Fort Getty, Rholde Island [General]

Fort Getty is in Jamestown of Rholde Island, which is very close to the Fort Wetherill. I really like this place because it has a lot of things to do other than beaches.

Of course many people come here because of the beaches. The beaches here look like typic New England style but the surf is not very strong, which is very pleasant. Besides the beaches, there are several shallow waters. People like shallow water because there are lots of sea shells. On the other side of the sea, there is a large area of swamp with many kinds of birds. So I think if you like outdoor activity, Fort Getty should be a very good place.

Weiwei posted @ 20:44:25 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Navigation and Boat Dive [    ]

We went to Fort Getty for the navigation and boat dive course. Ed brought his boat to the site.

Before we headed to the water, Gus taught us thoroughly about the compass. Before, every time when I got into the water, I always tried all my best to focus on taking pictures and never bothering to use the compass. So this time I should learn how to use it. For the first dive, we practiced a lot in the water about the navigation. It's not difficult at all.

For the second dive, we started from Ed's boat. This is not easy at the begining because the boat swing back and forth and I got the sea sick. It's supposed that I should descent along the anchor line. But when I got into the water, the rope of the flag was tangled with my camera and I had to use the other hand to make them apart. And then I lost the anchor line and my buddy. I think I almost dropped onto the bottom, even without a chance to clear the ears. The visibility was almost zero. So I could not hear nor see anything. I felt really nervous at that moment and started to ascend.

Ed managed to pull me back to the boat. I decided to leave my camera on the boat for the second dive. This time it went smoothly. I met my buddy on the bottom. And once you got to the bottom, the visibility was not that bad.

My conclusion is that to handle the diving flag is actually more difficult than to use the compass.

p.s. I should thank Liu Shan for taking a picture of myself. I rarely found a picture of myself since I started to do the photography.

Weiwei posted @ 20:36:25 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Night Dive in Stonington [    ]

I heard a lot about the night dive in Stonington. And I can imagin how wonderful it is - Stonington has lots of animals to see.

Before we dove into the water, Gus showed us different types of flash lights. When we really got into the water, it's actually not bad at all. Since the visibility was pretty good, we could easily see the buddy's flash light. So it's not very hard to follow each other.

The difficult part is I felt that I did not have enough hands to use. With the flash light in one hand and my BC inflator on the other, I felt so busy to take a picture.

Weiwei posted @ 20:17:02 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Quarry Dive [    ]

I started my advanced SCUBA diving course this weekend. It includes 6 dives and the first one is the quarry dive.

The place we go is located in Sterling (actually I only know the name but have no idea of where it is). When I stood on the side of the quarry, I was thinking how could I dive in this water - because it does not smell very good. Well it turned out this is quite normal because of the foilage in the water.

The main task is to learn to use lift bag. The idea is quite simple - you put air into the bag and it will lift something up with the buoyancy. The problem is if we want to work on something on the bottom, it's impossible to avoid stirring the stuff on the bottom. So basically we were working at the zero visibility. But since it's a team work, it turned out not very difficult.

After the work, we had a chance to navigate the whole area. Amazingly, as long as you move quietly, the visibility is very good. With the sun beam goes into the water, the grass and the bubbles look very beautiful. Plus it is fresh water, it's very pleasant to dive.

Weiwei posted @ 19:48:03 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Pilot Pen 2 [Sports]

You can not imagin how beautiful the weather is in this late summer day. It's supposed to be the the Wednesday diving. But I give up this time. On of the reason is that I will take advanced course this weekend. I do not want to bother to take one more dive before that. Well the most important reason is the Pilot Penn tennis game this evening - I would have a chance to see Martina Navratilova.

Definitely Martina Navratilova is the tennis giant. She is holding 43 Grand Slam Championship title. Nobody could pass this record anymore. She is 47 years old and is still playing the game - amazingly, not only playing, but also winning. So you can imagin how excited I am when I see she is playing the game.

She won again, giving a good performance to her fans.

Weiwei posted @ 21:37:49 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Pilot Pen [Sports]

Pilot Pen tennis competition is one of the most significant sport event in New Haven area. This is my third time to be here for this event. After the huge thunder storm yesterday, the weather today is beautiful.

All the games so far are just for qualification. So they are not in a very high level. We only watched one match between two players we never heard of. In the late afternoon, some super stars came to the practice quarts. I got good chances to take some pictures. I am not fan for specific player but just thinking it's pretty cool to see somebody that you had supposed to see her only in TV.

In the same day today, two Chinese girls got the gold medal of women's tennis - double in Athens Olymic Games. This is totally out of anyone's prediction - it's damn cool!

Weiwei posted @ 21:31:18 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Anatase TiO2 (101) [Research]

Today I got more results from Brookhaven National Lab about my anatase TiO2 thin film. This is a surprise to me because the results I already had are not very good. But what I got today is very beautiful.

From the above transmission electron microscope (TEM) image, you can see both Ti and Al atoms very clearly. Also the interface between the film and the substrate is very clear.

However on the other hand, analysis of TEM image is difficult. In most cases, you can not derive the real structure directly from the image. Because of the diffraction condition, some of the atoms may not be seen from the image. Also the structure alos depends on the orientation of the material mount.

With this image, I could get my paper much better than what it is now. The resolve of the interface structure will go to a seperate paper.

Weiwei posted @ 20:55:06 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Some Random Thoughts [Thoughtful]

I did not put any entry to my journal for several days. I was a little bit depressed recently because I found myself busy but not productively busy recently. The experiment is not going very smoothly - I know this is pretty much normal, but with the time is flying away, I feel kind of empty.

Like every Olympic Games before, I paid pretty much attention to this one. This time, I am trying to imagine how an Olympic exprience will affect the athletes - some people would win, maybe the best winning in their life time; some people would lose, maybe the biggest regret in their life time. It's actually very hard for an audience like me to really understand the taste.

I remember when Amanda Beard was interviewed after her swim, she was very happy because she thought a silver medal was actually a 'bonus' for her first Olympic competition. Her smile showed that how much fun she had had. But for Pelps, there is no fun for him even he could get 6 gold medals.

Weiwei posted @ 21:48:00 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (11) [    ]

With the summer approaching its end, the water is actually getting warmer and warmer. As soon as I got the bottom at Stonington today, I saw a large school of fish passing by. I was amazed because I only saw this kind of pictures on the book. Since the visibility was not very good, the picture did not come out good.

One of my buddies (we went as four people today) got very excited today because it's his first time to really "caught" a lobster. Whenever I saw a lobster, he would rush in and try to catch it. Most of time he just made a cloud of mud. I was wondering when people saw some animals they seldom saw, they did not stop to observe it but try to catch it. If you do catch it, what are you going to do with it? Why people can not try to be friend to the animals?

I also saw a squid and some very beautiful fish. They just passed by and I even did not realize to turn the camera on.

Weiwei posted @ 21:29:34 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Fort Wetherill [    ]

Forth Wetherill is located in Jamestown, Rholde Island. Probably it is the most famous diving site in New England. The water is surrounded by the cliff, with only one narrow side connected to the ocean. This makes the area quite calm. The marine life is abundant along the cliff.

Mark and I got here, planning a two-tank diving. Since we did not have the diving flag, we joined the class of Scuba Shack. They set up a square area, with diving flag on each corner. We could only stay in the area. But quickly we found the area was too small. We went back and forth for many times until we had to surface. There was not too much to see, besides hundreds of spider crab. I have to say those crab does not look very good.

After about a two-hour surface interval, we started the second diving. This one was much better than the first one. We went deeper. Along the cliff, we saw a lot of stuff. There's a kind of fish. It is fish with legs - like a crab. It can both swim and run, pretty interesting.

Some of the pictures are in the photoalbum.

Weiwei posted @ 11:20:40 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (10) [    ]

Today is my 10th diving at Stonington point. The storm swept from New Haven through out the Essex. So the Wednesday diving was cancelled. This was after Mark and I got to the site. Amazingly, Stonington was very quite, without any evidence that it would rain.

We suited up and walked into the sea. Since it was early, it was very bright under the water. The visibility was pretty good, about 10 ft. We went slowly and were trying to find lobsters. There were a lot. Some of them were youngsters but some of them were huge. We also spot a huge fish passing by.

When I started to use the flash, I found the quality of my underwater pictures are improving. I put the good one in the photo album now.

Weiwei posted @ 21:15:16 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

High Vaccum in STM Chamber [Research]

Finally today the STM chamber in the Becton Lab has the pressure of 9x10E-10 torr. This is the first time it has this low working pressure since it was initially set up about 4 years ago.

The system I am working on has three connected vaccum chambers. I still remember how much effort we had made to find the leak for the MBE chamber, which took about 3 months and got to 2x10E-10 torr eventually more than two years ago. The STM chamber took longer because the electronic parts inside the chamber can not bear very high temperature. We finally figured out the way of how to do it.

Weiwei posted @ 11:01:11 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Underwater Photo Album [Photography]

I add a new section on the photo album which has my underwater photos. There are not many pictures there yet. But you can still go and check it out!

Weiwei posted @ 21:01:35 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Dinner at BAR [General]

Gao Ning is leaving to China tomorrow. So basically today is her last day in US. She wanted me to show her how to use her newly bought Canon 300D. The girl went to B&H last Friday and bought a camera plus 4 lenses at once - hard to belive. Well I believe the people in B&H must love her.

After we took some pictures we went to BAR for some pizza. Actually I don't like - no, I actually hate pizza. But today's pizza in BAR is actually pretty good. We ordered potato and clamp and without cheese. It's really good. Actually New Haven has the oldest pizza store in US, which is on cross street of BAR. But this store is not that famous. People who come here to see the store always end up going into BAR.

Click the picture to see some pictures.

p.s. Larry and Jin drove from Boston to New Haven this weekend. We had buffet this morning. Haven't seen them for quite a while. I am glad that everything is fine.

Weiwei posted @ 20:57:16 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Adobe Illustrator CS [General]

I am working on another new website and need some vetor graphic. I was trying to find some books talking about Coral Draw. But unfortunately, there is not many. It ends up with Adobe Illustrator. It's hard to belive how wonderful and creative of this software. But of course, it difficult to learn at the beginning - it is not that straight forward as Photoshop. I started to work on it. Hopefully I will have some graphic desigh works soon.

Weiwei posted @ 20:40:48 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (9) [    ]

Mark and I got to know each other on Wednesday's diving and we decided to go to Stonington again this weekend. This is pretty cool because I am always trying to find more chances to dive.

For the previous diving, there always a dive master going. But not this time. I am a little bit nervous at the beginning. I went to the shop to get the tank filled and grabbed a compass. I focused to much on taking the pictures before and never carefully learned to use compass. Ed showed me how to use it. But I think in Stonington it should be okay because the water is pretty shallow. Whenever you get lost, you can always surface and find the right direction.

Shane, Mark's friend, also joined. Actually the diving went smoothly. I am pretty much comfortable now with my gears and control very well. We saw a lot of star fish. It seems they have groups, like family, hanging out and having sex together...hehe...We lost the buddy once, only because I concentrated on taking pictures. So I am really thankful for Mark and Shane's patience.

Weiwei posted @ 20:35:15 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Stonington Point (8) [    ]

Don had planed to go diving in Rholde Island today. But unfortunately, for all kinds of reasons, we had to head to Stonington again. Mark and Ellen are my buddies. They both were trying to practice navigation, which made me pretty much hard to follow if I wanted to take pictures.

Most of the time, it's not easy to find a buddy who'd like to do the same kind of thing as I do. Most of people do not like either diving nor taking pictures. Some people like diving but do not take pictures. Some people like to take pictures but they do not dive. So having a buddy who would have the same interest is very important if you want to take underwater pictures.

Weiwei posted @ 22:44:26 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Chinese Women Soccer Team [General]

In last weekend the Chinese and U.S. women soccer teams had a friendly game in Hartford. On the way back to New York City, the Chinese Women Soccer team dropped by Yale this afternoon. Although I am not a soccer fan, it is still wonderful for me to see the real face of the star.

People are respectful to the team. In China, the women soccer does not have as many fans and does not earn as much as men's soccer. However, with their hard work, they are in the world leading level and had lots of achievements.

Good luck to the girls in the Olympic Games!

Weiwei posted @ 18:25:33 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)

Edgerton Park (2) [General]

I went to Edgerton Park this afternoon. Since it's rainy this morning, I had thought it would be great if the rain stopped and the sky would be cloudy. But the sun popped out after the rain. So I was not that lucky this time and only got several shots of the dragonfly.

This is the first time I shot dragonfly. The good point is once they leave, they usually come back to the same place. However, it is pretty difficult to choose the angle so that the dragonfly will not look 'flat'. Blending the background is also difficult - an important issue of the nature photography.

I had a nice brunch with David. Kirin joined in the middle. I also set up to run the experiement this afternoon. I am a sort of lost in my experiment recently. This is not the first time but always makes people kind of frustrated.

Weiwei posted @ 20:24:47 || New Haven, CT || Comments (0)