Another semester

It's been a while since my last update, and I promise to get to blogging more. Another semester has gone by, though for me it doesn't make a difference as I don't have any classes to take. I did get a lot accomplished this term in the lab though. I'm not close to finishing, but I feel like I made significant progress and I'm very happy about that. I have been able to complete a low noise cryogenic single stage self-biased high frequency amplifier with 18 dB of gain, and am in the process of building a two stage device. Might not sound particularly difficult for those who have been in the microwave business for a while, but for the last two months this was all that I have been working on. It does feel good though to now be able to say I understand what's going on, and more importantly, that I've made a working, functional device. The amplifier certainly feels like my first real accomplishment in the lab, since I essentially put everything together, with everyone's help and guidance.

More picture updates to come as I get to taking more pictures!

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Youthful Reminisces

These past four days have been a trip down memory lane. I'm going to try to organize some of the memories for blogging, though not all in this post. My parents, M and I took a road trip to Hualien, partly as a family get-away, and also to introduce our Taiwanese hometown to a group of my brother's ( Albert Wu see here and here ) students from France. Albert and his wife are jointly teaching a course in history in Paris, and over the last few weeks they have been taking their students on an abroad research-coursework-fun tour of Taiwan. If you know my father, he tends to try to get involved in some way with any of his sons' projects, and from our perspectives, it's great to get his help and/or just advice (from time to time). My brother and his wife planned a historical, social justice introduction to Taiwan (I wrote about a visit to Dadaocheng ). Important components to understand the complex identities and mindsets of Taiwanese today involves understanding the Ea...

Did X say that?

I was cleaning out old draft emails when I came upon these quotes. 1. “Set your goals high; make friends with different kinds of people; enjoy simple pleasures. Stand on high ground; sit on level ground; walk on expansive ground.” 2. In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit . -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (1875-1965) Both quotes resonated with me, and both quotes provide profound, provoking, prose projecting providence. But for the first quote I'm not sure who to attribute, and for the second, while I'd like to imagine he said that, I'm not really sure if Dr. Schweitzer did (because I have never met him!). In the internet age, I think it really behooves one to critically analyze everything read online. Does X make sense, did X say that? Sometimes it...

Goodbyes

It's hard saying goodbye. A good friend of mine is leaving Duke to return to Paris. He was fed up with the physics program here, and after securing a position in France, decided to return home. It's unfortunate that the department here could not do more to help, as he was genuinely bright; unfortunately he was suffering from depression, probably induced by the stresses of the PhD program as well as the dull boring city of Durham. In general how does one say goodbye? You don't really, especially if you're good friends. You just end up saying hello less often. At least that's my take. Unfortunately, more on goodbyes, it's goodbye to Duke's NCAA hopes for this year. We were outplayed by LSU. Sure the refs were really not entirely fair (from our point of view of course), but they closed our top scorer down. It was a fun run, and I enjoyed watching them play, especially since I thought they played such great team basketball, but it's over. Such a somber posti...

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