The Start of 2025

It's been months since I last updated my articles. A lot has happened recently.

PhD Applications and Graduation

It all started last December, when I decided to stay on for a PhD. Since then, things have kept going back and forth, and a lot has come up.

First came the joy of accepting my advisor's offer. Then in March, he took me to task over a flaw in my application materials — and I'm honestly grateful, because it was my fault. At the end of March, I found out he was leaving. Not long after, a plan emerged to switch groups after admission. In just over a month, my emotions were on a roller coaster. Fortunately, another professor helped me with the application, and I've now received an offer. But which group I'll end up in is still up in the air — I'm just waiting for the final word.

Graduation, though, is all on me. I just finished addressing the blind review comments, but I don't know who to ask to look them over. Hope everything goes smoothly.

Content

Recently I revisited my Nankai senior's structural biology learning website, and I have to say the content is much richer than last time. The small mistake I found last time is still there, though, so I pointed it out to him and he confirmed it.

For this PhD application, I had wanted to include my personal website in my CV and slides. My senior said the site's content was too broad and not focused on academia, and advised me to drop it. I thought he had a point.

So I considered whether to build a separate website focused purely on academic content. In the end, I decided against it — I'd rather keep it in my personal website. Otherwise the site would be too bare; after all, as a biology student, I can't have a personal website full of nothing but tinkering content. But I do plan to make some changes:

• Reclassify Articles and Notes: Articles will contain only tinkering and academic content, sorted into categories — whether it's Cryo-EM, X-Ray, or anything else research-related, it'll be clearer and easier to find. Reflections, travelogues, and other content will go into Notes.
• Move tutorials I don't want public into the Internal Tutorials column under Articles: I've always felt some tutorials weren't suitable for public release, so they've stayed on my local machine. The password required feature in Notes makes this possible.
• Content quality: also inspired by my senior's content, I realize much of what I write isn't very detailed, largely because writing things out properly takes a lot of time. That's something I need to change — I'll focus on quality in future content.

Printing Photos

Over the Chinese New Year, I brought my camera and photo printer home, took photos of my family, and printed them out. One regret: I forgot to organize a family portrait this year. I'll definitely make up for it next year if I get the chance.

The whole process felt so ceremonial and meaningful that I recently bought a bunch of photo paper and printed out photos from the past two or three years, planning to make an album.

The printer is a Xiaomi Mi Home Photo Printer 1S that my girlfriend gave me for my birthday last year. It supports 3-inch and 6-inch photo paper:

• The 3-inch paper is square, so the aspect ratio and size differ quite a bit from ordinary 3-inch prints. I personally find it hard to get right.
• The 6-inch paper is the size I prefer, with an aspect ratio of about 3:2.
  • Landscape photos and the like can be printed directly at 6 inches.
  • If 6 inches feels too big, you can use Meitu Xiuxiu to stitch two photos together — set the ratio to 3:2 and the gap to 60, then add a border when printing. You'll get exactly two 4-inch photos.
  • You can also print in a "life in four frames" style — see this post for reference.

Anyway, there are plenty of ways to play with it. If you're interested, I can write a tutorial on how to print.

Daily Life

After getting back to school, it turned out the first Type-C port on my MacBook has a bad connection. There are only two Type-C ports to begin with, so now just one works.

I checked online — it might be caused by oxidation on the Type-C board or similar. On Taobao, a replacement board costs just over ten yuan; I found a Shanghai seller who would replace it for 100 yuan, labor included. But it could also be a motherboard problem, which would be more of a hassle.

I haven't gone to get it replaced yet, though. It doesn't affect daily use for now — my usual needs are just connecting a monitor and charging.