ultrascience labs
This brand makes the thing which a consumer is satisfied with. - engrish.com
lab notes
Research articles and blog posts, some of it evergreen. Included archived blog posts restored from previous website incarnations.
r & d
Work logs for past and present hobby projects. Case mods, electronics, models, woodworking, vintage audio.
linkroll
A cultivated collection of link to sites of all types. Currently working on a linkroll and directories section - a linkroll of linkrolls.
current news
RSS headlines. Sources are subject to change. I try to use sources that are relatively resource light, and produce feed XML docs that aren't ridiculously boated. As usual, tread carefully in the comments sections, for example slashdot is a good source for headlines, but the comment section is full of Libertarians.
slashdot
- Digg Launches Its New Reddit Rival To the Public - 2026-01-14 19:25
- Cerebras Scores OpenAI Deal Worth Over $10 Billion - 2026-01-14 18:45
- DoorDash and UberEats Cost Drivers $550 Million In Tips, NYC Says - 2026-01-14 18:02
- US Approves Sale of Nvidia's Advanced AI Chips To China - 2026-01-14 17:20
- Bandcamp Bans AI Music - 2026-01-14 16:40
hackaday
- Dad Makes Kid’s Balance Bike Into Electric Snow Trike Like a Boss - 2026-01-14 18:00
- A New Life For An Old Amplifier - 2026-01-14 15:00
- FLOSS Weekly Episode 860: Elixir Origin Story - 2026-01-14 13:30
- Genetic Therapy Aims To Bring Hearing To Those Born Deaf - 2026-01-14 12:00
- ESP32-P4 Powers Retro Handheld after a Transplant - 2026-01-14 10:30
neatorama
- Walt Disney's Audacious Dream of Disneyland - 2026-01-14 19:49
- There's Now a Pokémon Theme Park - 2026-01-14 13:33
- Running Doom on a Cooking Pot - 2026-01-14 08:06
- "Dixie" on a Chinese Erhu - 2026-01-14 07:55
- Life Living on Sesame Street - 2026-01-14 07:41
NPR
- U.S. to suspend immigrant visas from 75 countries over public assistance concerns - 2026-01-14 18:09
- In a win for Democrats, court allows California's redistricting plan to proceed - 2026-01-14 17:19
- Denmark says there's a 'fundamental disagreement' with Trump over Greenland - 2026-01-14 13:57
- Kitchen countertop workers are dying. Some lawmakers want to ban their lawsuits - 2026-01-14 13:29
- Candidates have legal standing to challenge election laws, the Supreme Court rules - 2026-01-14 13:28
jacobin
- ICE Has Become a Rogue Paramilitary - 2026-01-14 10:22
- A New Day for NYC Taxi Drivers Under Zohran Mamdani? - 2026-01-14 07:15
- The Fed Is Quietly Bailing Out Wall Street - 2026-01-14 04:51
- Most Americans Condemn ICE’s Murder of Renee Good - 2026-01-14 04:33
- Right-Wing Dark Money Groups Want Regime Change in Iran - 2026-01-14 04:00
africa is a country
- Between Bambali and Nagrig - 2026-01-13 22:32
- The untameable Victor Osimhen - 2026-01-13 20:36
- Grounded expectations - 2026-01-05 06:00
- The twins who shaped Egyptian football - 2026-01-04 11:00
- Where are the politics of Bafana Bafana? - 2026-01-03 19:00
404media
- Strange ‘Little Red Dots’ in Space Have a Mind-Boggling Explanation, Scientists Discover - 2026-01-14 13:46
- How One Guy Crowdsourced More Than 500 Dashcams for Minneapolis to Film ICE - 2026-01-14 10:28
- Cop Used Flock to Wrongfully Accuse a Woman Then Refused to Look at Evidence That Exonerated Her, Body Camera Shows - 2026-01-14 09:29
- Podcast: The ICE Tool That Tracks Entire Neighborhoods - 2026-01-14 08:00
- Instagram AI Influencers Are Defaming Celebrities With Sex Scandals - 2026-01-13 11:48
techdirt
- We Found More Than 40 Cases Of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds And Other Moves That Can Cut Off Breathing - 2026-01-14 17:46
- ICE Is Going On A Surveillance Shopping Spree - 2026-01-14 15:08
- Bari Weiss Is Sad That People Aren’t Enjoying Her Clumsy Destruction Of CBS News - 2026-01-14 13:01
- Daily Deal: The Complete CompTIA And IT Exam Prep Bundle - 2026-01-14 12:55
- Prosecutors Flee DOJ After Being Told To Investigate The Murdered Woman, Not The Murderer - 2026-01-14 11:27
the register personal tech
- Maker fight! SparkFun cuts ties with Adafruit in harassment dispute - 2026-01-14 18:30
- Firefox 147 brings GPU boost, tidier tabs, and video that follows you around - 2026-01-14 07:15
- Buy servers now or cry later: DRAM price spike threatens infrastructure budgets - 2026-01-14 05:00
- The AI PC needs to deliver more than performance - it needs to deliver security - 2026-01-14 03:00
- PC shipments set to hit the buffers as AI guzzles memory - 2026-01-12 12:54
sciencedaily
- Scientists finally uncover why statins cause muscle pain - 2026-01-14 10:06
- This sweet fruit is packed with hidden health compounds - 2026-01-14 09:32
- Massive brain study reveals why memory loss can suddenly speed up with age - 2026-01-14 08:56
- “Marine darkwaves”: Hidden ocean blackouts are putting sealife at risk - 2026-01-14 08:45
- The ocean absorbed a stunning amount of heat in 2025 - 2026-01-14 07:36
space.com
- With Starfleet Academy beaming up to small screens and season four of Strange New Worlds later in the year, 2026 is a big year for Star Trek and you can save 37% on an annual subscription to Paramount Plus - 2026-01-14 17:10
- James Webb Space Telescope's mysterious 'little red dots' may be black holes in disguise - 2026-01-14 16:00
- Massive supernova explosion may have created a binary black hole - 2026-01-14 14:00
- 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy': Robert Picardo and Gina Yashere on embracing the legacy of their roles in latest Trek show (interview) - 2026-01-14 13:00
- Starlink satellites lift off on SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral (video) - 2026-01-14 12:21
space news
- CAS Space conducts first suborbital launch and capsule landing test - 2026-01-14 15:41
- ESA’s Comet Interceptor mission moves up launch - 2026-01-14 12:24
- Taiwan’s Moonshot: why ‘T-Dome’ needs systems engineering, not just a shopping list - 2026-01-14 12:00
- Space sustainability will evolve into a data-driven system - 2026-01-14 10:00
- ThinkOrbital raises seed funding to advance X-ray space inspection - 2026-01-14 09:00
phys.org
- Handmade learning: Students weave sustainability lessons into rag rugs - 2026-01-14 20:00
- Can a hashtag help prevent atrocities? Study shows social media can be a powerful tool - 2026-01-14 19:40
- Rural coworking spaces thrive on community ties and mixed funding models - 2026-01-14 19:20
- British redcoat's lost memoir reveals harsh realities of life as a disabled veteran - 2026-01-14 18:00
- Chemists determine structure of fuzzy coat that surrounds Tau proteins - 2026-01-14 18:00
onion latest
- Spencer Pratt Announces Run For L.A. Mayor - 2026-01-14 10:56
- Really Hot Mailman - 2026-01-14 08:00
- Amy Warburton and Zachary Kemp - 2026-01-14 08:00
- Powerful Bidet Blasts Hole Clean Through Man - 2026-01-14 08:00
- Vivid Sex Dream About Steely McBeam Again - 2026-01-14 08:00
changelogs
December 2025
2025-12-22 - r & d - Infrastructure worklogs updated in shop rehab redux
November 2025
2025-11-09 - updated the ticker links to open in new tabs.
2025-11-07 - updated yellow to version 0.9.16
July 2025
2025-07-15 - linkroll - added links to the esoterica, linkrolls, design inspiration, and woodworking sections.
March 2025
2025-03-10 - r&d - Added the "rei & asuka" entry under r&d -> case mods -> legacy case mods. I also realized that I also got my Dragon case work log entered but forgot to update the change log to document it. So check that out too, I guess.
February 2025
2025-02-26 - Spent a few days messing around with the site layout. Went crazy with the icons and integrated them into the nav areas of the site. I created new layouts to generate dynamic icon-based navigation. I also pushed the "about" sections to the bottom of their respective sections.
2025-02-20 - linkroll - Alphabetized the linkroll categories. Working on putting together a linkroll/directory category.
December 2024
2024-12-20 - lab notes - Taking advantage of the new lab notes blog format and manually importing content from the previous iterations of the site. I've imported both Greymatter versions of the blog (thanks to the Internet Archive) and I'm working through the Drupal blog posts pulled from the backups I restored in October. I'm including comment text inline with the post content - click "read more" under any of the older blog posts to see them. I should also note that since these restored posts are over 15 years old many of the links are dead. I'm linking to Internet Archive pages contemporary to the date of the blog post in question where needed and when possible.
November 2024
2024-11-18 - linkroll - Adding more links new categories over the last several days. A bit of styling on the headers to improve readability.
2024-11-02 - Updated the styling for the ultrascience_efc theme used on the lab notes pages.
2024-11-02 - lab notes - adjusting content sorting. Lab notes is now in a blog format, using tags to sort blog entries and logn form research articles.
2024-11-01 - linkroll - Added new links
2024-11-01 - Added ticker feeds
October 2024
2024-10-31 - Working on the front page layout. Rolling latest changes into the changelogs. Still messing with the ticker feeds.
2024-10-30 - Updated Datenstrom Yellow to version 0.9, installed ticker extension for displaying RSS feed content. Currently just dumping it on the bottom of the homepage. I also installed the blog extension. I'm also considering other structural changes to the site.
2024-10-22 - lab notes - new article "A Site Recovery 15 years in the making" created to track archived site recovery work. Article is live, but very under construction
2024-10-22 - Been working on recovering the circa 2005 version of the site from my old backups. At the time it was using Drupal 4.7 running on a typical LAMP stack. Recovery work will be logged in a new lab notes article.
2024-10-04 - homepage - added icons, refreshed intro copy, cleaned up changelogs
September 2024
2024-09-16 - r & d - Whitewings worklogs updated under paper airplanes
2024-09-16 - lab notes - Updated the "whitewings" lab notes entry in the "models, hobbytronics & programming" notebook. Added links for model and manual scans. Updated the History of Jet Fighters and Volume 1 worklogs to include a list of models with assembly and flight reviews. Work will be ongoing there as I build and fly models.
2024-09-09 - r&d - Started work on the "Whitewings - History of Jet Fighters 1992" worklog under the r & d section
August 2024
2024-08-01 - August was offline work
July 2024
2024-07-15 - r&d - Started work on the "Whitewings - Excellent Paper Airplanes Volume 1 1980" worklog under the r & d section
2024-07-01 - lab notes - Created the "whitewings" lab notes entry in the "models, hobbytronics & programming" notebook
April 2024
2024-04-17- homepage - Continuing updates - all experimental. Added a current research section as a kind of "now" page.
2024-04-16 - lab notes -New article published "why we are still using 88x31 buttons"
2024-04-04 - homepage - Cleaning up changelogs and latest changes on homepage, added intro copy.
2024-04-04 - linkroll - Added a "categories" list.
2024-04-04 - homepage - Adding icons and images for interest.
2024-04-01 - r&d - Completed the "mdportal elite" entry under r&d -> case mods -> legacy case mods
March 2024
- r&d - Started with restoring my 'ancient' case mod project logs and updating them for the new site.
Updated theming for the R&D section of the site.
2024-03-06 - lab notes - New article published "windows xp running on a vm"
2024-03-01 - lab notes - New article published "searching for search"
February 2024
2024-2-30 - linkroll - Added new category papercraft
2024-2-23 - linkroll - Added links to tools and resources I've been using to build this site.
2024-2-23 - Applied font sub-setting to drastically reduce font download size, played with header font styling.
2024-2-3 - Updated blue theme colors for the landing page and played with background images and styling in general.
January 2024
2024-1-28 - linkroll - Added more links to the.
2024-1-26 - Working on categories/layout for the linkroll.
current research
Web
Thanks to my restored backups and the Internet Archive, I was able to pull in the blog content from my pre 2010 Greymatter and Drupal versions of the site in the lab notes. Content is tagged with "greymatter" and "drupal" as appropriate. Old comments are included. I'm still working on old project logs.
Hardware
Workshop reorganization has continued through the fall and into winter. But along the way I've knocked out a few projects and made headway on others. Details coming.
Papercraft/Models
Paper airplanes made for some fun summer and fall flying, but wet and cold winter weather has settled in so I've been spending time on the model railroad layout. It's a mixed-gauge two-level layout consisting of HO and HOn30. The main HOn30 in-town streetcar loop track has been laid and wired, and I've laid track on the HO portion. Details coming.
Infrastructure
Shop re-org and updates continue. I still need to document the work so I can keep track of it in the future - if only I had a website for tracking projects...
about
Welcome to the labs. Back in the early 2000s I was playing with case mods and website design and I set up this domain as a homepage to share my projects and sandbox to play with various development tools and styles.
I dropped it after several years, but lately I've wanted a place to record and share my old and new project work again. So I re-registered the site and dusted off my old data files.
system status
Generator: Datenstrom Yellow version 0.9.16