welcome to the labs
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.
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...
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
- Database Tables of Student, Teacher Info Stolen From PowerSchool In Cyberattack - 2025-01-10 16:40
- Media Companies Scrap Venu Sports Before It Ever Launches - 2025-01-10 16:00
- Canadian 'Super Scooper' Plane Grounded After Hitting Civilian Drone Over LA Wildfires - 2025-01-10 15:20
- JPMorgan Chase Requires All Workers To Return To Office Five Days a Week - 2025-01-10 14:40
- YouTubers Are Selling Their Unused Video Footage To AI Companies - 2025-01-10 13:30
hackaday
- Bit-Banging the USB-PD Protocol - 2025-01-10 15:00
- Life Without Limits: A Blind Maker’s Take on 3D Printing - 2025-01-10 13:30
- Hackaday Podcast Episode 303: The Cheap Yellow Display, Self-Driving Under $1000, and Don’t Remix that Benchy - 2025-01-10 11:30
- SerenityOS On Real Hardware - 2025-01-10 10:30
- This Week in Security: Backdoored Backdoors, Leaking Cameras, and The Safety Label - 2025-01-10 09:00
neatorama
- Inheritance Powder: The History of Arsenic - 2025-01-10 10:42
- Trapped by a Blizzard in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range - 2025-01-10 07:24
- Popeye's Out to Kill You in Two January Slasher Films - 2025-01-09 19:19
- History's Deadliest Sniper Was Only Five Feet Tall - 2025-01-09 17:37
- Correcting the Dinosaurs of <i>Jurassic Park</i> - 2025-01-09 11:38
NPR
- A small seafood restaurant turns into a national donation hub for LA fire victims - 2025-01-10 16:42
- New photos show the volcanic plains of Mercury after a spacecraft fly-by - 2025-01-10 16:33
- Venezuela's Maduro begins new term as US raise bounty for his arrest - 2025-01-10 16:28
- Is smoke in your home? Here's how to make an air purifier from a box fan - 2025-01-10 15:44
- Canceled flights, stranded cars, no power: Winter storm slams swath of U.S. - 2025-01-10 14:46
jacobin
- The Video Game Industry Is Unionizing - 2025-01-10 06:48
- Alan Dershowitz Is Phoning in His Genocide Apologia - 2025-01-10 05:21
- Congratulations, Your Privacy Is Worth $20 - 2025-01-10 04:53
- The Los Angeles Fires Didn’t Have to Be This Bad - 2025-01-10 03:58
- Is Iran Next? - 2025-01-10 02:41
the register personal tech
- Tongue-zapping spoons, tea-cooling catbots, lazy vacuums and more from CES - 2025-01-10 14:30
- Rollable laptop displays to roll off the production line from April, says Samsung - 2025-01-09 20:33
- Look for the label: White House rolls out 'Cyber Trust Mark' for smart devices - 2025-01-09 15:45
- Short-lived bling, dumb smart things, and more: The worst in show from CES 2025 - 2025-01-09 13:30
- Tesla, Musk double down on $56B payday appeal - 2025-01-09 11:32
sciencedaily
- A fast-moving belly flop: Researchers unveil the unique skills of cricket frogs - 2025-01-10 13:37
- 'What is that?' Scientists explain white patch that appears near northern lights - 2025-01-10 13:35
- T cells' capability to fully prevent acute viral infections opens new avenues for vaccine development - 2025-01-10 11:19
- Magma composition may drive volcanic tremor - 2025-01-10 11:19
- Cleopatra's sister remains missing - 2025-01-10 11:19
space.com
- Images from space show devastation of raging Los Angeles fires - 2025-01-10 17:02
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab still 'untouched' by raging LA fires - 2025-01-10 17:00
- The Full Wolf Moon 'eats' Mars on Jan. 13. Here's how to see it - 2025-01-10 17:00
- Space2Sea Antarctica: 2 Ukrainian soldiers fulfill 1st part of Antarctic dream - 2025-01-10 15:33
- Mars is bigger and brighter this weekend than it will be all year. Here's how to see it - 2025-01-10 15:00
space news
- A vision for better MilSatCom in the United Kingdom - 2025-01-10 08:00
- ESA budget dips slightly in 2025 - 2025-01-10 06:34
- SpaceX launches NROL-153, expanding U.S. spy satellite constellation - 2025-01-10 04:30
- NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory evacuated due to LA wildfire - 2025-01-09 16:09
- Rubicon delivers propulsion for NASA dual-mode mission - 2025-01-09 15:48
phys.org
- Fossil discovery sheds light on the early evolution of animal nervous systems - 2025-01-10 13:00
- Wind lull offers hope in Los Angeles fires - 2025-01-10 12:39
- A new transformer-based model for identifying alloy properties - 2025-01-10 12:32
- Plant hormones that help roots reach deeper water provide potential strategy for drought-resistant crops - 2025-01-10 12:14
- Why crime content is popular: Exploring cognitive and emotional motives - 2025-01-10 12:08
onion latest
- Artist Profile: SZA - 2025-01-10 09:46
- First U.S. Bird Flu Death Reported - 2025-01-10 09:43
- Elite Commando Sick Of Unseen Assailants Darting Through Fog To Quietly Dispatch Team One By One - 2025-01-10 09:42
- Biden Wanders Into Flames - 2025-01-10 09:39
- U.S. Mint Introduces New Controversial John Wilkes Booth Pennies - 2025-01-10 09:36
changelogs
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 -> 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.
system status
Generator: Datenstrom Yellow version 0.9