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
- Anthropic Announces Claude Subscribers Must Now Pay Extra to Use OpenClaw - 2026-04-04 14:34
- No, AMD Is Not Buying Intel - 2026-04-04 13:34
- Amazon Must Negotiate With First Warehouse Workers Union, US Labor Board Rules - 2026-04-04 12:34
- The Document Foundation Removes Dozens of Collabora Developers - 2026-04-04 11:34
- 'Cognitive Surrender' Leads AI Users To Abandon Logical Thinking, Research Finds - 2026-04-04 09:00
hackaday
- Scrap Vintage Camera Goes Digital with Scanner Parts - 2026-04-04 15:00
- Open Graphics Card Powers Cyberpunk “Laptop” - 2026-04-04 12:00
- The Rapper, The Canadian Academics, And The Secret Behind The Earworm - 2026-04-04 06:00
- Heathkit Tuner Saved from Junk Pile - 2026-04-04 03:00
- Making a Vintage Allen Scythe Electric - 2026-04-04 00:00
neatorama
- This Summer, You Can Eat Your Hat with the Texas Rangers - 2026-04-04 06:05
- "The Apple Man" and Other Songs by a 3-year-old Lyricist - 2026-04-03 21:06
- When the Looting of Cambodian Antiquities Went All Wrong - 2026-04-03 15:21
- <i>Dune</i> Bunny Girl Cosplay - 2026-04-03 10:35
- Artemis II Toilet Is the First to Leave Low Earth Orbit - 2026-04-03 07:14
NPR
- Judge halts Trump effort requiring colleges to show they don't consider race in admissions - 2026-04-04 12:13
- After the Minnesota surge, ICE is moving to a quieter enforcement approach - 2026-04-04 10:34
- Opinion: Humanity's hopes ascended with Artemis II - 2026-04-04 07:00
- 'London Falling': A teenage imposter, an aging gangster and a body in the Thames - 2026-04-04 07:00
- Iran war enters its 6th week as military searches for downed jet crew member - 2026-04-04 05:48
jacobin
- The Los Angeles Community Schools Model - 2026-04-04 07:45
- Bernie Moreno Threatens the US-Colombia Relationship - 2026-04-04 06:47
- Crypto Is Flailing - 2026-04-04 05:48
- Trump Is Robbing You to Pay for His Dumb War - 2026-04-04 04:44
- Stop Asking If Israel Has a Right to Exist - 2026-04-04 03:45
africa is a country
- The human cost of Kenya’s expanding lakes - 2026-04-03 05:00
- You can’t kick politics out of football - 2026-04-02 17:00
- In Guadalajara, we found joy - 2026-04-02 05:00
- À Guadalajara, nous avons trouvé la joie - 2026-04-02 04:59
- Being right at the wrong time - 2026-04-01 08:00
404media
- Gambling Is Thousands of Years Older Than We Thought, Rewriting Human Evolution - 2026-04-04 08:00
- Behind the Blog: Systems As Designed - 2026-04-03 11:55
- Journalist Sues FAA Over Drone No Fly Zone Designed to Prevent Filming ICE - 2026-04-02 10:04
- Artemis II Astronauts Have ‘Two Microsoft Outlooks’ and Neither Work - 2026-04-02 09:50
- A Secure Chat App’s Encryption Is So Bad It Is ‘Meaningless’ - 2026-04-02 08:47
techdirt
- Game Jam Winner Spotlight: CARAMENTRAN - 2026-04-04 14:00
- Minnesota Kicks Off Legal Battle With Trump Administration To Hold ICE Shooters Accountable - 2026-04-03 21:39
- In Chiles V. Salazar The Supreme Court Issues A Bad Good First Amendment Decision - 2026-04-03 17:32
- Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source? - 2026-04-03 15:08
- Daily Deal: Hypergear 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Dock - 2026-04-03 15:03
the register personal tech
- We know what day it is but these Raspberry Pi price hikes are no joke - 2026-04-01 04:28
- Raspberry Pi leans into semiconductors as sales climb – especially in US and China - 2026-03-31 08:45
- Android keyboard ditches keys entirely, predicts what you mean - 2026-03-31 04:27
- UK fines Irish Apple outpost over sanctions-busting payments to Russian dev - 2026-03-30 10:09
- Google is to journalism what Vikings were to monks. Now their man will run the BBC - 2026-03-30 04:03
sciencedaily
- Binge drinking just once a month may triple your risk of liver scarring - 2026-04-04 07:29
- Most U.S. states are warming but not in the way you think - 2026-04-04 07:25
- These overlooked brain cells may control fear and PTSD - 2026-04-04 06:47
- MXene breakthrough boosts conductivity 160x with perfect atomic order - 2026-04-04 03:32
- Dying stars are devouring giant planets, astronomers discover - 2026-04-04 03:21
space.com
- Artemis 2 astronauts — now halfway to the moon — report 'burning smell' from toilet, but everything's fine - 2026-04-04 13:30
- This Week In Space podcast: Episode 204 — A New NASA - 2026-04-04 10:12
- 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' is finally available to buy digitally, and we've got an exclusive behind-the-scenes clip - 2026-04-04 10:00
- Disclosure day: If ET made contact, how would we handle the news? - 2026-04-04 09:00
- Defender at 45: How an icon of space gaming is in danger of being lost to history - 2026-04-04 07:00
space news
- Space Force budget would more than double in Trump’s $1.5 trillion defense plan - 2026-04-04 11:30
- Artemis 2 in good shape cruising towards the moon - 2026-04-03 20:18
- Italy’s Argotec plans to scale Florida satellite facility to meet rising US demand - 2026-04-03 12:33
- White House again proposes steep NASA budget cuts - 2026-04-03 10:15
- SpaceX and Amazon spar over satellite deployments - 2026-04-03 06:41
phys.org
- Thermal justice: New report examines threat of extreme heat, suggests culturally informed policies - 2026-04-04 15:00
- Humans' closest invertebrate ancestors date back much further than thought - 2026-04-04 14:00
- Humor helps older adults navigate aging, research suggests - 2026-04-04 13:00
- A simple ECG test could flag racehorses at risk of exercise arrhythmias - 2026-04-04 13:00
- How we came to be: Scientists get first look at the evolution of early complex animals - 2026-04-04 12:00
onion latest
- Pam Bondi Fired As Attorney General - 2026-04-04 08:00
- Pam Bondi Brought In For Exit Lobotomy - 2026-04-03 14:11
- Bondi: ‘My Only Regret Is Not Being Able To Re-Traumatize More Victims’ - 2026-04-03 14:07
- Pete Hegseth Replaces Top General With Horse That Drinks Beer - 2026-04-03 13:19
- Iran Imposes New ‘Cash, Grass, Or Ass’ Fee For Strait Of Hormuz - 2026-04-03 12:44
changelogs
April 2026
2025-04-03 - linkroll - added more links.
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