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
- Silicon Valley Execs Join the Army As Officers - 2025-06-19 02:00
- Scammers Use Google Ads To Inject Phony Help Lines On Apple, Microsoft Sites - 2025-06-18 22:30
- Texas Instruments To Invest $60 Billion To Make Semiconductors In US - 2025-06-18 20:20
- Major Oil Companies Face First 'Climate Death' Lawsuit - 2025-06-18 19:41
- Apple Posts Strongest Two-Month iPhone Growth Since Pandemic - 2025-06-18 19:02
hackaday
- Gas Burner Reuses Printer Nozzle For Metalwork - 2025-06-19 00:00
- A Number of Microphones… er, Inductors, Rather - 2025-06-18 21:00
- FLOSS Weekly Episode 837: World’s Best Beta Tester - 2025-06-18 18:00
- BhangmeterV2 Answers The Question “Has a Nuke Gone Off?” - 2025-06-18 15:00
- Split Keyboard Uses No PCB - 2025-06-18 13:30
neatorama
- <i>Jaws 3, People 0</i>: The Unhinged and Unmade Sequel - 2025-06-18 18:38
- You Can Carbonate Tuna Fish - 2025-06-18 16:38
- The Countries With the Most Nuclear Weapons, 1945-2025 - 2025-06-18 16:09
- The Curious Phenomenon of the Jumping Lumberjacks - 2025-06-18 12:48
- Frank Reynolds Joins the Fellowship of the Ring - 2025-06-17 18:05
NPR
- Erick is an 'extremely dangerous' Category 4 hurricane near Mexico's Pacific coast - 2025-06-19 02:18
- U.S. resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts - 2025-06-19 00:14
- Israeli president calls on the world to help destroy Iran nuclear sites - 2025-06-18 19:17
- Screen addiction and suicidal behaviors are linked for teens, a study shows - 2025-06-18 16:44
- Trump administration cuts specialized suicide prevention service for LGBTQ+ youth - 2025-06-18 16:09
jacobin
- Labor Could Swing New York’s Election to Zohran Mamdani - 2025-06-18 12:38
- Like George W. Bush, Donald Trump Is Lying His Way Into War - 2025-06-18 10:40
- Kamala Harris Didn’t Lose Because of Racism - 2025-06-18 07:13
- Spotify Deserves the Hate. But Don’t Forget the Major Labels. - 2025-06-18 06:49
- West Papua’s Forever War - 2025-06-18 06:44
africa is a country
- Critical mass - 2025-06-18 07:00
- Sinners and ancestors - 2025-06-17 07:00
- The verdict against womanhood - 2025-06-16 07:00
- It’s Gianni’s world (cup)… - 2025-06-13 06:30
- Firearms aren’t the only weapons - 2025-06-12 07:00
404media
- One of the Universe’s Biggest Mysteries Has Been Solved, Scientists Say - 2025-06-18 08:47
- 40,000 Cameras, From Bird Feeders to Baby Monitors, Exposed to the Internet - 2025-06-18 08:40
- The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel - 2025-06-18 08:00
- Podcast: Airlines Sold Your Flight Data to DHS—And Covered It Up - 2025-06-18 08:00
- California Cops Investigate ‘Immigration Protest’ With AI-Camera System - 2025-06-17 10:15
techdirt
- Nintendo Is Already Punishing Switch 2 Users Over Piracy ‘Suspicions’ - 2025-06-18 22:15
- SCOTUS Simply Ignores Precedent, Rather Than Overruling It, In Allowing Trump To Fire Officials Congress Deemed Independent - 2025-06-18 17:41
- Verizon ‘AI’ ‘Personal Shopper’ Assistant Ripping Customers Off With Weird Unwanted Charges - 2025-06-18 15:36
- Why Making Social Media Companies Liable For User Content Doesn’t Do What Many People Think It Will - 2025-06-18 14:02
- Former LAPD Chief: Sending Troops To Los Angeles Is A Major Mistake - 2025-06-18 12:44
the register personal tech
- Europe slams online tat bazaar AliExpress for dodging obligation to stop dodgy traders - 2025-06-19 02:26
- European consumers are mostly saying 'non' to trading in their old phones - 2025-06-18 10:29
- Logitech's latest keyboard and mouse combo is wired, quiet, and suspiciously sensible - 2025-06-18 04:29
- Apple dodges Optis patent payout for now as judge orders a do-over - 2025-06-17 12:40
- Doomed UK smartphone maker Bullitt Group finally liquidated - 2025-06-17 03:28
sciencedaily
- Heavy particles, big secrets: What happened right after the Big Bang - 2025-06-17 00:41
- Cozmic’s Milky Way clones are cracking the universe’s dark code - 2025-06-17 00:41
- Rainbow reefs revealed: The secret 112-million-year saga of glowing fish - 2025-06-17 00:41
- Clever worms form superorganism towers to hitch rides on insects - 2025-06-17 00:41
- Black coffee, longer life: The science behind your morning perk - 2025-06-17 00:41
space.com
- SpaceX's Starship explodes in Texas during preparations for 10th test flight - 2025-06-19 02:08
- See the moon rise alongside the giant planets Neptune and Saturn predawn on June 19 - 2025-06-18 16:00
- 2 Chinese spacecraft just met up 22,000 miles above Earth. What were they doing? - 2025-06-18 15:00
- Mars joins the Spring Triangle this week: Here’s when and how to see it - 2025-06-18 14:00
- Watch Honda launch (and land) its 1st reusable rocket in this wild video - 2025-06-18 13:00
space news
- Trump officially nominates Space Force Gen. Guetlein to lead ‘Golden Dome’ - 2025-06-18 18:26
- Firefly announces commercial lunar imagery service - 2025-06-18 15:36
- Regulators clear Starlink-enabled texting trial in war-torn Ukraine - 2025-06-18 14:00
- Varda to launch its first in-house built spacecraft for on-orbit manufacturing - 2025-06-18 09:00
- Learning from the past: How history can guide space and cyber rules today - 2025-06-18 08:00
phys.org
- 'The models were right': Astronomers find 'missing' matter linking four galaxy clusters - 2025-06-19 02:00
- Global carbon emissions on track to exhaust 1.5°C budget in three years, study warns - 2025-06-18 18:00
- The seemingly impossible reproduction of dogroses hinges on a centromere trick - 2025-06-18 16:25
- Electron microscopy technique captures nanoparticle organizations to forge new materials - 2025-06-18 16:19
- Gene-editing nanoparticle system targets multiple organs simultaneously - 2025-06-18 16:14
onion latest
- Texas Doctor Tapes Pregnancy Pamphlet To Comatose Woman’s Forehead - 2025-06-18 13:19
- Allergic Swelling Leaves Kristi Noem’s Face Completely Recognizable - 2025-06-18 12:00
- Tourist Damages Museum’s Crystal-Covered Chair By Sitting On It - 2025-06-18 11:00
- Physicists Discover Never-Before-Seen Particle In Back Of Old Cupboard - 2025-06-18 10:59
- Malin Rourke - 2025-06-18 08:00
changelogs
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