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
- Japanese Bank to Stop Allowing ATM Cards, PCs For Account Access - 2026-11-04 11:00
- Canva To Cut Or Relocate 22% of Global Workforce - 2026-11-04 10:00
- NASA's Swift Observatory Is Falling to Earth - 2026-11-04 07:00
- Dinosaur Blood Found In Fossils For the First Time - 2026-11-04 04:00
- Democrats Take Control of US Congress As Voters Reject Trump's Republicans - 2026-11-04 00:30
hackaday
- Using a Cheap DC Motor to Make a Go-Kart Go - 2026-11-04 10:30
- Yesterday Has Never Looked This Good: Feast Your Eyes On The 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge Winners! - 2026-11-04 09:00
- A Ridiculous Journey to Set the Clock in a 2014 Renault - 2026-11-04 06:00
- Reading Data from an Unwilling Blood Pressure Monitor - 2026-11-04 03:00
- As LLMs Devour the Storage Market, Fujifilm Bets on Tape - 2026-11-04 00:00
neatorama
- A Look Inside the Führerbunker, Where Hitler Ended His Reign of Terror - 2026-11-04 11:22
- Legolas Archery Sliding as a Sport - 2026-11-04 07:34
- The Godawan: A Pottery Animation About the Great Indian Bustard - 2026-11-03 17:44
- Now There's a Potato That Tastes Like Roast Chicken - 2026-11-03 17:40
- How Catalonians Build Human Towers for Castell Competitions - 2026-11-03 12:03
NPR
- Abdul El-Sayed welcomes Trump's plan to cut Israel aid, calls for end to arms sales - 2026-11-04 07:38
- The world is reacting to the Democrats' sweeping midterm elections victory - 2026-11-04 06:34
- Democrats seize full control of Congress. And, which candidates made history last night - 2026-11-04 06:18
- 6 takeaways from Democrats' big wave on election night - 2026-11-04 06:02
- Votes are still being counted to see who will represent Mississippi in the Senate - 2026-11-04 05:57
jacobin
- The 1956 Hungarian Uprising Was a Working-Class Revolt - 2026-11-04 11:14
- We Need a Socialist Congressional Caucus - 2026-11-04 09:42
- In the Midterms, America Rebuked Trump’s Authoritarianism - 2026-11-04 09:41
- Last Night’s Victories Were Made Possible by Zohran Mamdani - 2026-11-04 09:09
- The Donald Trump Era in American Politics Is Ending - 2026-11-04 08:18
404media
- ‘There Is One Fight’: American Voters Reject Tech Oligarchy - 2026-11-04 06:11
- America Votes: 'CEKEVPATIVG EDELDOA' - 2026-11-03 08:54
- World of Warcraft: Forever Is Already Overrun with AI Slop - 2026-11-03 08:00
- Vibe Coded AO3 Clone Site Down After Fanfic Authors Buried It With 2,000 Takedown Notices in a Single Day - 2026-11-03 02:49
- Voting in 2026 Is Getting an AI Slop 'I Voted' Sticker - 2026-11-02 10:33
techdirt
- Ofcom Admits ‘Highly Effective’ Age Checks At 16 Really Mean ‘ID Scans For Teens’ - 2026-11-04 11:31
- Musk’s Starlink Eyes Buying Boost Mobile In Doomed Bid To Dominate Smartphones - 2026-11-04 07:28
- 7th Measles Death Of The Year Recorded In New York State - 2026-11-03 21:56
- Rewriting Copyright Law For Generative AI Would Hurt Everyone - 2026-11-03 17:30
- Techdirt Podcast Episode 454: The Metric Is Not The Mission - 2026-11-03 15:30
sciencedaily
- A surprising discovery could help aging muscles repair themselves - 2026-11-04 07:26
- Scientists may have finally explained why our brains and bodies are cross-wired - 2026-11-04 07:24
- Permanent daylight saving time has a dark side, scientists warn - 2026-11-04 06:50
- A tiny squeeze dramatically changes the magnetism of exotic materials - 2026-11-04 06:37
- MIT scientists break a 20-year rule and unlock never-before-seen crystal structures - 2026-11-04 06:23
space news
- Simera Sense and Spacemanic to Collaborate on a New Complete Dual-Use Mission Solution - 2026-11-03 10:59
- DETUMBLER: Airbus’ Passive Spin Stabilization Solution - 2026-11-03 07:30
- How to Expand Reliable, Flexible Access to Space - 2026-11-02 08:00
- ESI supplying solar array components to missile defense programs - 2026-10-30 13:54
- Advice for optimizing the space industry with Laura Crabtree - 2026-10-29 10:01
phys.org
- Satellites leak noise that interferes with telescopes and GPS. Here's how to fix it - 2026-11-04 11:20
- Nature's looking glass: Crafting mirrors from plants - 2026-11-04 11:20
- Speaking in a second language may shift your moral compass—but it can't overpower it - 2026-11-04 11:00
- New species of pygmygoby discovered at the edge of the Red Sea's unexplored deep reefs - 2026-11-04 11:00
- Intercropping could improve animal feed and reduce environmental impact - 2026-11-04 10:50
onion latest
- St. Augustine of Hippo - 2026-11-04 08:00
- Jimmy Chiarella - 2026-11-04 08:00
- Gina Billings - 2026-11-04 08:00
- Jasper Collins - 2026-11-04 08:00
- Julie Marks - 2026-11-04 08:00
changelogs
September 2026
2025-09-25 - removed space.com feed from the ticker links. Their site updated and the feed.xml is empty. Now their feeds link is a pointless flyout tab at the top of their page.
2026-09-14 - r&d - Posted Part 1 of the Sanyo S-540 worklog to the Speaker Design section.
2025-09-09 - removed Register Personal Tech feed from the ticker links. Played with fonts and layout, decided against the changes and rolled them back.
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