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
- After a 10-Year Redemption Arc, No Man's Sky Is Coming to the iPhone and iPad - 2026-10-13 06:00
- A New 'Super Ice' Is 10 Times Stronger, Bringing It Close to The Strength of Concrete - 2026-10-13 02:00
- Linus Torvalds On Why AI Works For Him - 2026-10-12 22:30
- Firefox 158 Now Available With JPEG-XL Support By Default - 2026-10-12 18:00
- Epic Games Delays Disney Project, Asks Developers To Use More AI - 2026-10-12 17:00
hackaday
- Open Firmware Fixes Dead Onkyo AV Receivers - 2026-10-13 03:00
- Emulating a Floppy Drive By Emulating The Drive Itself - 2026-10-13 00:00
- Using Kirigami Techniques to Make Functional Designs - 2026-10-12 21:00
- WiFi Router Does Software-Defined Radio - 2026-10-12 18:00
- The Prusa Core One+ INDX, a Troubled Multi-Extruder Upgrade? - 2026-10-12 15:00
neatorama
- A Live Look at All of the Lighthouses of the World - 2026-10-12 10:56
- Extremely Cheap House on Zillow Has a Snake in the Promotional Photos - 2026-10-12 10:17
- The Famous Spaceship House Is for Sale - 2026-10-12 09:54
- A Virtual Music Box, and a Personal Milestone - 2026-10-12 05:22
- Behind the Scenes with Cat Models Chouchou and Miko - 2026-10-11 18:24
NPR
- Government spent millions on Trump ads. And, federal agents raid Ilhan Omar's home - 2026-10-13 06:08
- Pakistan imposes emergency rule in former prime minister's stronghold - 2026-10-13 05:51
- What ice cream has to do with this year's Nobel Prize in economics - 2026-10-13 05:30
- Should states force cities to build cheaper houses? Voters here will decide - 2026-10-13 04:00
- Polls are a snapshot, and other helpful things to remember during the midterm elections - 2026-10-13 04:00
jacobin
- AutoZone Workers Won a Union. Then the Company Fired Them. - 2026-10-12 08:00
- Robert Kramer Is the New Left’s Great, Forgotten Filmmaker - 2026-10-12 07:30
- Publishers Killed the Paperback, Then Blamed Readers - 2026-10-12 07:00
- The Philips Curve Is a Tool for Waging Class War on Workers - 2026-10-12 06:30
- The Strange Resurrection of Lonesome Dove - 2026-10-11 08:00
404media
- Cops can creep on Airbnb - 2026-10-12 08:54
- AI Company Lets Cops Pinpoint Specific Houses Based on a Single Interior Photo - 2026-10-12 08:00
- Scientists Detect Record-Breaking Radio Signal from the Ancient Universe - 2026-10-10 06:00
- Following 404 Media Investigation, Senator Demands Info About White House's License Plate Surveillance Program - 2026-10-09 11:00
- Behind the Blog: What Would the Pope Do? - 2026-10-09 10:44
techdirt
- Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt - 2026-10-11 14:00
- This Week In Techdirt History: October 4th – 10th - 2026-10-10 14:00
- Polling: Americans Uncertain On RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Stance, Very Certain That They Hate Him - 2026-10-09 21:39
- US Postal Service To Start Exploring Its Always-On Surveillance Options - 2026-10-09 17:18
- Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Like Herding Chats - 2026-10-09 15:15
sciencedaily
- Popular weight loss drugs linked to a surprising fingernail problem - 2026-10-12 04:34
- Scientists find hidden driver of aging and a simple amino acid that fights memory loss in mice - 2026-10-12 04:23
- NASA captures a stunning transformation in Australia's red outback - 2026-10-12 03:19
- Scientists discover a hidden factor that can make or break chemical reactions - 2026-10-12 01:24
- Scientists discover vanilla’s hidden healing potential - 2026-10-11 23:34
space news
- Jena-Optronik is proud to partner with MDA Space for its first ASTRO HP mission. - 2026-10-12 08:00
- What will it take to build a moon base? - 2026-10-08 08:57
- Announcing the finalists for the 2026 SpaceNews Icon Awards - 2026-10-07 09:18
- Deposition Sciences, Inc. Expands Sunshade® Tape Offering with New 12″ × 30″ Format - 2026-10-06 14:20
- Resource competition intensifies with surge in megaconstellations - 2026-10-05 14:13
phys.org
- 'Devastating' waves leave California beach homes on brink of collapse - 2026-10-13 06:10
- Rangers reimagine AI in wildlife monitoring - 2026-10-13 06:00
- El Niño watch: The impacts around the world this week - 2026-10-13 05:40
- World's largest penguin colony loses its title after decline of more than 250,000 breeding pairs - 2026-10-13 05:20
- 5 dead as Hurricane Simon, Rachel pummel Mexico's Pacific coast - 2026-10-13 05:18
onion latest
- What To Know About The Potential Russian Plague Outbreak - 2026-10-12 08:00
- North Dakota Apologizes For Contributing Nothing To Nation’s Greatness - 2026-10-12 08:00
- Audubon Society Formally Excommunicates Penguins - 2026-10-12 08:00
- Marathoner Already Pissing Self Half-Mile In - 2026-10-11 08:00
- Pentagon To Livestream Firing Squad Execution - 2026-10-09 15:58
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