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
- Particles Seen Emerging From Empty Space For First Time - 2026-04-10 02:00
- US Fertility Rate Falls To All-Time Low - 2026-04-09 22:30
- 'Negative' Views of Broadcom Driving Thousands of VMware Migrations, Rival Says - 2026-04-09 18:00
- Mozilla Accuses Microsoft of Sabotaging Firefox With Windows and Copilot Tactics - 2026-04-09 17:00
- Amazon May Sell Trainium AI Chips To Third Parties In Shot At Nvidia - 2026-04-09 16:00
hackaday
- Running DOOM on…a TrueType Font? - 2026-04-10 03:00
- Reflecting on Microsoft Windows Vista in 2026 - 2026-04-10 00:00
- USB, Abstracted - 2026-04-09 21:00
- [Kerry Wong] Finds SMD Test Clips - 2026-04-09 18:00
- Upgrading a MacBook Neo Using a 1 TB iPhone NAND Flash - 2026-04-09 15:00
neatorama
- The Youngest Soldiers Who Fought in World War II - 2026-04-09 20:42
- Award-Winning Student Film <i>Love & Gold</i> - 2026-04-09 17:04
- A Day in the Life of an Enshittificator - 2026-04-09 08:11
- The Moon as You've Never Seen It Before- On Your Phone Screen - 2026-04-09 07:11
- Snakes Can Eat Pretty Much Anything, But How? - 2026-04-08 21:01
NPR
- Morning news brief - 2026-04-10 03:45
- Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dies at age 68 - 2026-04-10 02:47
- Well-timed bets on Polymarket tied to the Iran war draw calls for investigations from lawmakers - 2026-04-10 02:33
- Immigration board denies Mahmoud Khalil's appeal - 2026-04-10 01:16
- Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel tells NBC News that he will not step down - 2026-04-10 00:59
jacobin
- Australia Has a Serious Landlord Problem - 2026-04-09 09:49
- The “Moderate” Think Tank Pushing Dems to Loosen AI Rules - 2026-04-09 07:49
- The Fight Against Trumpism Can Reinvigorate Labor - 2026-04-09 05:48
- Bernie and AOC Pump the Brakes on Artificial Intelligence - 2026-04-09 04:39
- Medicare for All Is an Electoral Winner - 2026-04-09 04:05
africa is a country
- Between fandom and dissent - 2026-04-09 04:00
- Who gets to be a civilian? - 2026-04-08 07:00
- The making of Arundhati Roy - 2026-04-07 07:00
- 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
404media
- World’s Largest Group of Chimps Waging Deadly ‘Civil War,’ Scientists Discover - 2026-04-09 13:00
- Farmer Arrested for Speaking Too Long at Datacenter Town Hall Vows to Fight - 2026-04-09 10:21
- FBI Extracts Suspect’s Deleted Signal Messages Saved in iPhone Notification Database - 2026-04-09 08:27
- Podcast: Wildlife Cops Are Searching AI Cameras for ICE - 2026-04-08 09:31
- A 'Self-Doxing' Rave Helps Trans People Stay Safe Online - 2026-04-08 09:18
techdirt
- Court Dismisses Pepperdine’s Nonsense Trademark Suit Against Netflix Over ‘Running Point’ - 2026-04-09 22:03
- Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ Internet - 2026-04-09 17:30
- A Baseless Copyright Claim Against A Web Host — And Why It Failed - 2026-04-09 14:59
- Someone Filed a Bogus DMCA Notice to Kill a Story About A Sketchy SEO Firm. It Worked — Briefly. - 2026-04-09 13:02
- Daily Deal: The 2026 Canva Bundle - 2026-04-09 12:47
the register personal tech
- Peace President's Iran war piles more pain on already battered PC market - 2026-04-09 08:38
- Amazon rewards loyal Kindle devotees by closing the book on old e-readers - 2026-04-08 07:42
- Break, no fix: Apple and Samsung make repairs hard - 2026-04-07 10:08
- Apple's chips are the core of a new landscape, but its biggest win is Windows - 2026-04-07 04:31
- Brits are falling out of love with posting every thought online - 2026-04-07 03:35
sciencedaily
- Scientists just found a hidden “drain” inside the human brain - 2026-04-09 09:11
- Your brain can trick you into liking artificial sweeteners - 2026-04-09 08:34
- Brain study reveals hidden link between autism and ADHD - 2026-04-09 07:21
- Scientists discover hidden gut trigger behind ALS and dementia - 2026-04-09 05:36
- Your DNA has a secret “second code” that decides which genes get silenced - 2026-04-09 03:32
space.com
- The Artemis 2 astronauts got a private 'Project Hail Mary' screening before launch. Here's their verdict - 2026-04-09 16:00
- Crew of tiny worms readies for April 11 launch to International Space Station - 2026-04-09 14:00
- 'It probably will start a precedent': Why satellite company's withholding of Iran imagery has this expert worried - 2026-04-09 12:32
- A house-size asteroid is heading toward Earth tonight: Here's what you need to know - 2026-04-09 12:00
- Watch Artemis 2 race back to Earth in this telescope livestream tonight - 2026-04-09 11:30
space news
- PLD Space secures $35 million European Investment Bank loan for MIURA 5 launcher - 2026-04-09 13:34
- Heather Pringle on the upcoming Space Symposium and future international collaboration in space - 2026-04-09 09:59
- China conducts pair of Long March launches for Thousand Sails and Guowang megaconstellations - 2026-04-09 09:23
- A new kind of arsenal: commercial satellites - 2026-04-09 09:00
- Portal Space Systems raises $50 million to accelerate spacecraft development - 2026-04-09 08:00
phys.org
- After reaching speeds of 10,657 meters per second, Artemis II hurtles home for make-or-break splashdown - 2026-04-10 03:12
- Artemis astronauts to shed light on space health risks - 2026-04-10 03:08
- Medieval Japanese poetry and buried trees help elucidate volatile space weather - 2026-04-09 22:00
- Bridging AI- and experimental-led materials discovery with better database architecture - 2026-04-09 21:40
- Work attitudes barely shifted after the 2008 crisis across 19 European countries - 2026-04-09 21:20
onion latest
- Passenger Gives Birth Mid-Flight - 2026-04-09 15:44
- State Department Issues Travel Warning For Women Vacationing With Husbands - 2026-04-09 13:53
- NASA’s Artemis II Mission By The Numbers - 2026-04-09 11:18
- Jean McCarthy and Allison Foster - 2026-04-09 08:00
- Arby’s Reclassifies Their Food As Entertainment - 2026-04-09 08:00
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