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
- Bluesky's Newest Product: an AI Tool That Gives You Custom Feeds - 2026-03-29 13:34
- Amazon Gambles on $4B Push Into America's Rural Areas, May Soon Carry More Parcels Than USPS - 2026-03-29 11:34
- Apple Now Requires Device-Level Age Verification in the UK. Could the US Be Next? - 2026-03-29 10:34
- Jupiter's Lightning May Have the Force of Nuclear Weapons - 2026-03-29 09:34
- What Made Bell Labs So Successful? - 2026-03-29 06:04
hackaday
- Clean Enclosures, No Printing Necessary - 2026-03-29 12:00
- Self-healing CMOS Imager to Withstand Jupiter’s Radiation Belt - 2026-03-29 09:00
- Multicolor 5-Axis 3D Printing - 2026-03-29 06:00
- Soviet CDs And CD Players Existed, And They Were Strange - 2026-03-29 03:00
- Play a .WAV Instead of Typing Line After Line Into Vintage Microcomputer - 2026-03-29 00:00
neatorama
- 15 Musical Recording Mistakes That Stayed in Famous Songs - 2026-03-29 11:58
- Would You Recognize the New "Lip Filler Accent"? - 2026-03-29 07:48
- The International Airport That Can Only Serve One Other Country - 2026-03-28 21:28
- The Glass Delusion: When People Became Psychologically Fragile - 2026-03-28 18:12
- Zoo Hires French-Speaking Trainer for Polar Bear Taught in French - 2026-03-28 16:49
NPR
- Pope Leo XIV rejects claims that God justifies war in Palm Sunday Mass message - 2026-03-29 07:48
- How to navigate the maze of drug discounts to get the best price - 2026-03-29 06:30
- Iran warns U.S. against ground invasion, as Pakistan holds diplomatic talks - 2026-03-29 05:08
- Why a 98-year-old federal judge is asking the Supreme Court for her job back - 2026-03-29 05:00
- Some critics of birthright citizenship say it's a fraud issue. What does that mean? - 2026-03-29 04:00
jacobin
- Chicago City Council Just Stabbed Tipped Workers in the Back - 2026-03-29 08:49
- How Thoreau Challenged America to Live Up To Its Own Ideals - 2026-03-29 07:46
- Increase the Inheritance Tax - 2026-03-29 06:45
- Uber Backs Bills to Make It Harder to Sue Them for Crashes - 2026-03-29 05:43
- ICE vs. High Schoolers - 2026-03-29 04:45
africa is a country
- Trumpism in Nigeria - 2026-03-27 07:00
- After the subcontracting state - 2026-03-26 06:45
- Cooking up the city - 2026-03-25 05:00
- Who owns the memory of struggle? - 2026-03-24 07:00
- Greater Israel and the new regional order - 2026-03-23 07:00
404media
- Scientists Discover Giant ‘Cavity’ Beyond Earth That Isn’t Supposed to Exist - 2026-03-28 08:00
- Slopaganda and Sora, lol - 2026-03-27 10:31
- Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War - 2026-03-27 09:30
- Apple Gives FBI a User’s Real Name Hidden Behind ’Hide My Email’ Feature - 2026-03-26 14:38
- Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Content - 2026-03-26 11:13
techdirt
- Game Jam Winner Spotlight: I Am Sam Spade - 2026-03-28 14:00
- Hey, Game Devs: The ‘Placeholder Assets’ Excuse For Using AI Is Running Really Thin - 2026-03-27 21:39
- Hegseth’s War On Anthropic Encounters The First Amendment - 2026-03-27 17:31
- Turns Out That Advertisers Not Wanting To Fund Neo-Nazi-Adjacent Content Isn’t An Antitrust Violation - 2026-03-27 14:56
- FBI Tells Senate It’s Still Bypassing 4th Amendment By Purchasing Location Data From Third Parties - 2026-03-27 12:58
the register personal tech
- Apple's last tower topples… and the others will follow - 2026-03-27 12:35
- AMD's new desktop CPU oozes cache out of all 16 cores - 2026-03-26 16:12
- Apple signs meaningless deal to make some less-important parts in America - 2026-03-26 12:09
- UK wants to know if banning under-16s from social media does anything useful - 2026-03-26 04:30
- Go for a walk, man: Sony's drive to create a car parked by partner Honda - 2026-03-26 01:24
sciencedaily
- This hidden state of water could explain why life exists - 2026-03-29 08:32
- This quantum computing breakthrough may not be what it seemed - 2026-03-29 08:14
- Scientists solved the mystery of missing ocean plastic—and the answer is alarming - 2026-03-29 07:41
- Stroke triggers a hidden brain change that looks like rejuvenation - 2026-03-29 05:34
- New cholesterol guidelines could change when you get tested - 2026-03-29 04:43
space.com
- 'Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4': Release date, plot, factions, & everything else we know about the upcoming 40K strategy game - 2026-03-29 11:00
- Kristen Stewart will play Sally Ride, the 1st American woman in space, as Amazon finally greenlights mini-series 'The Challenger' - 2026-03-29 08:00
- NASA's Artemis 2 moon astronauts are 'fortunate' to have a private space toilet — Apollo crews pooped in plastic bags - 2026-03-29 07:00
- Making Canadian history: Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen is ready for his epic moon mission - 2026-03-29 05:00
- 'It's all I think about': Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman is zeroed in on historic moon mission - 2026-03-29 05:00
space news
- ‘Shots on goal and win the game’: NASA’s effort to accelerate lunar landings - 2026-03-29 04:37
- Starfish Space finds a new partner for docking demonstration mission - 2026-03-28 15:28
- Artemis 2 astronauts arrive at KSC - 2026-03-27 19:45
- Commercial Space Federation (CSF) Welcomes Two New Associate Members - 2026-03-27 14:00
- ESA to decide by June on Europe’s Gateway contributions - 2026-03-27 13:55
phys.org
- The time capsule in the salt flat - 2026-03-29 13:00
- TESS discovers an Earth-sized planet orbiting nearby M-dwarf star - 2026-03-29 12:50
- Ancient Neanderthal genome reveals isolated, distinct populations - 2026-03-29 12:20
- Eco-friendly hair repair adds to more natural personal care product pipeline - 2026-03-29 12:00
- The world's waste mountain is rising at an alarming rate - 2026-03-29 12:00
onion latest
- Olympics Bans Trans Athletes From Women’s Events - 2026-03-28 08:00
- NASA To Build $20 Billion Moon Base - 2026-03-27 15:06
- RFK Jr.: ‘I Am 6 Animal Penises Away From Curing Cancer’ - 2026-03-27 14:05
- Norris God - 2026-03-27 12:58
- Trump Weighs Deploying 340 Million More U.S. Troops To Middle East - 2026-03-27 12:12
changelogs
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