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
- Zoom Partners With Sam Altman's Iris-Scanning Company To Offer Callers Verifications of Humanness - 2026-04-20 02:34
- Brave Browser Introduces 'Origin', a Pay-Once 'Minimalist' Browser - 2026-04-19 23:34
- Blue Origin Rocket Launches, Successfully Reuses Booster - But Loses Satellite - 2026-04-19 21:50
- Voyager 1 is Running Out of Power. NASA Just Switched Part of It Off - 2026-04-19 18:49
- Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Predicts Humankind Won't Survive Another 50 Years - 2026-04-19 16:57
hackaday
- Quirky Electric Car Rides the Rails - 2026-04-20 00:00
- Modded Server PSU Provides Plenty of Current - 2026-04-19 21:00
- Hackaday Links: April 19, 2026 - 2026-04-19 18:00
- 2026 Green Powered Challenge: The Eternal Headphones - 2026-04-19 15:00
- Rack Cage Generator Gets Your Gear Mounted - 2026-04-19 12:00
neatorama
- Neanderthal Infants Grew Strangely Fast - 2026-04-19 20:48
- Children Need to Stretch Their Imaginations and Learn to Manage Risk - 2026-04-19 19:50
- How Goodyear Developed Tires for the Moon - 2026-04-19 10:03
- Countries of the World, Sorted by the Percentage of Immigrants - 2026-04-19 06:12
- Running a Marathon 3600 Feet Underground - 2026-04-18 20:26
NPR
- A humanoid robot sprints past the human half-marathon world record in Beijing race - 2026-04-20 01:10
- U.K police investigating if attacks in London are the work of Iranian proxies - 2026-04-20 00:34
- Communities launch cleanup after severe weather and tornadoes churn across Midwest - 2026-04-19 16:57
- Will the DHS shutdown affect security for the World Cup? - 2026-04-19 16:01
- 8 children killed in a shooting in Louisiana, police say - 2026-04-19 12:26
jacobin
- Victor Serge Was One of the Great Revolutionary Writers - 2026-04-19 07:43
- LA Socialists’ Debates Reflect the Left’s Growing Strength - 2026-04-19 06:45
- Dance Marathons Were the Forerunners of Today’s Reality TV - 2026-04-19 05:44
- Socialists Are Cornering Hochul on Taxing the Rich - 2026-04-19 04:50
- Dockworkers Against Russia’s and Israel’s Wars - 2026-04-19 03:46
africa is a country
- Fields of dependency - 2026-04-17 09:00
- More commerce than chaos - 2026-04-16 04:00
- The demographic dividend no one wants to pay - 2026-04-15 12:45
- The debts our parents left us - 2026-04-14 07:00
- Whose progress? - 2026-04-13 07:00
404media
- Babies Born from Dead Parents Will Increase with New Tech. Are We Ready? - 2026-04-18 08:00
- FAA Scraps Civil and Criminal Penalties for Flying Drones Near ICE Vehicles - 2026-04-17 10:44
- The Destroyed Remnants of a Lost World Are Falling to Earth, Scientists Discover - 2026-04-17 08:00
- Behind the Blog: Jazz and Journalism - 2026-04-17 08:00
- App Stores Push Users Toward Nudify Apps, New Research Shows - 2026-04-16 11:34
techdirt
- Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt - 2026-04-19 14:00
- Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Lilac Song - 2026-04-18 14:00
- AI Could Create A Massive Problem For Valve’s Steam - 2026-04-17 21:39
- Trump Is Literally Negotiating With Himself Over How Much Taxpayer Money He Gets Because His Taxes Were Leaked - 2026-04-17 17:17
- Inside Trump’s Effort To “Take Over” The Midterm Elections - 2026-04-17 15:15
the register personal tech
- 'Invisible mouse' made a mess of PC rebuild - 2026-04-20 02:01
- Indonesia’s game rating system paused amid claims it leaked developer creds and glimpses of major new titles - 2026-04-19 21:07
- Attention data hoarders: Alexa loses its Plex appeal as voice feature gets canned - 2026-04-17 05:45
- Locked-out iPhone user tells The Reg that Apple is scrambling to fix character flaw passcode bug - 2026-04-17 05:00
- The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out - 2026-04-15 02:03
sciencedaily
- After 200 years scientists finally crack the “dolomite problem” - 2026-04-20 01:28
- A new force of nature is reshaping the planet, study finds - 2026-04-19 08:18
- Scientists develop dirt-powered fuel cell that could replace batteries - 2026-04-19 07:57
- Scientists just found a way to control electrons without magnets - 2026-04-19 07:31
- Why two-sun planets keep disappearing scientists blame Einstein - 2026-04-19 05:17
space.com
- Watch SpaceX launch advanced GPS satellite for US Space Force early on April 21 - 2026-04-19 11:00
- Giant BlueBird 7 mobile phone satellite will be deorbited after faulty Blue Origin launch - 2026-04-19 09:59
- 'Sunshine' was 2007's answer to 'Project Hail Mary', and it told a much darker tale of solar catastrophe - 2026-04-19 09:00
- The Lyrid meteor shower returns with ideal viewing conditions! Here's what to look out for this week - 2026-04-19 08:00
- Telescope livestream: Watch the moon pass in front of the Pleiades on April 19 - 2026-04-19 07:00
space news
- Space Force weighs Vulcan flights without solid boosters - 2026-04-19 12:59
- Third New Glenn launch suffers upper stage malfunction - 2026-04-19 08:54
- Rhea Space Activity raises $6 million to develop GPS-free spacecraft navigation - 2026-04-19 05:41
- The Space Force’s ‘commercial first’ strategy in action with Col. Tim Trimailo - 2026-04-17 19:21
- NASA selects Falcon Heavy to launch ESA Mars rover mission despite budget threat - 2026-04-17 17:05
phys.org
- When AI starts shopping for you, fashion may be entering a new era of pricing - 2026-04-19 18:30
- A cheaper way to fight 'forever chemicals': How pH-controlled traps could clean drinking water - 2026-04-19 17:00
- A light-controlled 'muscle' could give synthetic cells a new way to move - 2026-04-19 16:00
- Archaeologists have discovered 12,000‑year‑old dice. Here's what they reveal about the history of play - 2026-04-19 16:00
- Wafer-scale 2D magnetic films emerge thanks to a new low-defect growth technique - 2026-04-19 15:00
onion latest
- Sabrina Carpenter Turns Body Fully Inside Out In Horrific New ‘Juno’ Position - 2026-04-17 23:00
- Oil Prices Plummet In Big Fuck-You To Americans Who Got Gas Yesterday - 2026-04-17 13:42
- Tips For Getting Better Haircuts - 2026-04-17 13:07
- Lena Dunham Claims Adam Driver Used The Force On Set Of ‘Girls’ - 2026-04-17 13:04
- TMZ Launches D.C. Bureau - 2026-04-17 10:57
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