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
- Microsoft Copilot Is Now Injecting Ads Into Pull Requests On GitHub - 2026-03-30 12:00
- Sony Shuts Down Nearly Its Entire Memory Card Business Due To SSD Shortage - 2026-03-30 11:00
- Tech CEOs Suddenly Love Blaming AI For Mass Job Cuts - 2026-03-30 10:00
- New Company Hopes to Build Age-Verification Tech into Vape Cartridges - 2026-03-30 06:34
- Apple's Early Days: Massive Oral History Shares Stories About Young Wozniak and Jobs - 2026-03-30 02:34
hackaday
- Medieval Alhambra’s Pulser Pump and Other Aquatic Marvels - 2026-03-30 12:00
- Tame the Tape: Open-Source Dotterboard for Bulk SMT Parts - 2026-03-30 10:30
- Spy Tech: Conflicts Bring a New Number Station - 2026-03-30 09:00
- Using a Scientific Satellite for Passive Radar - 2026-03-30 06:00
- The Hazards of Charging USB-C Equipped Cells In-Situ - 2026-03-30 03:00
neatorama
- Costco-Brand Whiskey Exists - 2026-03-30 11:33
- Thieves Steal 12 Tonnes of KitKat Bars - 2026-03-30 08:28
- The Bizarre Mystery of the Upside-Down "H" - 2026-03-29 18:51
- Nostalgia for the Good Old Days of the Internet - 2026-03-29 18:46
- 15 Musical Recording Mistakes That Stayed in Famous Songs - 2026-03-29 11:58
NPR
- Figure skating season ends with redemption and heartbreak. What do fans watch next? - 2026-03-30 11:30
- NASA is just days away from historic Artemis II moon launch - 2026-03-30 10:30
- Who is an American? The Supreme Court will decide - 2026-03-30 09:07
- TSA workers may receive pay soon. And, Israel plans to expand its invasion of Lebanon - 2026-03-30 06:27
- Trump is weighing all options on Iran's Kharg Island - 2026-03-30 05:05
jacobin
- Muskism Is the Specter Stalking Our Present - 2026-03-30 08:29
- A Plan to Stop ICE From Stealing the Midterms - 2026-03-30 08:19
- The No Kings Protests Are Cause for Hope - 2026-03-30 08:05
- The Peaky Blinders Film Ratchets Up the Gloom and Black Humor - 2026-03-30 05:08
- Why the Left Wins in Cities - 2026-03-30 04:49
africa is a country
- Waiting to believe - 2026-03-29 21:56
- 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
404media
- An AI Agent Was Banned From Creating Wikipedia Articles, Then Wrote Angry Blogs About Being Banned - 2026-03-30 09:03
- The Journalist Who Tracked Epstein Island Visitors’ Phones (with Dhruv Mehrotra) - 2026-03-30 08:01
- 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
techdirt
- FBI Director Kash Patel’s Personal Email Account Apparently Breached By Iranian Hackers - 2026-03-30 11:23
- Dems Urge Probe Of Saudi, Chinese Money Backing The Ellisons’ Warner Bros Acquisition - 2026-03-30 07:25
- Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt - 2026-03-29 14:00
- 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
the register personal tech
- UK fines Irish Apple outpost over sanctions-busting payments to Russian dev - 2026-03-30 10:09
- Google is to journalism what Vikings were to monks. Now their man will run the BBC - 2026-03-30 04:03
- Security contractor blew the whistle on support crew's viral indifference - 2026-03-30 02:30
- US foreign router ban criticized for being ‘industrial policy disguised as cybersecurity’ - 2026-03-29 23:31
- Apple's last tower topples… and the others will follow - 2026-03-27 12:35
sciencedaily
- Some dinosaurs could rise up like giants — until they grew too big - 2026-03-30 08:08
- Simple therapies beat drugs for knee arthritis pain relief - 2026-03-30 07:52
- Webb telescope spots mysterious explosion that defies known physics - 2026-03-30 07:33
- Monster black holes are silencing star formation across the universe - 2026-03-30 07:23
- This overlooked hormone could be why your blood pressure won’t drop - 2026-03-30 02:50
space.com
- Best moon movies: 12 lunar adventures to watch ahead of NASA's Artemis 2 launch - 2026-03-30 12:00
- Moon menu: Here's what the Artemis 2 astronauts will eat during their historic mission (video) - 2026-03-30 11:00
- Sun rises on Artemis 2 launch pad | Space photo of the day for March 30, 2026 - 2026-03-30 09:00
- 'The sasquatch is honesty': Inside Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen's Artemis 2 mission patch - 2026-03-30 08:00
- Powerful X-class solar flare triggers radio blackout ahead of Artemis 2 launch (video) - 2026-03-30 07:04
space news
- ESA launches first Celeste satellites to test complementary LEO navigation layer - 2026-03-30 11:44
- SpaceX launches Transporter-16 rideshare mission - 2026-03-30 11:31
- China’s Kinetica-2 rocket debuts successfully, sending prototype cargo spacecraft to orbit - 2026-03-30 10:39
- Pentagon weighing termination of Raytheon GPS ground control contract after years of delays - 2026-03-30 08:43
- With Voyager’s help, Icarus Robotics to test free-flyer on ISS - 2026-03-30 08:00
phys.org
- AI tools are widely used by federal judges, study finds - 2026-03-30 12:30
- Finding the 'quantum needle' in a haystack: New filtering method can isolate photons - 2026-03-30 12:20
- Research urges housing providers to shield women, families from abuse and gambling risks - 2026-03-30 12:10
- Earth formed from material exclusively from the inner solar system, planetary scientists show - 2026-03-30 12:00
- Global human population is pushing Earth past its breaking point - 2026-03-30 11:40
onion latest
- Frog A Little Turned On By Avocado - 2026-03-30 08:00
- Kristi Noem Defends Use Of Force On Own Face - 2026-03-30 08:00
- Victor Wembanyama Issued Technical For Punching Jumbotron - 2026-03-30 08:00
- Study: Children Who Play Violent Video Games More Likely To Say ‘That’s Goro’ When Shown Picture Of Goro - 2026-03-30 08:00
- Jesus Clarifies Return Will Be Strictly Limited To Carpentry Business - 2026-03-30 08:00
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