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
- India's Toxic Air Crisis Is Reaching a Breaking Point - 2026-02-16 14:00
- Instagram Boss Says 16 Hours of Daily Use Is Not Addiction - 2026-02-16 13:00
- KPMG Partner Fined Over Using AI To Pass AI Test - 2026-02-16 12:00
- Ireland Launches World's First Permanent Basic Income Scheme For Artists, Paying $385 a Week - 2026-02-16 11:00
- New EU Rules To Stop the Destruction of Unsold Clothes and Shoes - 2026-02-16 10:06
hackaday
- Retrotechtacular: Mr. Wizard Jams with IBM - 2026-02-16 13:30
- Keebin’ with Kristina: the One With the NEO With the Typewriter Shell - 2026-02-16 12:00
- How Volunteers Saved a Victorian-Era Pumping Station From Demolition - 2026-02-16 10:30
- Real LED TVs Are Finally Becoming A Thing - 2026-02-16 09:00
- A Novelty Clock Makes The Best Tiny Mac Yet - 2026-02-16 06:00
neatorama
- A Polar Explorer Explains Her Beauty Routine - 2026-02-16 12:17
- Luxurious Home in a Decommissioned Grain Elevator - 2026-02-16 07:10
- <i>Jane Austin's Period Drama</i>: Just What It Says On the Tin - 2026-02-16 05:00
- Uh-Oh- The Winter Games Ran Out of Condoms - 2026-02-15 14:31
- He Fled Hiroshima After the Bomb to Return to Nagasaki - 2026-02-15 14:25
NPR
- A Curling Scandal Rocks Olympic Ice - 2026-02-16 14:40
- The U.S. ready to make up, Europe ready to break up in Munich - 2026-02-16 13:49
- Actor Robert Duvall has died — he brought a compassionate center to edgy hard roles - 2026-02-16 12:39
- Italy's athletes shine at the Milan Cortina Olympics - 2026-02-16 12:37
- Primary care is in trouble. Doctors are banding together to increase market power - 2026-02-16 12:08
jacobin
- Who Wants to Rent a Human? - 2026-02-16 02:58
- Donald Trump’s Imperialism Follows a Grim American Tradition - 2026-02-16 02:55
- Mano Dura Comes to Costa Rica - 2026-02-15 03:02
- Trump’s Immigration Police Keep Abducting Children - 2026-02-15 03:00
- Mothers Are on the Front Lines of the Nordic Care Crisis - 2026-02-15 02:57
africa is a country
- Whose story gets to be heard? - 2026-02-16 05:00
- Visiting Ngara - 2026-02-13 06:00
- Revolution without illusion - 2026-02-12 07:00
- Who owns Ghana’s mission schools? - 2026-02-11 03:30
- Gen Z’s electoral dilemma - 2026-02-10 04:30
404media
- Underground Facial Recognition Tool Unmasks Camgirls - 2026-02-16 08:00
- Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article - 2026-02-15 14:14
- Astronomers Create Strange ‘Vortex Crystals’ from Space in the Lab - 2026-02-14 08:00
- Behind the Blog: Unglamorous Work - 2026-02-13 09:27
- Tumbler Ridge Shooter Created Mall Shooting Simulator in Roblox - 2026-02-12 15:56
techdirt
- Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt - 2026-02-15 14:00
- This Week In Techdirt History: February 8th – 14th - 2026-02-14 14:00
- UK Supreme Court Affirms Ruling That Oatly Can’t Use ‘Milk’ In Its Oat Milk Branding - 2026-02-13 21:39
- Copyright Kills Competition - 2026-02-13 17:28
- Cops Criticize Flock Safety After It’s Caught Handing Out Access To Federal Agencies - 2026-02-13 15:29
the register personal tech
- You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised - 2026-02-16 10:20
- X users howl into the void as timelines fail to load - 2026-02-16 09:22
- Secondhand laptop market goes 'mainstream' amid memory crunch - 2026-02-16 08:29
- Why does the Windows 11 taskbar hurt me like that? - 2026-02-16 06:24
- Price of popularity: Linux Mint's success also means maintainer stress - 2026-02-16 05:14
sciencedaily
- One in three people carry this brain parasite but the body has a kill switch - 2026-02-16 07:33
- Microplastics have reached Antarctica’s only native insect - 2026-02-16 06:48
- Lab grown human spinal cord heals after injury in major breakthrough - 2026-02-16 06:41
- Brain inflammation may be driving compulsive behavior - 2026-02-16 06:32
- Scientists confirm one-dimensional electron behavior in phosphorus chains - 2026-02-16 05:52
space.com
- Astronomers discover chemicals that could seed life in the core of a developing star - 2026-02-16 15:00
- Comet C/2024 E1 Wierzchos makes its closest approach to Earth tomorrow: Here's what you need to know - 2026-02-16 13:00
- Wormholes may not exist – we've found they reveal something deeper about time and the universe - 2026-02-16 11:00
- How astronomers are unveiling the 'skeleton' of the universe - 2026-02-16 10:00
- Double delivery: SpaceX sends Starlink satellites into orbit on launches from California and Florida - 2026-02-16 09:46
space news
- NASA work on several programs pending responses to White House executive order - 2026-02-16 10:11
- The space nuclear power bottleneck — and how to fix it - 2026-02-16 08:00
- Low-profile Chinese launch firm conducts first stage static fire - 2026-02-16 05:54
- Portions of the Pentagon’s LEO constellation on hold as acquisition reviews proceed - 2026-02-16 05:00
- Isaacman planning to meet with head of Roscosmos - 2026-02-15 18:08
phys.org
- Researchers uncover MraZ 'donut' deformation that triggers bacterial cell division - 2026-02-16 15:00
- What cold-water geysers on Earth reveal about the habitability of ocean worlds - 2026-02-16 14:53
- New blockchain platform brings credibility to carbon registries - 2026-02-16 14:28
- Amazon rainforest flipped to carbon source during 2023 extreme drought, study shows - 2026-02-16 14:20
- How one genome creates two distinct fungal bodies - 2026-02-16 14:00
onion latest
- Tips For Observing Lent - 2026-02-16 08:00
- Bookseller Scrambles To Hide All The Classics After Seeing Emerald Fennell Approaching Door - 2026-02-16 08:00
- Baby Fails To Change New Father In Any Way - 2026-02-16 08:00
- Finnish Ski Jumping Team Caught Tampering With Earth’s Gravitational Field - 2026-02-14 11:45
- FBI Announces They Have Located Savannah Guthrie - 2026-02-13 13:47
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