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
- Melania Trump Welcomes Humanoid Robot At White House Summit - 2026-03-26 02:00
- Brazil's UFO Capital Marks 30 Years Since 'Alien Encounter' - 2026-03-25 22:30
- Postal Service to Impose Its First-Ever Fuel Surcharge on Packages - 2026-03-25 18:00
- Canada's Immigration Rejected Applicant Based On AI-Invented Job Duties - 2026-03-25 17:00
- Apple Can Create Smaller On-Device AI Models From Google's Gemini - 2026-03-25 16:00
hackaday
- Testing Severely Neglected VHS Tapes and CDs - 2026-03-26 00:00
- Demonstrating Gray Codes With Industrial Display - 2026-03-25 21:00
- VGA Output From A PIC18 - 2026-03-25 18:00
- The Most Intricate Of Freeform Digital Clocks - 2026-03-25 15:00
- FLOSS Weekly Episode 867: Pangolin: People Can Lie - 2026-03-25 13:30
neatorama
- <i>Star Wars</i> Relies on Hidden Planets and Missing Maps, Which is Strangely Authentic - 2026-03-25 20:03
- The Dangers of Digging a Deep Hole - 2026-03-25 16:39
- The 10 Discontinued Taco Bell Items We Want Back - 2026-03-25 15:55
- The Future Is Now: Public Restrooms with In-Stall Screens Showing Ads - 2026-03-25 09:11
- Clam Chowder-Filled Donuts - 2026-03-25 09:01
NPR
- Melania Trump shares the spotlight with a robot at an education and technology event - 2026-03-26 00:29
- UN calls for reparations to remedy the 'historical wrongs' of trafficking enslaved Africans - 2026-03-26 00:21
- War with Iran disrupts fertilizer exports as U.S. farmers prepare for planting season - 2026-03-25 23:01
- OpenAI's Sora app may be going away, but its legacy will be the spread of AI video slop - 2026-03-25 16:05
- Doctors worry about FDA scrutiny of RSV shots to protect babies - 2026-03-25 15:26
jacobin
- The Kathy Hochul Donors in the Jeffrey Epstein Files - 2026-03-25 10:52
- Umberto Bossi, a Founding Father of Postmodern Italy - 2026-03-25 09:19
- Elon Musk Represents the Right’s New Reactionary Modernism - 2026-03-25 05:32
- The Congressional Budget Game Is Rigged - 2026-03-25 05:04
- How Texas Populists Almost Destroyed the Two-Party System - 2026-03-25 04:58
africa is a country
- 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
- Senegal’s theater of morality - 2026-03-20 07:00
- A life in struggle - 2026-03-19 04:00
404media
- Why It's Good to Jack Off Frequently, According to Science - 2026-03-25 11:38
- Disney's Sora Disaster Shows AI Will Not Revolutionize Hollywood - 2026-03-25 09:15
- The People Left Behind by the Metaverse - 2026-03-25 08:47
- Podcast: The Company Secretly Turning Your Zoom Meetings into Podcasts - 2026-03-25 08:32
- Delivery Robot Drives Through Bus Stop Shelter, Shattering Glass Everywhere - 2026-03-24 12:02
techdirt
- The Casey Means Surgeon General Nomination Appears To Be In Trouble - 2026-03-25 21:59
- An Open Letter To Members Of The United States Congress - 2026-03-25 17:05
- Judge Rejects Government’s Weak Attempt To Memory-Hole DOGE Deposition Videos - 2026-03-25 15:07
- Gov’t Admits More Than 100 Asylum Seekers Were Deported In Violation Of A *Single* Court Order - 2026-03-25 13:02
- Daily Deal: Geekey Multi-Tool - 2026-03-25 12:57
the register personal tech
- Go for a walk, man: Sony's drive to create a car parked by partner Honda - 2026-03-26 01:24
- Dell slims down business laptops, fattens up cooling and battery life - 2026-03-25 08:00
- Windows 95 let installers trash its files then fixed the mess behind their backs - 2026-03-25 07:30
- Samsung still glued to its bad habits with Galaxy S26 Ultra - 2026-03-25 06:41
- Open source isn't a tip jar – it's time to charge for access - 2026-03-25 06:00
sciencedaily
- Vivid dreams may be the secret to deeper, more restful sleep - 2026-03-26 01:00
- Scientists found a bug that generates its own heat in freezing cold - 2026-03-26 00:26
- Scientists open a million-year-old time capsule beneath New Zealand - 2026-03-25 23:58
- Most mass spectrometers handle a few molecules. This new prototype handles billions - 2026-03-25 20:30
- Cold weather linked to 40,000 extra heart deaths each year in the U.S. - 2026-03-25 20:11
space.com
- Inside Artemis 2: NASA's historic astronaut moon mission explained (video series) - 2026-03-25 17:43
- 100 new alien worlds: Scientists find hidden haul in data from NASA exoplanet-hunting spacecraft - 2026-03-25 17:00
- Jupiter and the moon take a sunset stroll on March 26. Here's how to see it - 2026-03-25 14:00
- Canada cancels its 1st moon rover: 'It's hopefully not a lost cause' - 2026-03-25 13:00
- Get $28 off this Lego Star Wars Dark Falcon set or suffer at the hands of Darth Jar Jar - 2026-03-25 12:37
space news
- Space Force weighs launch alternatives as Vulcan faces potential months-long grounding - 2026-03-25 17:55
- Office of Space Commerce releases mission authorization proposal - 2026-03-25 14:50
- Terran Orbital Introduces New Star Tracker Product Line at SATSHOW 2026 - 2026-03-25 13:16
- Telesat eyes defense role with laser comms test ahead of LEO debut - 2026-03-25 10:20
- Sift raises $42 million in Series B round - 2026-03-25 10:14
phys.org
- Decoding the complete genome of the fungus responsible for Cercospora leaf spot in olive trees - 2026-03-25 23:20
- How plants stop growing to survive stress: Retired scientist's persistence reveals insight to boost farm yields - 2026-03-25 22:00
- New study outlines privacy solution for retail central bank digital currencies - 2026-03-25 21:50
- New research suggests deadly bat fungus is more widespread in western Canada than previously known - 2026-03-25 21:30
- Organocatalytic strategy provides a metal-free route to antiviral candidates - 2026-03-25 21:20
onion latest
- Epidemiologists Confirm First Airborne Transmission Of Mar-A-Lago Face - 2026-03-25 13:24
- Florida Bill To Ban First Cousin Marriage Fails To Pass - 2026-03-25 12:17
- 42-Year-Old Woman Refers To Herself As ‘Preggerz’ - 2026-03-25 08:00
- White House IT Guy Sends Out Reminder Memo About Child Porn - 2026-03-25 08:00
- Economists Warn That Even Their Friend’s Son Who Went To Business School Can’t Find A Job - 2026-03-25 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