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
- Meta Signs $27 Billion AI Infrastructure Deal With Nebius - 2026-03-16 13:00
- Data Centers Overtake Offices In US Construction-Spending Shift - 2026-03-16 12:00
- Court Rules TCL's 'QLED' TVs Aren't Truly QLED - 2026-03-16 11:00
- Animated 'Firefly' Reboot In Development With Nathan Fillion - 2026-03-16 10:00
- Sodium-Ion Battery Tested for Grid-Scale Storage in Wisconsin - 2026-03-16 06:36
hackaday
- Making a Better Kitchen Scale out of Junk Parts - 2026-03-16 13:30
- How I 3D Printed My Own Lego-Compatible Train Bridges - 2026-03-16 12:00
- LEGO Machine Plays Tic-Tac-Toe Without Electronics - 2026-03-16 10:30
- Ask Hackaday: Wired or Wireless Headphones? - 2026-03-16 09:00
- The IPV4 We Didn’t Get - 2026-03-16 06:00
neatorama
- 100 Years Ago Today: The Launch of the Rocket Age - 2026-03-16 12:55
- Michael Jackson Had a Seriously Messed Up Childhood - 2026-03-16 09:15
- Everyone Wants to Be in a <i>Star Wars</i> Movie - 2026-03-15 19:35
- A Minnesota Town Has a Public Works Chicken - 2026-03-15 17:49
- Selena Gomez Has a Role In Controlling New Zealand's Possums - 2026-03-15 06:16
NPR
- Gasoline prices are still rising as the Iran war stretches into its third week - 2026-03-16 12:50
- Team USA won the second-most medals at these Paralympics. See the standout moments - 2026-03-16 10:34
- Senate prepares to vote on Trump's SAVE Act. And, takeaways from last night's Oscars - 2026-03-16 06:28
- Trump demands NATO and China police the Strait of Hormuz. So far they are refusing - 2026-03-16 05:05
- Influencers push 'parasite cleanses' but doctors say to steer clear - 2026-03-16 04:00
jacobin
- Long Before MAGA’s White Grievance, There Was Bernie Goetz - 2026-03-16 07:14
- Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Live in a Society With No “Kill Line”? - 2026-03-16 07:01
- Thousands of Colorado Meatpacking Workers Are on Strike - 2026-03-16 05:44
- An Oscars Night of Sentimentality and Amnesia - 2026-03-16 05:38
- Bruno Kreisky, a Social Democrat From a Different World - 2026-03-16 04:12
africa is a country
- Pilgrimage to power - 2026-03-16 08:00
- Who speaks for Iran? - 2026-03-13 08:45
- The arrest protocol on my fridge - 2026-03-12 05:00
- Slow death by food - 2026-03-11 06:30
- The Imam against the insurgents - 2026-03-10 04:00
404media
- Texting a Random Stranger Better for Loneliness Than Talking to a Chatbot, Study Shows - 2026-03-16 11:48
- Witness Caught Using Smartglasses in Court Blames it all on ChatGPT - 2026-03-16 09:41
- The Removed DOGE Deposition Videos Have Already Been Backed Up Across the Internet - 2026-03-14 11:00
- Alien Life Might Exist on the Starless Moons of Rogue Planets, Scientists Say - 2026-03-14 08:00
- DOGE Deposition Videos Taken Down After Judge Order and Widespread Mockery - 2026-03-13 19:19
techdirt
- ICE Officers Admit To Arrest Quotas During Court Testimony - 2026-03-16 12:51
- Daily Deal: Mag 3 Ultra Qi2 25W 3-in-1 Foldable Charger - 2026-03-16 12:46
- Turns Out The DOGE Bros Who Killed Humanities Grants Are Kinda Sensitive About It - 2026-03-16 11:33
- Microsoft Locks Down Discord Server After People Wouldn’t Stop Making Fun Of AI ‘Microslop’ - 2026-03-16 07:21
- Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt - 2026-03-15 14:00
the register personal tech
- Apple’s MacBook Neo turns out to be its most repairable lappy in 14 years - 2026-03-16 08:27
- Age verification isn't sage verification when it's inside operating systems - 2026-03-16 07:30
- Microsoft points at Samsung after Galaxy app bug locks users out of C:/ - 2026-03-16 06:37
- AI Burning Man happens next week –what to expect at Nvidia GTC 2026 - 2026-03-13 01:30
- Apple takes a bite out of app store fees in China - 2026-03-12 22:22
sciencedaily
- Just 24 minutes of specially designed music could significantly reduce anxiety - 2026-03-16 06:04
- Scientists discover what really happens during sourdough fermentation - 2026-03-16 05:59
- The smell of Egyptian mummies is revealing 2,000-year-old secrets - 2026-03-16 05:46
- A strange new quantum state appears when atoms get “frustrated” - 2026-03-16 05:19
- Scientists unlock a powerful new way to turn sunlight into fuel - 2026-03-16 03:01
space.com
- Astronomers discover a new type of planet that probably smells like rotten eggs - 2026-03-16 13:00
- 'Villains are the heroes of their own movie': We chat to 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy' showrunners about building an iconic Trek villain - 2026-03-16 11:00
- Timboy Chaco in the Mars borderlands | Space photo of the day for March 16, 2026 - 2026-03-16 09:30
- Siril astrophotography software review - 2026-03-16 09:00
- The new 'Disclosure Day trailer just dropped, and now we think it's a secret sequel to 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - 2026-03-16 08:00
space news
- Melagen Labs and Satlyt Announce Joint ISS Mission to Demonstrate Radiation-Resilient In-Orbit Computing and Next-Gen Shielding - 2026-03-16 11:00
- Kepler Communications: Call for Live-Stream Payload Concepts - 2026-03-16 10:00
- Investing in student programs is essential for America’s lead in space - 2026-03-16 08:00
- New Moog Innovations for the Satellite Market on Full Display at SATELLITE 2026 Conference - 2026-03-16 07:00
- China launches new highly retrograde Yaogan satellite, KZ-11 rideshare deploys 8 satellites - 2026-03-16 05:59
phys.org
- Origin of lowest density super-puff planet remains a hazy mystery - 2026-03-16 13:40
- Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks, bolstering origin-of-life theories - 2026-03-16 13:26
- Extremely rare second-generation star discovered inside ancient relic dwarf galaxy - 2026-03-16 13:20
- Paleontologists uncover a new Spinosaurus species by following a clue from a decades‑old book into the Sahara Desert - 2026-03-16 13:20
- Sugar-processing enzyme has a hidden second job—controlling when cells divide - 2026-03-16 13:00
onion latest
- Trump Beefs Up Security Presence After Frighteningly Close Brush With JD Vance - 2026-03-16 13:22
- History Of St. Patrick’s Day - 2026-03-16 11:59
- Kansas Revokes 1,700 Licenses For Being Transgender - 2026-03-16 08:00
- How To Survive An Avalanche - 2026-03-16 08:00
- MrBeast Offers $50,000 To Anyone Who Can Survive Seeing What Lies Beneath His Mask - 2026-03-16 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