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
- Wikipedia To Use AI - 2025-04-30 10:20
- Electronic Arts Lays Off Hundreds, Cancels 'Titanfall' Game - 2025-04-30 09:41
- Microsoft Vows Legal Fight Against US To Protect European Cloud Customers - 2025-04-30 09:00
- Gen AI Is Not Replacing Jobs Or Hurting Wages At All, Say Economists - 2025-04-30 08:00
- Firefly Aerospace's Alpha Rocket Fails, Sends Satellite Falling Into Ocean - 2025-04-30 05:00
hackaday
- A Gentle Introduction to COBOL - 2025-04-30 09:00
- Terminal DAW Does it in Style - 2025-04-30 06:00
- Building an nRF52840 and Battery-Powered Zigbee Gate Sensor - 2025-04-30 03:00
- Back to Reality with the Time Brick - 2025-04-30 00:00
- Comparing ‘AI’ for Basic Plant Care With Human Brown Thumbs - 2025-04-29 21:00
neatorama
- New Bionic Hands Work Even When Detached - 2025-04-29 20:36
- Fried Chicken and Shrimp Parfaits - 2025-04-29 15:30
- Cosplayers Bring the Bling at Laval Comiccon 2025 - 2025-04-29 13:24
- An Honest Trailer for <i>Captain America: Brave New World</i> - 2025-04-29 13:19
- The ATM Where You Can Melt and Deposit Gold - 2025-04-29 09:33
NPR
- Private eye accused of hacking American climate activists loses U.K. extradition fight - 2025-04-30 09:03
- Republicans aim to pass Trump's big bill. And, Steve Bannon analyzes Trump's strategy - 2025-04-30 06:20
- More and more older Americans want to know their Alzheimer's status, survey finds - 2025-04-30 05:00
- With a focus on unity, Vietnam celebrates 50 years since war's end - 2025-04-30 05:00
- A man chopped down Los Angeles trees. The crime cut deep in the struggling neighborhood - 2025-04-30 04:01
jacobin
- The Courts Won’t Save Us - 2025-04-30 05:32
- Taking Stock of Donald Trump’s First One Hundred Days - 2025-04-30 05:31
- A Hundred Days In, Donald Trump Is Flailing - 2025-04-30 04:03
- Will Utah Compensate Victims of Forced Sterilization? - 2025-04-29 10:07
- Big Tech Wants Free Rein to Sell Your Data - 2025-04-29 09:53
africa is a country
- What’s left of Nigeria’s feminist left? - 2025-04-30 04:45
- As aid ends, empire endures - 2025-04-29 08:00
- Art is a place for rehearsal - 2025-04-28 10:00
- Kenya’s vibe shift - 2025-04-25 08:00
- Zambia’s quiet diplomacy - 2025-04-24 07:00
404media
- ‘TheTrillionDollarDinner.Gov’ Registered Around Time of Trump’s Pay-to-Play Memecoin Dinner Announcement - 2025-04-30 08:26
- Podcast: Meta's AI Chatbots Are a Disaster - 2025-04-30 08:00
- Trump Demands Amazon Deny the Reality of What His Tariffs Are Doing to Prices - 2025-04-29 10:48
- Instagram Is Blocking Minors from Accessing Chatbot Platform AI Studio - 2025-04-29 10:12
- Instagram's AI Chatbots Lie About Being Licensed Therapists - 2025-04-29 09:37
techdirt
- Google Kills Software Support For Many Nest Users, Eroding Trust In The Brand - 2025-04-30 07:37
- US Measles Cases On Pace To Eclipse 2019, 1994 Case Numbers - 2025-04-29 22:19
- Inspector General Probes Whether Trump, DOGE Sought Private Taxpayer Information Or Sensitive IRS Material - 2025-04-29 17:34
- DOJ Deportation Memo Pretends The Fourth Amendment Doesn’t Exist - 2025-04-29 15:30
- FTC’s ‘Tech Censorship’ Investigation Is Censoring Comments About ‘Censorship’ - 2025-04-29 14:08
the register personal tech
- Does UK's Online Safety Act cover misinformation? Well, that depends - 2025-04-30 03:33
- Chinese carmaker Chery using DeepSeek-driven humanoid robots as showroom sales staff - 2025-04-30 00:05
- Trump admin freaks out over mere suggestion Amazon was going to show tariff impact on prices - 2025-04-29 19:13
- Meta bets you want a sprinkle of social in your chatbot - 2025-04-29 16:36
- TAKE IT DOWN Act? Yes, take the act down before it's too late for online speech - 2025-04-29 15:09
sciencedaily
- New machine algorithm could identify cardiovascular risk at the click of a button - 2025-04-29 09:31
- Heart disease deaths worldwide linked to chemical widely used in plastics - 2025-04-29 09:31
- Rainfall triggers extreme humid heat in tropics and subtropics - 2025-04-29 09:28
- Global study links consumption of ultraprocessed foods to preventable premature deaths - 2025-04-28 21:23
- A vast molecular cloud, long invisible, is discovered near solar system - 2025-04-28 21:21
space.com
- You really need to check out 'Moonrise', Netflix's awesome new sci-fi anime from the director of 'Attack on Titan' - 2025-04-30 10:00
- Amateur astrophotographer captures gorgeous view of Bode's galaxy from Death Valley - 2025-04-30 09:00
- John Lithgow to launch into life of Apollo 11 astronaut in new podcast 'BUZZ' - 2025-04-30 07:00
- How to edit a solar eclipse photograph: A step-by-step guide - 2025-04-30 06:00
- How to see a celestial 'gazelle' cross the night sky close to the Big Dipper this week - 2025-04-30 05:00
space news
- Senate Commerce Committee advances Isaacman nomination to lead NASA - 2025-04-30 10:25
- Novaspace Forecasts Global Space Exploration Investment to Reach $31 Billion by 2034 - 2025-04-30 09:34
- Defense-focused space startup True Anomaly raises $260 million - 2025-04-30 09:03
- If European leaders want to beef up defense in space, they should look to the Space Development Agency - 2025-04-30 08:00
- Vega launches Biomass satellite - 2025-04-30 06:59
phys.org
- Social workers urged to embed Aboriginal cultural practices in First Nations communities - 2025-04-30 10:35
- Loss of nature's 'unsung heroes' threatens ecosystems - 2025-04-30 10:32
- Experts urge caution on green nitrate fertilizer gains - 2025-04-30 10:30
- ITER completes world's largest and most powerful pulsed magnet system - 2025-04-30 10:30
- Researchers say national guidelines needed to make nature play work for every child - 2025-04-30 10:20
onion latest
- Anderson Cooper Undergoes Cosmetic Surgery To Look Even More Concerned - 2025-04-30 08:00
- Misfortune Cookie - 2025-04-29 10:18
- Rockies Pitcher Out With Altitude Sickness After Ascending Mound Too Quickly - 2025-04-29 08:00
- Trump’s Support Surges After He Points Gun At Nation - 2025-04-29 08:00
- Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Honors Guy Going Nuts In Front Row - 2025-04-29 08:00
changelogs
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