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
- iPhone Video Shows 'Earthset' From Space - 2026-04-21 02:00
- PlayStation To Require Age Verification For Messages and Voice Chat - 2026-04-20 22:30
- Mobile Phones To Be Banned In Schools In England Under New Plans - 2026-04-20 18:00
- Apple CEO Tim Cook Is Stepping Down - 2026-04-20 17:05
- Former Palantir Employee Running For Congress Unveils 'AI Dividend' Plan - 2026-04-20 16:00
hackaday
- Why Some S3 Videocards Have a Brightness Issue - 2026-04-21 03:00
- Cyberdeck Build Gets Closer To Regular Laptop Than Most - 2026-04-21 00:00
- Growing Aluminium-Copper Alloy Crystals Using Hydrogen - 2026-04-20 21:00
- Making the Most Pick-Proof Lock Yet - 2026-04-20 18:00
- Vintage Chyron TV Hardware? Of course It Runs NetBSD - 2026-04-20 15:00
neatorama
- <i>Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie</i> Proved That "Mainstream" Isn't Always Better - 2026-04-20 20:52
- The World According to Hollywood in 1927 - 2026-04-20 19:09
- Watch a Police Chase through Horse Cam - 2026-04-20 15:04
- Politician in Turkey Has Serious Mustache Game - 2026-04-20 13:21
- <i>HOPE-65</i> Sends a Chimpanzee on a Space Adventure - 2026-04-20 12:33
NPR
- The hidden power keeping wages low - 2026-04-21 05:30
- 3 things to know about Fed chair nominee Kevin Warsh - 2026-04-21 04:00
- The surprising origin of 4 features that superglue kids — and adults — to screens - 2026-04-21 04:00
- She raised concerns about her company's contracts with ICE. Then she lost her job - 2026-04-21 04:00
- Gunman shoots several tourists at historic pyramids in Mexico - 2026-04-21 00:18
jacobin
- Ibrahim Traoré Would Like to Be Thomas Sankara’s Heir - 2026-04-20 07:52
- Communists Helped Build the Mighty New York Hotel Union - 2026-04-20 07:50
- “I’m Running Because It Shouldn’t Be So Hard to Live Here” - 2026-04-20 05:45
- Big Tech Quietly Demanded Immunity for Working With TikTok - 2026-04-20 05:36
- The AI Revolution Could Usher In a New Age of Stagnation - 2026-04-20 04:08
africa is a country
- Sovereignty beyond the nation - 2026-04-20 07:00
- Fields of dependency - 2026-04-17 09:00
- More commerce than chaos - 2026-04-16 04:00
- The demographic dividend no one wants to pay - 2026-04-15 12:45
- The debts our parents left us - 2026-04-14 07:00
404media
- Scientists Gave a Bunch of Salmon Cocaine. This Is What Happened Next - 2026-04-20 14:40
- Forbes Prediction Market Gamifies Story About Mass Shooting of 8 Children - 2026-04-20 11:18
- Why Journalists Are Going Indie (with Maddy Myers) - 2026-04-20 08:00
- Babies Born from Dead Parents Will Increase with New Tech. Are We Ready? - 2026-04-18 08:00
- FAA Scraps Civil and Criminal Penalties for Flying Drones Near ICE Vehicles - 2026-04-17 10:44
techdirt
- YouTuber Copyright Struck After Others Layer AI Voiceovers On Video Game Music - 2026-04-20 22:07
- Caught In The Crackdown: As Arrests At Anti-ICE Protests Piled Up, Prosecutions Crumbled - 2026-04-20 17:00
- Palantir Goes Mask-Off For Fascism. It Won’t End Well. - 2026-04-20 14:58
- Rep. Mike Johnson Tries, Fails To Sneak Clean Section 702 Re-Authorization Past The Goal Line - 2026-04-20 12:58
- Daily Deal: The Complete Arduino, Raspberry Pi & ESP32 Bundle - 2026-04-20 12:53
the register personal tech
- England's school phone ban gets teeth, just in time to bite no one - 2026-04-21 05:13
- HP's remote desktop push retreats as Anyware heads for end of life - 2026-04-20 06:25
- 'Invisible mouse' made a mess of PC rebuild - 2026-04-20 02:01
- Indonesia’s game rating system paused amid claims it leaked developer creds and glimpses of major new titles - 2026-04-19 21:07
- Attention data hoarders: Alexa loses its Plex appeal as voice feature gets canned - 2026-04-17 05:45
sciencedaily
- 95% success rate: This new trick lures termites straight to their death - 2026-04-20 22:54
- These California bees are beating a killer that’s wiping out colonies - 2026-04-20 22:28
- This missing vitamin could stop cancer cells in their tracks - 2026-04-20 06:14
- This simple 3-amino acid trick boosts mRNA therapy 20-fold - 2026-04-20 05:53
- Scientists stunned as bacteria rewire DNA machinery to shape cells - 2026-04-20 05:18
space.com
- NASA's Curiosity rover finds building blocks of life on Mars. Scientists aren't sure how they got there - 2026-04-21 04:05
- NASA shuts down Voyager 1 instrument to keep probe exploring interstellar space - 2026-04-20 16:31
- 600 rocket landings! SpaceX notches another milestone during Sunday Starlink launch (video) - 2026-04-20 14:00
- Scientists found a 'bathtub ring' on Mars. Could it be evidence of an ancient Red Planet ocean? - 2026-04-20 13:03
- Astronauts face grip strength challenge in space and on Earth, scientists find - 2026-04-20 12:01
space news
- Falcon 9 launches final GPS 3 satellite into orbit for U.S. Space Force - 2026-04-21 04:16
- Artemis spacesuit development risks further delays - 2026-04-20 21:19
- Pentagon officially ends OCX program, citing risk and delays - 2026-04-20 16:58
- Latvia joins the Artemis Accords - 2026-04-20 11:16
- Space Force sets up ‘cislunar coordination’ office to focus beyond Earth orbit - 2026-04-20 09:00
phys.org
- Earthquake sets off brief tsunami alert and a megaquake advisory in northern Japan - 2026-04-21 04:17
- Mars rover detects never-before-seen organic compounds in new experiment - 2026-04-21 04:00
- Report analyzes the present and future of North America's most important trade agreement - 2026-04-20 21:40
- Promoting communication in English among students learning English as a foreign language - 2026-04-20 21:00
- Daily probiotic could help prevent skin infections in dogs - 2026-04-20 20:40
onion latest
- Straggler Cicadas To Appear - 2026-04-20 15:17
- At Long Last, InfoWars Is Ours - 2026-04-20 12:02
- Surgeon Charged After Removing Wrong Organ - 2026-04-20 11:54
- ‘Beef’ Creator Reveals Season 3 Will Focus On Escalating Feud Between Cartoon Mouse, Cat - 2026-04-20 11:35
- The Onion’s Exclusive Interview With Lena Dunham - 2026-04-20 08:00
changelogs
April 2026
2025-04-03 - linkroll - added more links.
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