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
- Intel's New Core Series 3 Is Its Answer To the MacBook Neo - 2026-04-17 02:00
- Sperm Whales' Communication Closely Parallels Human Language, Study Finds - 2026-04-16 22:30
- 'TotalRecall Reloaded' Tool Finds a Side Entrance To Windows 11 Recall Database - 2026-04-16 18:00
- OpenAI's Big Codex Update Is a Direct Shot At Claude Code - 2026-04-16 17:00
- Is Linux Mint In Trouble? - 2026-04-16 16:00
hackaday
- Building a Big RC Mini Truck - 2026-04-17 00:00
- Comparing 12 VDC Air Fryers with Regular 240 VAC Ones - 2026-04-16 21:00
- Do We Really Need Another Development Board? - 2026-04-16 18:00
- FPGA Powers DIY USB Scope and Signal Generator - 2026-04-16 15:00
- Desktop Digitizer Makes Note Capture a Breeze - 2026-04-16 13:30
neatorama
- A Lush Garden of Mondegreens - 2026-04-16 19:41
- Continental Collisions, Supermountains, and Species Evolution Could Be Related - 2026-04-16 17:30
- How the Persian Gulf Came to Have So Much Natural Gas and Oil - 2026-04-16 11:25
- The Thoughts of <i>The Thinker</i> Are No Secret - 2026-04-15 20:13
- The Dark Side of Some Popular Children's Toys - 2026-04-15 10:39
NPR
- ICE acting director Todd Lyons will resign at end of May, DHS says - 2026-04-17 00:10
- Singer D4vd is arrested months after a teen's remains were found in his car - 2026-04-16 21:19
- House passes bill extending protections for Haitian migrants in the U.S. - 2026-04-16 18:37
- Top five takeaways from Homeland Security budget hearings - 2026-04-16 17:07
- These musicians are providing the soundtrack for anti-ICE protests in LA - 2026-04-16 16:14
jacobin
- Decarbonizing Housing Means Fighting Landlords - 2026-04-16 09:59
- How Flint Sit-Down Strikers Built Their Confidence - 2026-04-16 07:11
- Dwight Macdonald After the Death of Liberalism - 2026-04-16 05:11
- Make Lower Manhattan Socialist Again - 2026-04-16 05:03
- Japan Is Building a War Machine in the East China Sea - 2026-04-16 04:57
africa is a country
- 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
- Whose progress? - 2026-04-13 07:00
- Art has never been innocent - 2026-04-10 07:00
404media
- App Stores Push Users Toward Nudify Apps, New Research Shows - 2026-04-16 11:34
- I Almost Lost My Mind in the Bridal Algorithm - 2026-04-16 08:00
- Thomson Reuters Shareholders Demand Investigation into ICE Contracts - 2026-04-15 19:09
- Ukraine Says Russians are Surrendering to Robots - 2026-04-15 12:43
- Emails Reveal Space Force’s Hardest Mission Is Writing a Song - 2026-04-15 08:29
techdirt
- Rockstar On Latest Potential Hack & Information Leak: Meh, We Don’t Care - 2026-04-16 21:59
- Ctrl-Alt-Speech: The Silence Of The LLMs - 2026-04-16 18:06
- The Right Wing Origins Age Verification Laws Don’t Disappear Just Because They’re Going Bipartisan. - 2026-04-16 15:05
- All But 3 Of The 4,499 Refugees Admitted To The US Under Trump Are White South Africans - 2026-04-16 13:03
- Daily Deal: The Ultimate Python & Artificial Intelligence Certification Bundle - 2026-04-16 12:58
the register personal tech
- The only technology that died more times than VR is AI, and that seems to have worked out - 2026-04-15 02:03
- Microsoft raises UK Surface prices as RAM crisis reaches the checkout - 2026-04-14 05:31
- NHS pays £46K to prep next Microsoft licensing round - 2026-04-13 04:27
- Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user - 2026-04-12 03:01
- Electronics industry says FCC's foreign-made router policy is a bit of a mesh - 2026-04-10 10:44
sciencedaily
- Can sparkling water boost metabolism and help with weight loss? - 2026-04-17 02:17
- Scientists discover natural hormone that reverses obesity - 2026-04-16 22:49
- Scientists supercharge immune cells to destroy cancer more effectively - 2026-04-16 22:28
- A “death” protein may be the key to slowing aging at its source - 2026-04-16 21:58
- Scientists remove “zombie” cells and reverse liver damage in mice - 2026-04-16 06:59
space.com
- Landing astronauts on the moon 'is absolutely doable, and it's doable soon,' NASA's Artemis 2 commander says - 2026-04-16 16:53
- 'That was a wonderful toilet': Artemis 2 commander defends mission's lunar loo - 2026-04-16 15:42
- Fantasy RPG 'Crimson Desert' lets you stab your way up to space, showcasing a remarkably detailed cosmos - 2026-04-16 14:00
- Blue Origin fires up used New Glenn rocket ahead of landmark reflight (photo) - 2026-04-16 13:00
- The Lyrid meteor shower 2026 has begun! Here's what to expect - 2026-04-16 12:00
space news
- India’s TakeMe2Space sets sights on 50-kilowatt data center - 2026-04-16 18:59
- Countering missile threats ‘left of launch’ - 2026-04-16 18:05
- Taiwan floats shared satcom constellation amid calls for more space collaboration - 2026-04-16 16:47
- Companies make the case for commercial space station markets - 2026-04-16 16:42
- Boeing and its subsidiary Millennium Space team on new mid-size satellite - 2026-04-16 13:39
phys.org
- A student-led experiment sets new limits in the search for axions - 2026-04-16 23:00
- Deep earthquakes triggered by the olivine-poirierite transition - 2026-04-16 21:40
- Preconception radiation exposure alters offspring mitochondrial DNA in an organ-specific manner - 2026-04-16 20:40
- Different interannual co-evolutionary models reveal how East Asia's jet stream and summer monsoon evolve together - 2026-04-16 20:20
- New methods can help study the phenomenon of turbulence - 2026-04-16 20:00
onion latest
- Sure, Nation Won’t Say No To Another Reason To Hate Katy Perry - 2026-04-16 15:24
- Soaring Gas Prices Forcing More Americans To Drink Less Gas - 2026-04-16 13:42
- White House Doctor: ‘The President Has Very Strong Nipples’ - 2026-04-16 13:01
- What To Know About ‘Euphoria’ Season 3 - 2026-04-16 10:14
- Teresa Willis and Brendan Cooks - 2026-04-16 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