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.
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slashdot
- Supreme Court Rejects Verizon Bid For $47 Million Refund of FCC Fine - 2026-08-17 18:00
- Apple Wallet Driver's License Feature to Launch in Four More US States - 2026-08-17 17:00
- Judge Sets Framework For Nine PBS to Retrieve 70 Years of Archival TV Data - 2026-08-17 16:00
- Meta Faces $1.4 Trillion Reckoning In Latest Trial Over Social Media Addiction - 2026-08-17 15:00
- US Grid Operator PJM Proposes Forcing Data Center Off Grid During Emergencies - 2026-08-17 14:00
hackaday
- Edison Motors Offering All-Mechanical Trucks, At Least to Start - 2026-08-17 21:00
- One Man’s Perfect Retro-Style Monitor Takes All Inputs - 2026-08-17 18:00
- OLEDs Have Gained Brightness, Not Burn-In Resistance - 2026-08-17 15:00
- Using Starlink’s Satellites to Study Earth’s Upper Atmosphere - 2026-08-17 13:30
- Linux Fu: Improving FTP - 2026-08-17 12:00
neatorama
- What a Linguist Can Tell us About Baby Talk - 2026-08-17 18:34
- The Town with a Traffic Light That Only Turns Green Once a Year - 2026-08-17 15:19
- A Hand-Cranked Bicycle Ferry - 2026-08-17 13:24
- A Creepy, Terrifying, Hungry Bowl of Spaghetti - 2026-08-17 12:36
- The <i>Star Trek</i>/<i>King of the Hill</i> Crossover Comics We Need - 2026-08-17 07:26
NPR
- Part of a key firearms law lapsed following a federal court decision. What happens now? - 2026-08-17 17:37
- Former federal prosecutor is suing DOJ for 'unlawful and retaliatory' firing - 2026-08-17 16:01
- Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez being investigated over sexual misconduct allegations - 2026-08-17 14:53
- DHS defends investigating agency critics and giving them warning notices - 2026-08-17 08:31
- USS Washington to relieve USS Lincoln. And, Jared Kushner to meet with Netanyahu - 2026-08-17 06:48
jacobin
- Donald Trump’s Coalition Is Coming Apart - 2026-08-17 13:33
- The Trump Administration Has Been Spying on Labor Unions - 2026-08-17 12:43
- Capitalism Is Killing Summer - 2026-08-17 11:37
- Kate Bronfenbrenner, the Union Organizer’s Scholar - 2026-08-17 10:10
- German Christian Democrats Are Paralyzed by a Far-Right Surge - 2026-08-17 08:33
404media
- Pornhub's Parent Company to Pay $120 Million to Settle Child Sexual Abuse Lawsuits - 2026-08-17 16:04
- ‘Show How 3M Is 0% at Fault:’ Expert Witness Used ChatGPT to Write Report Defending Company in Deadly Explosion Lawsuit - 2026-08-17 09:56
- The Future of Deepfakes and the Decline of Reality (With Hany Farid) - 2026-08-17 09:19
- We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility - 2026-08-17 08:16
- Memories Mysteriously Survive After Brain Shutdown, And Scientists Don’t Know Why - 2026-08-15 05:00
techdirt
- Another California Court Has Now Broken Media Advertising, So The Copia Institute Asked Another California Appeals Court To Fix It - 2026-08-17 17:27
- Flock Safety Decides To Implement A Few Changes After Months Of Negative Press - 2026-08-17 15:31
- Federal Court Rules That Blocking Speech Is Protected By The First Amendment, But Recommending It Isn’t - 2026-08-17 13:10
- Daily Deal: The Complete Arduino, Raspberry Pi & ESP32 Bundle - 2026-08-17 13:05
- Rather Than Investigate The Alex Pretti Murder, The DHS Investigated Minneapolis Activist Groups - 2026-08-17 11:30
the register personal tech
- Classic ASCII game NetHack debuts version 5.0 just 11 years after last major release - 2026-05-05 01:32
- Bad news for OpenClaw stans: Apple’s Mac Mini now starts at $799 - 2026-05-04 16:46
- Ask.com, former home of search butler Jeeves, closes just as conversational search comes back - 2026-05-04 00:13
- Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone - 2026-05-01 10:24
- That old phone in the kitchen drawer could save an industry - 2026-05-01 09:16
sciencedaily
- Low-fat vegan diet helps people lose weight without eating less - 2026-08-17 08:07
- Webb’s mysterious little red dots may be hiding entire galaxies - 2026-08-17 07:56
- Tiny 1.7-billion-year-old fossils could reveal how complex life began - 2026-08-17 07:40
- Caltech breakthrough brings fiber-optic performance to silicon chips - 2026-08-17 07:30
- Scientists uncover the hidden nerve network fueling breast cancer - 2026-08-17 07:06
space.com
- How an ancient collision with another galaxy transformed the Milky Way - 2026-08-17 16:00
- China bounces back from Long March rocket explosion with back-to-back launches (video) - 2026-08-17 15:00
- The best Ruko drone to date is half-price at Amazon but you'll have to hurry - 2026-08-17 14:56
- Scientists find dead star that predicts our sun's future: 'Broken apart and returned to the galaxy' - 2026-08-17 13:16
- The 1st 'Star Wars: Ahsoka' season 2 trailer finally gives us a release date (video) - 2026-08-17 11:00
space news
- HEO to use Planet satellites for non-Earth imaging - 2026-08-17 17:00
- New EU sanctions target leaders of Russia’s space industry - 2026-08-17 16:05
- ULA names Peller as new CEO - 2026-08-17 11:43
- L3Harris names space sector leader Sam Mehta CEO after Kubasik steps down - 2026-08-17 07:32
- The 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2026) is the One Space Event You Cannot Miss - 2026-08-17 07:23
phys.org
- Molecular memory: How a mother's age echoes in her offspring's cells - 2026-08-17 21:20
- Billions of invasive round goby are in the Great Lakes. Researchers want to stop them from spreading inland - 2026-08-17 20:40
- Can telecoms turn data into action? Seven-dimension model maps readiness - 2026-08-17 20:00
- Immune cells have a 'sense of touch,' scientists discover - 2026-08-17 19:00
- Molecular electromagnetic sensor may enable remote-controlled gene therapy - 2026-08-17 18:40
onion latest
- Todd Blanche Vows To Remain Fully Independent Of The Law - 2026-08-17 14:47
- White House Taps Mean Teen In Zara Fitting Room As New Press Secretary - 2026-08-17 13:18
- ‘Do You Have Any Idea Who I Am?’ Jalen Brunson Shouts At Librarian Refusing To Move Him Up ‘Lonesome Dove’ Waitlist - 2026-08-17 10:00
- Crying Newborn Has No Idea How Much Worse It Gets - 2026-08-17 09:51
- AOC Freezing Her Eggs - 2026-08-15 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