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
- The US Government's Mario, Pokemon and Naruto Meme Posting Could Damage These Franchises, Japanese Officials Warn - 2026-08-06 14:00
- FCC Kills TV Ownership Cap, Claiming Authority Over Limit Set By Congress - 2026-08-06 13:00
- Times Magazine Now Serves Ads That Only AI Chatbots Can See - 2026-08-06 12:00
- Meta AI Hacked External Systems During Cybersecurity Testing - 2026-08-06 11:00
- Broadcaster Wins Broad US Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don't Exist Yet - 2026-08-06 10:00
hackaday
- CNC’d, CNC-inspired Adjustable Wrench Won’t Round Your Bolts - 2026-08-06 13:30
- Calculus-Free PID (Almost) in a Spreadsheet - 2026-08-06 12:00
- Going Full Fruity with Apple’s 1999 High-End Power Mac G3 - 2026-08-06 10:30
- FitzRoy’s Glass: Victorian Weather Marvel or Glorified Thermometer? - 2026-08-06 09:00
- Amiga and Commodore, Back Together (Sort Of) - 2026-08-06 06:00
neatorama
- One For Your Bucket List: The Moist Towelette Museum - 2026-08-05 20:33
- Police Dress as Shrubs to Catch Distracted Drivers - 2026-08-05 15:33
- Enjoy a Delicious Stop Motion LEGO Belgian Waffle - 2026-08-05 14:50
- Funny Signs on Scottish Passenger Trains - 2026-08-05 08:48
- Exposing Deadly Practices at a Uranium Enrichment Plant - 2026-08-05 07:19
NPR
- Sticky or slippery? Snails can change their slime to meet the moment - 2026-08-06 13:26
- The park service says Trump's arch would obstruct historic sites. Could it be moved? - 2026-08-06 13:19
- European nations say World Cup boycott is still on, keeping FIFA's Infantino in limbo - 2026-08-06 12:11
- A new flu vaccine geared to older people is coming soon - 2026-08-06 12:06
- Greetings from a wildlife park in central Sri Lanka that's a haven for elephants - 2026-08-06 09:19
jacobin
- Hollywood Is Losing Not Just Jobs but Entire Lineages - 2026-08-06 12:38
- Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work - 2026-08-06 11:37
- The Deadly Military-Vet-to-ICE Pipeline - 2026-08-06 10:17
- The US Beats Europe — in Wasteful Health Care Spending - 2026-08-06 07:35
- What to Do When Your Union Contract Is Voted Down - 2026-08-05 15:25
404media
- Software Giant SAP Stops Most Travel and Hiring Because of AI’s Soaring Cost - 2026-08-06 14:13
- Scientists Designed a Virtual Alien Lifeform to Hunt for Extraterrestrials - 2026-08-06 11:49
- Cities Are Ditching Flock, Immediately Replacing It With Axon License Plate Readers - 2026-08-06 08:14
- Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines to Create Pretext to Search His Car for Weed - 2026-08-05 09:50
- Podcast: This Man Might Go to Prison for Wiping His Phone - 2026-08-05 09:23
techdirt
- Elon Musk’s Grokipedia Quietly Stopped Updating In April. Basically No One Noticed. - 2026-08-06 13:02
- Daily Deal: Soundfreaq Sound Spot II Bluetooth Speaker - 2026-08-06 12:57
- California Town Says Flock Cameras Misread License Plates 71% Of The Time - 2026-08-06 11:25
- Trump Admin Hijacked $21 Billion In Taxpayer Money Earmarked For Internet Access And Then Went Mute - 2026-08-06 07:25
- Budget Cuts, Apathy Lead To Trump Administration Being Slow Acknowledging Two Cyclosporiasis Deaths - 2026-08-05 22:08
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
- Major study challenges long-held fears about acetaminophen and ibuprofen use in babies - 2026-08-06 07:43
- A star’s violent death exposed a hidden supermassive black hole - 2026-08-06 07:16
- Cell-inspired nanoreactor turns sunlight into hydrogen peroxide - 2026-08-06 07:03
- World’s most-used weedkiller disrupts honeybee brains - 2026-08-06 06:42
- Nearly half of dementia cases may be linked to risks you can change - 2026-08-06 05:23
space.com
- Rocket Lab launches Japanese Earth-observing satellite after 5-week delay (video, photos) - 2026-08-06 13:34
- 'Strange New Worlds' latest 'Hangover'-inspired episode is a reminder that 'Star Trek' vacations are never a good idea - 2026-08-06 11:00
- SpaceX rocket's impact crater on the moon spied by Korean lunar orbiter (photos) - 2026-08-06 10:24
- Blue Origin traces origin of huge New Glenn rocket explosion to oxygen valve, CEO says - 2026-08-06 10:00
- On this day in space! Aug. 6, 2012: NASA lands huge Curiosity rover on Mars with a rocket-powered sky crane - 2026-08-06 09:00
space news
- How should Europe’s militaries respond to space threats - 2026-08-06 10:31
- Lessons for the future of NASA Mars exploration from a 1970s mission - 2026-08-06 10:00
- Redwire to fly dedicated Starfall mission for microgravity research - 2026-08-06 09:18
- Three companies building the tech to grow crops on the moon - 2026-08-06 07:00
- Rocket Lab launches 8th iQPS satellite - 2026-08-06 06:17
phys.org
- Super-Earths may be solid deep inside their mantles - 2026-08-06 14:20
- Drained by humans, rewetted by beavers—opposing forces shape boreal wetlands - 2026-08-06 14:20
- Are cats getting tamer, or is it people who are changing? - 2026-08-06 14:00
- Observing key material properties atom by atom for the first time - 2026-08-06 14:00
- JWST study suggests a handful of 'leaky' galaxies reionized the early universe - 2026-08-06 13:40
onion latest
- New DNC Fundraising Email Urges Voters To Find Something Better To Do With Their Money - 2026-08-06 14:00
- What To Know About ‘One Night Only’ - 2026-08-06 08:00
- Truth Social Begins Selling Advanced Access To Trump Posts - 2026-08-06 08:00
- Michelle Zhang-Russo - 2026-08-06 08:00
- Vacationing Mom Misses Alexa - 2026-08-06 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