Well, I decided to start on a new case mod. This one is going to be a StarCraft themed old school gamer. I have some of the prelim cutting done, but that's about it. With a little effort, I will get the custom site working and post new pics. Meanwhile, you can grab pics of my old projects and some desktop images at ultrasciencelabs.com/images/.

The Dragon 2.0 project is on hold until I score a matching pair of old ATX cases- or at least a matching pair of ATX motherboard trays.

Oh yeah, colds blow.

Maybe not an era, probably more like a brief period, but either way, I have moved ultrasciencelabs.com to a new server. I just don't have the money for bandwidth and the time to maintain a server farm. Server managment is in the hands of paid specialists.

Migrating the site to a full-fledged CMS is the next challenge. Greymatter has been fun to play with and hack, but I am going to need a better system if I want to build a community site. I will retain a GM install somewhere on the server. I'll probably use it for my personal site. Greymatter is wonderful, flexible blogging system, and I'd like to continue using it for small scale sites.

Before I make this transition, I have to choose a CMS. I am currently debating e107, Mambo Open Source, and Ubersonic 1.6.

We're currently hosting a number of folks chased from Welch by tear gas and pepper spray wielding cops. An amazing overreaction that has decended the situation into open violence from both sides. Events witnessed by those involved: 5 people standing in the open with "peace signs" held high- hosed with mace; a friend was asking for help from a cop and another ran up and sprayed him in the face with pepper spray.

Frozen bearings in the server's power supply cooling fan forced emergency repairs earlier this evening. Swapping fans solved the problem. The server may go down for an extended period later this week for upgrades. On the docket: a new motherboard with RAID and DDR memory suport. I may upgrade the processor as well.

Due to the current state of Internet Explorer's broken CSS implementation, broken iframe background transparency (unfortuneately this bug appears in Opera, as well), and missing PNG-24 support (available on most broswers since the late 90's), this site will not be displayed properly.

I recommend dowloading a Mozilla based browser, or Netscape for the Windows IBMPC. Safari is good choice for the MacPC. Linux user? There are a wealth of browsing options. Mozilla, Konquerer, and Galeon are a few. My personal current favorite is Mozilla Firefox.

By using a standards rigid browser and code checking sevices from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), I have a standards compliant site that requires a standards compliant browser. Netscape's Standards Challenge explains very well the benefits of pushng for standards compliance. There are better, free alternatives out there. Use them.

Losing access to my main rig computer was teh s uck, but I got my new processor today and it is currently working to bring you this blog. Speaking of the blog, I fixed some server issues preventing scripts in /cgi-bin/* from running; the results, comments work, and I can use Greymatter. :w00t:

I am working on formatting the pages for the custom gear site. The image display needs a bit of tweaking. I think I'll make the thumbnails smaller, and I have to implement a "clicking on a thumbnail displays a full sized version of the picture" feature. I guess after that, I can start uploading content again. I am going to try to tone down the geek factor this time. Tech is reserved for how-to's and guides. Regular entries will be for pretty pictures and descriptive commmentary; maybe a spec or feature list for the geeks.

It really isn't that awesome, but I reapaired the fstab file on the server. Kernel Scurry noticed that FTP uploads weren't completing. Apparantly, the partition containing all of the client web files was dropped ffrom the fstab file, and since late summer of '03, people were uploading right to the /root partition! shocked

I had to reinstall Apache last fall and my mucking probably broke things. Embarrassing? Quite, but no data was lost and I now have a backup of everyone's content circa last July-October. LOL

I finally have a direction in mind for the ultrascience labs website. This means another overhaul, but with the skills I've honed on the the mdportal website, it should be killer site. So much to do, so little time.

After years of service, the GeForce 256 video card in the server failed. I replaced it with an older, but cooler running Matrox Millenium G200. A throwback from K6-2 glory days, but It still has fantastic 2-D image quality and utilizes passive cooling; no more dead fans!

Speaking of fans, the motherboard northbridge chip cooling fan died. I replaced the tiny heatsink/fan assembly with a modded CPU cooler. The new heatsink should make for an exceedingly stable system. A newly added adjustable speed fan blows cool air over the CPU heatsink/fan. As soon as I get my digi-cam back, I will post some photos.

I added more system RAM, too. I believe the current total is 320 MB.

We removed a DNS conflict and now the web server is functional.

Jerrod informed me of some more permissions errors. If anybody finds more, just drop me a line at bruce42@netins.net. You can fix these errors within your FTP client. If you are using Internet Explorer (works well), simply right-click on the file and set the permissions. TIP- check all of the boxes EXCEPT for 'group' and 'all users'. You don't want anyone editing your stuff. There is, of course, an exception- if the file needs to be edited by a script you should set permissions to '777'; that is, with 'group' and 'all users' checked.

The mail server will be running soon, and by Spring the ultrascience labs server stack should be ready for users and traffic. We'll have a new DSL connection, 700MB file quotas, and plenty of e-mail space for clients.

Work on the mdportal elite machine is progressing nicely. I've replaced the interior x-mas lights and I am going to add some new fans for quieter operation. The back panel has been cut away to allow easier access to ports. I also want to replace the x-mas lights in the front panel with nifty blue LED's.

I also managed to put the modular shelves up this weekend. They look sharp, but I need to redesign the brackets to make them easier to install. Whew! So much to do! At least all the new design work will keep me busy over the winter.

If anyone was wondering what happened to the site over the weekend, I reinstalled Red Hat 8.0 and all the server software. I was running into problems trying to upgrade Apache (web server), so I decided build and install everything from scratch so I know where all the source files and programs are- easy upgrading :)

As for any 403 errors you may have seen recently, when I uploaded the content to the server I had to fix all the file permissions. I think I have all of them worked out, but if you find any bugs just drop some comments.

Its been a solid week of work here at ultrascience labs. I am working on a modular shelving design. I'll have the results posted soon, and it should look fairly sharp. If the design proves solid, I'll start tracking down materials supplies. Prototype ETA: End of the week?

As long as the current warm snap stays, I will have the chance to complete the wood finishing. Aside from that, just a little metal fabrication, and finally, assembly and testing. Please give me any feedback once I post photos. Please keep it constructive, tell me what is cool and what isn't. I'll have some more details concerning any material or design changes once I have the protoype built (it's easier to explain with pictures.)

Also, I am going to enlist the services of some critical peers to provide user feedback. I will probably use a simple decision matrix to produce ratings that are weighted. For example, one user might find the product's end cost more importance than another user, so his or her review would be more helpful for a user that felt similary about the price tag.

Contact: bruce42@netins.net Pricing information will be posted when the design is refined and formalized and I have material and labor costs figured.

Parts finally arrived for the server upgrade. I replaced the 475MHz AMD K6-2 CPU, motherboard, and RAM with an Abit KT7-A motherboard, an AMD AthlonXP 1800+, and 256MB of PC133 RAM.

The Public DNS Service at www.granitecanyon.com seems to back up and running. For everyone's future reference, the main site at www.ultrasciencelabs.com can still be accessed at 12.216.41.16. This IP will change soon when we (hopefully) get new ISP service with increased bandwidth and a static address.

Currently, we have one client site at moonbass.ultrasciencelabs.com, but another will be posted shortly- LilDevilNoizelab.ultrasciencelabs.com. www.D3F1L3.com will also be appearing on the site in the near future.

I am in the process of designing and building a project log, or plog for the case mods. I'm thinking of calling the section mod plogs. An archive version of the ultrasciencelabs site will be posted soon, too. You can see my first 3 case mods there. All three mods will be undergoing a rework soon. Rei & Asuka require an almost entire rebuild, but the overall style should remain. The dragon case needs a lot of work, too. The elite machine just needs a bit of refinement and it'll be ready to rock.

My new shop is under way, and I am going to buy the rest of my tools this week. New work should be quick to follow.

It's taken a bit of effort, but the web log is up and running... for the most part. Some formatting remains, but the code seems to be running nicely. Once things are finalized, I may allow clients access to the blog.

During the blog building process, I ran into some CGI issues. I've worked them out, but I need to apply the fixes across client directories on the server.

One more quick note, the DNS servers are down http://www.granitecanyon.com due to a DoS attack, but hopefully things will be running soon.