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
- Microsoft Defender 'RoguePlanet' Zero-Day Grants SYSTEM Privileges - 2026-06-10 18:00
- Visa Plugs Its Payment Network Into ChatGPT - 2026-06-10 17:00
- Valve Discontinues Physical Steam Gift Cards Due To Scammers - 2026-06-10 16:00
- Threats Against Politicians Tripled After Meta Changed Its Speech Rules - 2026-06-10 15:00
- BYD To Install Thousands of 5-Minute EV Chargers Across Europe - 2026-06-10 14:00
hackaday
- Meshcore and Haiku: a Match Apparently Made in Italy - 2026-06-10 18:00
- Safely Using Old EV Batteries in Your Home Solar Setup - 2026-06-10 15:00
- FLOSS Weekly Episode 870: Open Source Gardening - 2026-06-10 13:30
- DIY CO2 Scrubber in DIY Sub by a Hacker Braver Than Most - 2026-06-10 10:30
- NASA Announces Artemis III Crew and Ambitious Goals - 2026-06-10 09:00
neatorama
- The Myth and the Reality of Lover's Lane - 2026-06-10 17:59
- A Bluegrass Cover of Sting's "Fields of Gold" - 2026-06-10 15:29
- Juan Romero Carried Guilt Over RFK's Assassination for 50 Years - 2026-06-10 11:05
- Adaptive Bowling Balls for Players with Disabilities - 2026-06-10 07:30
- RIP The Last Son of a Civil War Veteran - 2026-06-10 07:17
NPR
- FBI seizing evidence at California plant where chemical tank overheated - 2026-06-10 18:05
- U.S. military says it's striking 'multiple targets' in Iran in 2nd day of renewed fire - 2026-06-10 17:46
- Somali World Cup referee denied U.S. entry, hailed as hero at home - 2026-06-10 15:45
- Veterans and relatives see no place for Trump's arch near Arlington National Cemetery - 2026-06-10 15:26
- Report: ICE wasted millions, endangered detainees in largest immigration facility - 2026-06-10 15:10
jacobin
- Teamsters for a Democratic Union Leaders Explain Their Strategy - 2026-06-10 13:06
- The UFC Is Debasing Itself for Donald Trump - 2026-06-10 11:48
- New York Democrats Marched With Israeli Fascists - 2026-06-10 11:00
- Yemen Could Be Sucked Into the US War on Iran - 2026-06-10 09:38
- How to Democratize the United States - 2026-06-10 09:13
404media
- Scientists Just Accidentally Discovered a Strange, Hidden Rule of Human Nature - 2026-06-10 08:39
- Podcast: Google Employees Meme About How Bad Their AI Is - 2026-06-10 08:36
- Cops Keep Getting Arrested for Using Flock to Stalk People - 2026-06-10 08:22
- FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones By Forcing Telecoms to Get All Customers’ IDs - 2026-06-09 10:11
- Judge Learns Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case - 2026-06-09 09:30
techdirt
- California’s AB 412 Still Demands AI Developers Do The Impossible - 2026-06-10 17:34
- LAPD Apparently Has Its Own Internal Cop Gang Problem - 2026-06-10 15:30
- Beneath The Enshittification, Something Amazing Is Growing - 2026-06-10 13:02
- Daily Deal: The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle featuring Databricks - 2026-06-10 12:57
- ICE Wants To Hand Out Its Unproven Facial Recognition Tech To Thousands Of Cops - 2026-06-10 11:28
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
- MIT’s new spacecraft engine could send tiny satellites to Mars - 2026-06-10 06:24
- A classic brain test exposed AI's biggest weakness - 2026-06-10 05:52
- Scientists mapped every neural connection in a fruit fly and found a surprise - 2026-06-10 05:10
- Popular joint supplement glucosamine linked to faster Alzheimer’s progression - 2026-06-10 00:17
- Earth's first animals barely evolved until sex changed everything - 2026-06-09 23:56
space.com
- James Webb Space Telescope finds evidence the mysterious 'little red dots' are black hole stars - 2026-06-10 16:00
- NASA chief defends all-male Artemis 3 astronaut crew amid backlash: 'I don't think anyone should be reading into this' - 2026-06-10 15:00
- 'Voltron: Legendary Defender' turns 10 today, and we think this mecha robot reboot was just as good as 'Power Rangers' and 'Transformers' - 2026-06-10 14:00
- The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may have created a vast underground habitat for life that lasted 8 million years - 2026-06-10 13:00
- 'Doctor Who' Christmas Special is cancelled as Russell T. Davies departs the show: What does this mean for the future of Doctor Who? - 2026-06-10 12:30
space news
- Artemis 3 commander confident crew will be ready for 2027 mission - 2026-06-10 17:22
- House appropriators back $55.5 billion Space Force budget, omit reconciliation funds - 2026-06-10 14:39
- Spire to pursue space-based missile warning in partnership with German defense firm - 2026-06-10 10:00
- Commercial Space Federation (CSF) Welcomes Two New Space Supply Chain Members - 2026-06-10 10:00
- UK startup Applied Atomics to enter US market with focus on military space mobility - 2026-06-10 09:00
phys.org
- Where humpbacks gather near Tokyo's remote islands could reshape whale watching and conservation - 2026-06-10 19:20
- Silver nanoparticles pave the way for precise DNA cutting and joining - 2026-06-10 19:10
- Canada's 'AI for All' strategy has ambitious growth targets, but it falls short on workers and the environment - 2026-06-10 19:00
- Annual global migration has nearly tripled since 2000, reshaping where and how people move - 2026-06-10 18:40
- NASA's CloudCube pioneers miniaturized radar to study clouds, precipitation - 2026-06-10 18:40
onion latest
- McDonald’s Worker Suffers Severe Burns After Being Attacked With Hot Oil - 2026-06-10 11:16
- Rick Brunson Tests Jalen Brunson Again On What To Say When Press Asks About Bruises - 2026-06-10 08:00
- Sam Levinson Emerges From 7-Year Drug Binge Horrified At What He Created - 2026-06-10 08:00
- Doug Valdez - 2026-06-10 08:00
- Chic Apartment With Designer Furniture - 2026-06-10 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