Chad Clark's Open Journal : 2009-04-09

1) A 105-day isolation test to simulate a trip to deep space is starting

Bob McDonald at the CBC wrote:

  Six volunteers from Russia and Europe have locked themselves in a
  windowless habitat, about the size of four mobile homes, for a 105-day
  isolation test that simulates a trip to deep space.
  
...
  
  Only three days after launch, the Earth will be gone from view. For seven
  months, crewmembers will see nothing out their windows but the blackness
  of interplanetary space. As their distance from Earth increases, so too
  does the travel time of their radio signals, creating a delay of up to 20
  minutes. Normal dialogue with home will be impossible. All communication
  with the ground will be one-way, mostly by email.
  
...
  
  Even the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon were never more than
  three days from home. Those on a mission to Mars are completely on their
  own, with no possibility of rescue for months.


2) Editing the file explorer context menu for images in Vista.

You can edit the context menu that appears when you right-click in windows
file explorer by editing the windows registry.  For details see
http://www.jfitz.com/tips/rclick_custom.html

The traditional location is:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT

but that just maps onto the real location of:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes

I was trying to do this in Windows Vista.  Editing the "jpegfile" key was
not working.  I tried editing the registry for the "txtfile" key and it did
work!

I went googling and found the fix after reading page 141 of "Windows Vista
Annoyances" by David Karp.

There is another directory in the (Vista-only?) registry that has priority
over the traditional location for some types of files.  The over-riding
directory is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\SystemFileAssociations\image\shell\

The author wrote:

  The benefit is that you use this key to add a custom context menu item
  that affects a large number of different file types at once.  The
  drawback is that it's one more place you'll have to look to track down a
  misbehaving or unwanted context menu item.