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Very often, a video comes along which puts life in perspective. Luckily, the medium that is YouTube allows us to visit such moments in the mere click of a mouse button. The video I stumbled across while surfing around on YouTube was Carl Sagan’s – A Pale Blue Dot. A video devoted in some sense to the art of astronomy but in another – the tiny significance of the earth and all that humanity has done to it in the wider perspective of our universe.

Indeed, once you view this video – the enormity of the universe is vastly apparent and perhaps also the fragility of the human experience and all the sadness that the human race brings upon itself. Sadly, no other known animal seeks the narcissistic triumphs and extreme destruction that human kind does and while we have brought unspeakable wonders and advances upon ourselves – we have equivalently brought unbearable pain. I encourage you to view the video below and share it with your friends. In my opinion, the more people that put themselves in perspective – the better the world will become.

Text: The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It talks about the photo of the same name, Pale Blue Dot, taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.

You have two ears and one mouth – use them in proportion.

Why is this so important?

It’s so important, at least in my mind, because it can be successfully applied to almost every aspect of our lives. If you run a business, listening to your customers is paramount. If you are in government, listening to the populous increases your understanding before legislating or creating new policy. If you are a client-servicing business, listening to your clients and understanding their concerns and problems before providing advice is critical.

I am by no means suggesting that you merely listen and then take no action – indeed the quote when my grandfather says it to me – by no means directs this. Rather, it suggests that you should do more listening before you talk.

Don’t interrupt. Don’t put someone on hold. Don’t interject. Don’t talk over the top of them. Listen to people – then talk.

I am actively trying to achieve this daily as I really think it’s a positive step in the right direction for listening more about what people have to say – and then responding with relevant arguments. Many people I have discussions with tend to try and talk over the top of me and this is ultimately extremely frustrating. It’s a little like ‘hey you’ve had your turn, now it’s mine’. Of course, the better way to approach this is not to take such a view but rather simply take heed of this quote and listen more.

Since I’ve been doing this – the counter arguments are often more effective as I have listened intently to what someone is saying rather than forming thought patterns in my head – ready to hit back at a singular particular point or two points. By waiting and listening you are able to draw upon the whole argument – and most importantly, you are able to listen and feel like an engaging person in doing so. This helps the person you are talking too feel like they are contributing to the conversation and having their chance at speaking – rather than being cut off all the time.

People love listeners – they don’t love talkers.

So I am all excited to get modern warfare 2 for a little relaxation time when I get the chance [which is not often] – only to discover that an install on Windows 7 x64-bit is an absolute nightmare. It’s a ridiculous proposition that a Gaming Studio – Infinity Ward – would release a game without even testing it on Windows 7 – yet this is exactly what they have done, and this is why there has been a huge amount of backlash in respect to this game. However, in order to get things running on my PC I thought I would post something to assist those trying to install on a Windows 7 x64-bit build. I note that this is the setup that allowed me to get it working and this may not work for everyone [different hardware etc].

1. The first error I got was a “Failed to Run Install Script” error. To solve this, you must download and install Steam as a separate download first – then open Start –> Run and type “C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steam.exe” -install “CD Driver” – where “CD Driver” is “D:” or “E:” or “F:”. So for example the final line would look like – “C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steam.exe” -install “F:”. This will get the Game installed.

2. When I attempted to run the game after install – all I got was nothing but a blank screen which required me to do a reset. To resolve this problem, I needed to fix DirectX. Goto C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\Redist\DirectX and run DXSETUP.exe. Install this file and Restart your PC

3. After restart, I got the same error again. So I searched around and found that I had to make the screen size 1024×768 for launch – so I had to adjust my settings for launch. This launched the game but presented me with yet another error.

4. Now I had the game started – but I received nothing but Garbled Text on load. So the game wouldn’t work at all. To solve this, I needed to update to the latest version of ATI Catalyst Software - but of course this is not supported in Windows 7 for my Graphics Card. When you attempt to install this on Windows 7 – it doesn’t get past the install splash screen. To resolve this, you must download a fix from MSFT to install ATI Catalyst Install Manager as Windows 7 has a problem with any sort of legacy card except the newest hardware. This solves the VC++ 2005 redistributable problems which prohibits installing and fixes the garbled text issue.

5. The game still seemed to have a “blackscreen” onload and so I thought that this problem might be related to the fact that it was in fullscreen – so I wanted to shift the game to “windowed mode”. To do this, you have to go into C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\players and you will see 2 .cfg files called config and config_mp. Open both these files in Notebook [config is for single player and config_mp is for multiplayer] and find line seta r_fullscreen “1″ and change it to “0″. This will fix the game to run in Windowed Mode and you can change it back at any time. When the game starts [and this fix was a key for me] – ensure that you just change the graphics under “settings” to basically make the window full screen.

6. Another problem I experiencing throughout this entire process was a fairly common one such that Comodo Personal Firewall kept buggin me to accept the game as a permissible firewall program. I had to edit a Custom Rule in Comodo to allow the game to access the Internet.

So after close to 4 hours total – combining a 40 minute game install time and then all the time spent trying to resolve these bugs – I managed to the start the game. To be honest, it is completely unacceptable in this day and age to purchase a game and have to go through hoops to try and run it. I would definitely not have purchased this game had I known all issues were present from the start and quite frankly any future games that Infinity Ward produce I will not be getting.

As a consumer, they owe a legal responsibility to ensure that their products are tested on all relevant platforms before they sell the game. It’s so evident that their strategy was to release the game as quickly as possible in order to grab as much revenue as they could in lieu of Christmas and deal with the fallout as it comes. Whilst the official gaming merchandise says “Vista” – it was a fatal error to release the game without testing on Windows 7 and prepare a patch fix for immediate release. Instead, they have angered the very hand that feeds them and in this regards many gamers in the future will not purchasing Infinity Ward games.

While it’s a good game, it’s unacceptable to except a normal consumer to have to go through all this simply to get the game working.

One of the companies that I greatly admire is Zappos.com led by a fantastic CEO - Tony Hsieh. The company essentially drives its revenue from the sales of shoes and has managed to etch its mark in the same manner that Amazon.com did for books. Zappos.com’s statistics are a little mind blowing for a company that is essentially still growing – more than 3.6 million products from 1,250 brands and more than 146,000 different styles.  But that is not really what makes me love Zappos – rather, it’s the companies fanaticism about customer service – something that is seemingly lost in this day and age. It’s interesting to parallel & compare today’s customer service to that of the ‘olden days’ – the 1950′s and 1960′s – which was driven by person-to-person sales and advice with the primary business differentiator being which had a better & more engaging customer service paradigm. In my opinion, it’s something that needs to return to business in this day and age and technology should assist the promotion of such endeavors rather than seek to reduce it by pushing the customer experience to ‘automation engagement methodologies’.

The reality is that customer services cost a significant amount of money. To maintain call centers and front-line sales staff is an expensive exercise when you slap on top of this training, turn-over, culture problems and sales incentives. The model is one that needs a high degree of tuning – but it’s one that is not overtly difficult – something along the lines of what my father says about marriage – “happy wife, happy life” – except in this regard it’s more “happy staff, happy path”. That is, make the staff happy and watch the path of your company skyrocket forwards. You see, the reason I think Zappos has got things so right primarily relates to the fact that the staff who work at the company are generally excited to be there. They love what they are doing, they are passionate about the Zappos brand and they honestly believe that they are making a difference to the customer experience. It’s a far cry from other organisations – particularly at the enterprise level – which aim to cut cost by outsourcing the customer experience and who generally have poor employee morale which has been inherited through write-downs, management changes and degradation of the purported ‘Company Mission Statement’ or ‘Company Values’.

It goes without saying that by setting up your staff to be happy, you are maintaining their enthusiasm to be engaged in your business and as a facet of this – be engaged in the customer. The customer drives revenue, and the revenue sales drive the ability to keep staff happy and the business ticking over. You can see the cyclical action in this regard – it’s definitively not rocket science – rather it’s taking business back to basics and really looking at what makes it overtly tick in the first place. Most notably, it’s also fairly amazing to see how simple it is to achieve employee happiness. I would suggest that in small business, it’s primarily ensuring that you employ the right people who fit similarly with you – this is perhaps the hardest part – and one of the reasons that Zappos offers staff who get to the final round of the interview process more than $2,000 to leave. Yes, you read that right – to leave. Tony Hsieh believes by offering staff an incentive to leave – you are able to weed out those people who really don’t want to be there and who aren’t really interested in the organisation. It’s an interesting strategy and perhaps one that is not available to all business’ but one which has considerable merit.

After the post-employment process – that is the interviewing, questioning, cv-reviewing and generally attempting to ascertain whether a person is the best fit for your company from meeting with them for 2 hours or so (ridiculous in my opinion) most staff – and I say this as a vast generalization - are looking for flexible hours, safe working environment and good colleagues. Additional perks like free lunch or free t-shirts cost surprisingly little but go a long way in terms of staff ‘loving’ your business and wanting to over-extend themselves in times of need. Perhaps my former comment also deserves a little more explanation - interviewing someone for 2 hours is hardly the best way to get them to know whether they work for you – at most, it should be a prima facie indicator but by no means the final stamp of approval. Getting the person into your office, working with them on a project or asking them to interact with your colleagues at drinks is by far and large the best way to determine whether they are suitable for your business. While this isn’t always possible – for example, overtly hard in computer science engineering roles were source code is confidential – it is definitely possible for sales or customer facing staff.

In my opinion and experience so far, attempting to keep your staff happy is the only way to succeed. The have to love what they are doing and they have to believe in both the management team and what the company stands for. If this is enshrined in a ‘Company Mission Statement’ all well and good – but if it is not actively and knowingly reinforced every single day then it’s just another worthless piece of paper which sits along side – no doubt in such companies – the other 1000 ‘brain storming sessions’ which have gone no-where and ‘business continuity meetings’ which are pointless. Create the best culture you can in your own unique way, keep your staff as happy and engaged as you possibly can and then your business will grow organically through their enthusiasm and drive. Dislodging any aspect of this carefully crafted ‘Tim Davis Path to Success’ (ha) will result in probable downfall. As Jim Collins – author of Good to Great - puts it

first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. People are not your most important asset – the right people are.

Once they are on the bus, drive it like crazy.

One of the annoying things in ALL windows systems has been the lack of native support to create user defined services. Yes, you can type in the cmd prompt “sc create /?” to get some instructions to get some services that rely on executable files in Windows – but nothing really exists for web services and hosting in this regard. Way back in 2003 Microsoft released some developer tools for Windows Server 2003 and they have been used ever since – including (yes, it is true!) in Windows 7.

To setup a user defined service in Windows 7 for hosting purposes (in our case for our development server) – hopefully the following steps help you (its been written for the Trac project)

1. Download instsrv.exe and srvany.exe from Microsoft 2003 Resource Kit (I’ve included them in this post but feel free to download them from Microsoft if you want)
2. Open a windows cmd prompt (run as administrator) and punch in the service you want (in our case tracd) i.e. drive:\path\to\InstSrv.exe tracd drive:\path\to\SrvAny.exe
3. Goto your Start Menu, type in “regedit” and goto the new service (in our case tracd) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tracd
4. Create subkey *Parameters* below which you must create 2 string values:
5. Create an String Value called App- then right click on this and add drive:\path\to\Python25\Scripts\tracd.exe
6. Create an String Value called AppParameters with the relevant parameters of the tracd.exe - i.e. drive:\Python25\Scripts\tracd –port 8080 –auth=proj_name,drive:\path\to\proj\digest.txt,trac drive:\path\to\proj\ if you were using Trac and wanted to generate passwords without apache
7. Run net start tracd
8. Complete!

Obviously, you can change this around and run it for any service you want to run it for and it will start up and appear in services.msc where you can start around the rest of the settings as you please.