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For the past 2 days, I have been attending WPF workshop organized by MDEC / NTDC. I was clueless on WPF and since Puan R has been asking me to attend it, I registered it knowing that i need to come back from singapore earlier. As our project will be using Silverlight, a subset of WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) as part of our a Rich Internet Application strategy, so WPF subject is quite important topic for us. This is one of the pre-seed programme benefits that we have received recently. I hope many more to come in the future.


For WPF, I was exposed to fundamentals of WPF about the XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) and was able to create simple animations and pretty interesting controls which never could have been so easily done via Winform or javascripts. Though XAML is at first hard to decipher, but using tools such as Expression Blend 2 and Visual Studio 2008 ( the intellisense in VS2008 does help alot which Blend don't have) does help me learn about XAML much easier and faster.


Well WPF is all about XAML and without it, it will render it useless. I learned alot about WPF concepts such as layouts, templates, controls, binding, events, commands and many many many more. I now know more about WPF capabilites on 3D, manipulating graphics, controls and many more. I also learn about differences on WPF standalone (exe), WPF Browser Application and the more famous plugin, Silverlight.

Tomorrow i'll be learning more about data binding and 3D topic. Hope my trainer, Mr Lee Daqing can cover all the topics by end of tomorrow. Below is my first WPF application which has a circle bouncing up and down mimicing a bouncing ball although my example will ignore gravity as it will bounce indefinitely but hey this is my first application. Enjoy and comments on my XAML on how to improve it further.


<Window
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
x:Class="WpfApplication2.Window2"
x:Name="Window"
Title="Window2"
Width="640" Height="480"
xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
mc:Ignorable="d">
<Window.Resources>
<Storyboard x:Key="Storyboard1">
<DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00"
Storyboard.TargetName="ellipse"
Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.RenderTransform)
.(TransformGroup.Children)[3].(TranslateTransform.Y)"
AutoReverse="True" RepeatBehavior="Forever" >
<SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:01" Value="220" KeySpline="0,0,1,0"/>
</DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>
</Storyboard>
<Storyboard x:Key="StopObject"/>

</Window.Resources>
<Window.Triggers>
<EventTrigger RoutedEvent="UIElement.MouseLeftButtonDown"
SourceName="ellipse">
<BeginStoryboard Storyboard="{StaticResource Storyboard1}"
x:Name="Storyboard1_BeginStoryboard"/>
</EventTrigger>
<EventTrigger RoutedEvent="FrameworkElement.Loaded"/>
<EventTrigger RoutedEvent="Mouse.MouseEnter"
SourceName="ellipse">
<PauseStoryboard
BeginStoryboardName="Storyboard1_BeginStoryboard"/>
</EventTrigger>
</Window.Triggers>

<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<Ellipse Fill="#FF5055D2" Stroke="#FF000000"
HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="62.72,112,0,0" Width="81"
RenderTransformOrigin="0.485,4.014" x:Name="ellipse"
VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="70">
<Ellipse.RenderTransform>
<TransformGroup>
<ScaleTransform ScaleX="1" ScaleY="1"/>
<SkewTransform AngleX="0" AngleY="0"/>
<RotateTransform Angle="0"/>
<TranslateTransform X="0" Y="0"/>
</TransformGroup>
</Ellipse.RenderTransform>
</Ellipse>
</Grid>
</Window>

In next article, I will explore on how to make a object to be moveable using mouse drap on runtime. Happy Coding!
Alot of happens since our last blogs and we are extremely busy on our projects and daily lives. Well this blog is not about our project progress but just want to share on some of the things we did last couple of month.


April and May is certainly a busy month for us. On April 20th, we finally met up with our development manager, Encik S (full name is not provided to protect personal info :-p) and was briefed on our deliverables and Mdec expectations. More important is that we received our first cheque on first schedule. This is truly a memorable day for us as this justify our efforts for the past 1 year since Veyron floated the idea of Pre-Seed fund to me almost one year ago.


In April also, both Veyron and I attended a one day workshop organized by EO (short for Entreprenuers Organization). The workshop is coincidently name as "Surviving the Crisis" - Going Global Getting Lean as the main tagline for this year. It was an eye opening for us as we get to meet lot's of entreprenuers, CEOs and world class speakers for the event. There are 3 keynote speakers this year namely,
  1. Verne Harnish, author of "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits"
  2. Guys Parsons, a leading practitioner in applying Lean principles
  3. Prof George Kohlrieser, author of "Hostage at the table: How Leaders can overcome Conflict. Influence Others and Raise Performance"

All the speakers really give me alot of inspring and information especially on being surviving and thrives in times of crisis. It was eye opener event as well for me to hear from them and i guess i was slightly more knowledgeable that day. All the keynote speeches has alot of impact on me, while all speakers come from different perpectives but all has a common message which is how to thrive in time of crisis and that's important to know in times like this.


Unfortunately i did not take any pictures from the events to share here or more details on the keynotes as the amount of the info was hummagous and you got to be there to learn it. Another highlight of the event is the Super CEO section which featured Malaysian Airlines (MAS) CEO, Dato' Sri Idris Jala. This section definitely change my mind of MAS as Dato' Sri Idris Jala certainly has the criteria of a great CEO where he shared with us how he become a CEO of MAS when MAS was on USD400 losses in 2005. He shares with us on his 6 principles of busines transformation which he manage to turn around MAS less than 2 years to profits (more than profit USD265 in 2007):
  1. Games of Impossible
  2. P & L Anchorage
  3. Discipline of Action
  4. Situational Leadership
  5. Winning Coalition
  6. Divine Intervention
These 6 principles are those he uses while he was in MAS to transform MAS from red to black and he stressed alot on BRF (arconyms for Big Results Fast). The way he told us on these principles are highly entertaining and informatives as we was laughing and busy writing down on his principles. In between he manage to squeeze in a brief sales talk on the MAS promotion that launched on the same day. But the most suprising part of Dato' Sri Idris is he is good guitar player as he wrapping up his session, he play his sons' own pen song with acoustic guitar. This shows a good CEO is versatile person which is not only a leader but also a salesman, entertainer, a visionary and much more. I also find him to be a down to earth and man with good principles based on faith which I find rare it nowadays. I can only can compare within my limited knowledge of business leaders like YTL group CEO Francis Yeoh.


As we just started this journey into technoprenuership, the next 12 months (11 months left as time of writing.. :-D ) is crucial before we start our commercialization next year (hopefully it can be earlier... maybe end of the year perhaps?), we are looking on how to survives after this period. As we were on this journey, the event certainly make me realized that this is the road I want to go even i'm not sure what is lying for us in the future but i know it will be good for me and my partners and it's worth trying for.