TFS/VSTS VPC Notification

We know that our esteemed delegator is a strong supporter of VSTS and TFS and are therefore notifying everyone, on his behalf, that Brian has notified the world of the new images, which will only expire end-2009. Get the details here: http://www.pluralsight.com/community/blogs/brian/archive/2008/12/24/happy-holidays-and-look-what-santa-s-brought.aspx

PDC Video Stories – PT 3: It’s quiet here

Myself and Herman were sitting around on Thursday wondering why NO ONE was pitching up for the mini PDC. Admittedly it is quiet here, because it’s Christmas time and people are on leave, but to have NO ONE arrive is a bit much.

The next day we were sitting around wondering what happened, when we saw the white board and noticed the days (15th, 17th, 19th and 22nd). Thursday (18th) was not there… we all just assumed it followed on from each other, but Herman in his delegator wisdom had planned it better than that. By subtly skipping a day he made sure that the work for one day was delegated across two days with no one (myself, Henk and Zayd) realizing!

Moral of the story: Delegating work to someone is ok, delegating work to someone twice is better ;)

Delegation at its best …

Robert and I rushed off to a customer this morning, only to be stopped by Herman at the main door of our team area … “Please tell my brother to have a festive season and a great holiday”.

BRILLIANT, you realise you are living with the master of delegation when you are oblivious to the fact that you have just become the messenger in his family as well.

Well, in the true spirit of his wishes, we wish everyone a festive season, a happy Christmas with family and a safe and successful port into 2009.

PDC Video Stories - PT 2: Material

For anything that is done by the team ratings need to be recorded so that we can understand how well it is being received.

As the Mini PDC is different from normal, Herman as the man in charge, would need to produce a special evaluation form for it.

He is so good at delegating that when the task was assigned, Henk (our fearless leader) skipped Herman and assigned it to me directly to be done.

Moral of the story, if you are a good delegator other people do your work. If you are a great delegator like Herman other people do your delegating too!

The Delegator has left the building …

The Delegator is leaving (very) early today … after the team of delegatees has been really proactive. Sorry for the bad picture, but it kind-of shows the delegator, surrounded by his ‘delegatees’, including his son q;-)

Have a nice afternoon Mr. Delegator … we will hold the fort for another 5 minutes or so on your behalf.

Who is the Delegator?

The delegator is one of our senior developers, analysts, mentors, evangelists … to cut a long story short, he is one of our most competent professionals, is highly specialised in user interface design and development and “loves” delegation.

He also loves the series “Dr. Horibble's Sing-Along Blog”, which is why we believe the following footage showing our esteemed delegator is simply classic:

http://www.saarchitect.net/Publications/Events/Academia/Rhodes%202008%20Interoperability%20Roadshow/Silverlight%20Expert.wmv

… there is also a slightly longer version on SA Architect, which we have not been allowed to publish … but looking at the above url you may find the extended version q;-) … otherwise corner Herman at the next community or professional event.

The Carousel Silverlight Application … Awesome!

What did our esteemed delegator tried and did …

He tried to create a simple Fish Eye type menu where the icons are spaced evenly in degrees around a circle.

How did he do it?

First he needed to load the images into his Silverlight page. This was done by dynamically adding any number of images into an array and the setting the canvas top and left to the appropriate position. Easier said than done.

How do you get the X and Y coordinates on the outer edge of a circle? This is a question with which he tortured everyone in his team and in the true spirit of things, everyone vanished on a separate thread doing research for the delegator. 

The scene:

                This is the point where he wants the X and Y coordinate.

                This is the angle that we need to work with.

He used C# for the language…You need the following formulas to do this:

First, the Math .NET object, so that you can do the COSINE and SINE calculations.

The COSINE and SINE needs the radians to get the correct coordinates. To calculate the radian from an angle you need

• Radian = ANGLE * Pi / 180

Then

• X = Radius * COS(Radian)
• Y = Radius * SIN(Radian)

Once he could calculate the x and y coordinates he was ready to rock and roll. Here is the method he used to add the animations to the images.

   1: private void addAnimation(Image image, double angle, double x, double y)

   2: {

   3:     TransformGroup tfGroup = new TransformGroup();

   4:  

   5:     //MouseOver animation for resizing

   6:     Storyboard sbMouseOver = new Storyboard();

   7:     ScaleTransform tfGrow = new ScaleTransform();

   8:     tfGrow.SetValue(NameProperty, "tfGrow_" + image.Name);

   9:     tfGrow.CenterX = 24;

  10:     tfGrow.CenterY = 24;

  11:     tfGrow.ScaleX = 1;

  12:     tfGrow.ScaleY = 1;

  13:     tfGroup.Children.Add(tfGrow);

  14:  

  15:     DoubleAnimation daGrowX = new DoubleAnimation();

  16:     daGrowX.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetNameProperty, tfGrow.GetValue(NameProperty));

  17:     daGrowX.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetPropertyProperty, new PropertyPath("(ScaleTransform.ScaleX)"));

  18:     daGrowX.To = 2;

  19:     daGrowX.Duration = new Duration(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 500));

  20:     daGrowX.AutoReverse = true;

  21:     sbMouseOver.Children.Add(daGrowX);

  22:  

  23:     DoubleAnimation daGrowY = new DoubleAnimation();

  24:     daGrowY.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetNameProperty, tfGrow.GetValue(NameProperty));

  25:     daGrowY.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetPropertyProperty, new PropertyPath("(ScaleTransform.ScaleY)"));

  26:     daGrowY.To = 2;

  27:     daGrowY.Duration = new Duration(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 500));

  28:     daGrowY.AutoReverse = true;

  29:     sbMouseOver.Children.Add(daGrowY);

  30:  

  31:     image.Resources.Add("sbMouseOver_" + image.Name, sbMouseOver);

  32:  

  33:     //Startup storyboard - Rotates the images in a circle

  34:     Storyboard sbStartLoading = new Storyboard();

  35:     TranslateTransform tfMove = new TranslateTransform();

  36:     tfMove.SetValue(NameProperty, "tfMove_" + image.Name);

  37:     tfMove.X = x+200;

  38:     tfMove.Y = y+200;

  39:     tfGroup.Children.Add(tfMove);

  40:  

  41:     DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames daMoveX = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames();

  42:     daMoveX.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetPropertyProperty, new PropertyPath("(TranslateTransform.X)"));

  43:     daMoveX.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetNameProperty, tfMove.GetValue(NameProperty));

  44:     DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames daMoveY = new DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames();

  45:     daMoveY.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetPropertyProperty, new PropertyPath("(TranslateTransform.Y)"));

  46:     daMoveY.SetValue(Storyboard.TargetNameProperty, tfMove.GetValue(NameProperty));

  47:     

  48:     TimeSpan nextTime = new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 0);

  49:     LinearDoubleKeyFrame myFrameX = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame();

  50:  

  51:     LinearDoubleKeyFrame myFrameY = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame();

  52:  

  53:     for (int i = 0; i < 72; i++)

  54:     {

  55:         angle += 5;

  56:         if (angle > 360)

  57:         {

  58:             angle -= 360;

  59:         }

  60:         double aniAngle = (angle) * Math.PI / 180;

  61:  

  62:         double nuX = 150 * Math.Cos(aniAngle);

  63:         double nuY = 150 * Math.Sin(aniAngle);

  64:  

  65:         TimeSpan nuTime = nextTime.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, 100));

  66:  

  67:         //LinearDoubleKeyFrame 

  68:         myFrameX = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame();

  69:         myFrameX.KeyTime = KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(nuTime);

  70:         myFrameX.Value = nuX+200;

  71:         daMoveX.KeyFrames.Add(myFrameX);

  72:  

  73:         //LinearDoubleKeyFrame 

  74:         myFrameY = new LinearDoubleKeyFrame();

  75:         myFrameY.KeyTime = KeyTime.FromTimeSpan(nuTime);

  76:         myFrameY.Value = nuY+200;

  77:         daMoveY.KeyFrames.Add(myFrameY);

  78:  

  79:         nextTime = nuTime;

  80:     }

  81:  

  82:     daMoveX.Duration = new Duration(nextTime);

  83:     daMoveY.Duration = new Duration(nextTime);

  84:     sbStartLoading.Children.Add(daMoveX);

  85:     sbStartLoading.Children.Add(daMoveY);

  86:  

  87:     image.Resources.Add("sbStartLoad_" + image.Name, sbStartLoading);

  88:     image.RenderTransform = tfGroup;

  89: }

In the end he came up with a rotating circle of images which independently animate.

Well done Mr Delegator!

PDC Video Stories - PT 1: The name

Herman (the delegator) is currently running a mini-PDC here at BB&D, by showing some of the videos from it, and a few stories should be shared. First, and most importantly, is the origin of the delegator name.

Herman was assigned the task of working out the schedule for the mini-PDC. So he stood up, went to the white board, drew a 5 by 4 grid, put dates across the top and times down the side and wrote names in each block.

Next he sent out an email telling the team to find their blocks and fill in what videos they want to see at that time… thus delegating the scheduling to the entire team!

Done for the day

Herman has left the building! He is done for the day! In traditional delegator fashion, as he was walking out of the door, he delegated the entertainment of next week to me… namely I need to bring my XBox to work.

I am thinking the Boules may be a better choice, especially since last time we got some winning pictures like this:

Welcome Herman "The Delegator" to your very own blog

Herman on behalf of your team we say WELCOME to your very own blog. We know your did not delegate this to be done but we felt it was about time. Thanks Robert "HAWTY"

One small step for blog kind

One giant leap for.... i actually have no idea what, but it's a start and starts need important catch phrases.
Welcome to the Delegator Blog! This blog is the place for all the information which Herman Nolte, the Delegator, wants to share with the world... but just is too lazy... I mean busy to do! So he has delegated the responsibility to the rest of us... who are is not as important as who Herman is. A topic I hope to cover in future posts ;)