Discovering Yourself

During the soft-skill class of our 3P course,the tutor gave us a personality test to know ourselves better. I found out it is quite interesting yet useful.Knowing yourself well may help you in either developing your future as well as we can impact each other. We can also minimizing the potential conflicts or unpleasantness.

There are 4 categories of personality Styles.But bear in mind that there is no right or wrong or even good or bad...The key of this personality test is "appropriateness".

4 categories of personality styles:

1. D- Dominance also known as "Driver" style or OVERCOMER

2. I- Influence also known as "Persuader" style or EXPRESSIVE

3. S- Steadiness also known as "Amicable" or RELATIONAL

4. Compliance to Own Standards also known as "Analytical" style or ORGANISER

So let start to evaluate yourself. Below is a table which consist of different characteristics. Mark one word in each row that you feel describe you the best:

This is the scoring sheet. Total up the number of times you have chosen D,I,S and C..

For example for the 1st row : you choose Careful, you will have to circle the column 3 row 1 ,D.

Total up your score for each are as follow :

D= ____ I=_____ S=____ C=_____

Pick the highest score. If you have highest score in D ,means you are in D category,if you have highest score in I,it means you are in I category and same goes to S and C.

Description of Personality Styles :

D- Dominance

Emphasis is on shaping the environment by overcoming opposition to accomplish results.

This person's tendencies include :

• Getting immediate results
• Causing action
• Accepting challenge
• Making quick decisions
• Questioning the status quo
• Taking authority
• Managing trouble
• Solving problems

This person desires an environment that includes :

• Power and authority
• Prestige and challenge
• Opportunity for individual accomplishments
• Wide scope of operations
• Direct answers
• Opportunity for advancement
• Freedom from controls and supervision
• Many new and varied activities

This person needs others who :

• Weigh pros and cons
• Calculate risks
• Use caution
• Structure a more predictable environment
• Research facts
• Deliberate before deciding
• Recognize the needs of others

To be more effective, this person needs :

• Difficult assignments
• An awareness of existing sanctions
• Understanding that they need people
• Techniques based on practical experience
• An occasional shock
• Identification with a group
• To verbalise the reasons for conclusions
• To pace self and to relax more

____________________________________________________________________

I-Influencing of Others

This person's tendencies include :

• Contacting people
• Making a favourable impression
• Verbalizing with articulateness
• Creating a motivational environment
• Generating ethusiasm
• Entertaining people
• Desiring to help others participating in a group

This person desires an environment that includes :

• Popularity, social recognition
• Public recognition of ability
• Freedom of expression
• Group activities outside the job
• Democratic relationships
• Freedom from control and detail
• Opportunity to verbalise proposals
• Coaching and counselling skills
• Favourable working conditions

This person needs others who :

• Concentrate on the task
• Seek facts
• Speak directly
• Respect sincerity
• Develop systematic approaches
• Prefer dealing with things to dealing with people
• Take a logical approach
• Demonstrate individual follow-through

To be more effective ,this person needs :

• Control of time
• Objectivity in decision-making
• Participatory management
• More realistic appraisals of others
• Priorities and deadlines
• To be more firm with others

____________________________________________________________________

S-Steadiness

This person's tendencies include :

• Performing an accepted work pattern
• Sitting or staying in one place
• Demonstrating patience
• Developing specialized skills
• Concentrating on the task
• Showing loyalty
• Being a good listener
• Calming excited people

This person desires an environment that includes :

• Security of the situation
• Status quo unless given reasons for change
• Minimal work infringement on home life
• Credit for work accomplished
• Limited territory
• Sincere appreciation
• Identification with group
• Traditional procedures

This person need others who :

• React quickly to unexpected change
• Stretch towards the challenges of an accepted task
• Become involved in more than 1 thing
• Are self-promoting
• Apply pressure on others
• Work comfortably in an unpredictable environment
• Delegate to others
• Are flexible in work procedures
• Can contribute to the work

To be more effective ,this person needs :

• Conditioning prior to change
• Validation of self-worth
• Information on how one's efforts contribute to the total effort
• Work associates of similar competence and sincerity
• Guidelines for accomplishing the task
• Encouragement of creativity
• Confidence in the ability of others

____________________________________________________________________

C-Compliance (to their own standard)

This person's tendencies include :

• Attention to key directives and standards
• Concentrating on key details
• Working under known circumstances
• Being diplomatic with people
• Checking for accuracy
• Critical thinking
• Critical or performance
• Complying with authority

This person desires an environment that includes :

• Security assurances
• Standard operating procedures
• Sheltered environment
• Reassurance
• No sudden or abrupt changes
• Being part of a work group
• Personal responsiveness to their effort
• Status quo unless assured of quality control
• Door openers who call attention to accomplishments

This person needs others who :

• Desire to expand authority
• Delegate important tasks
• Make quick decisions
• Use policies only as guidelines
• Compromise with the opposition
• State unpopular positions

To be more effective, this person needs :

• Precision work
• Opportunity for careful planning
• Exact job and objective descriptions
• Scheduled performance appraisals
• As much respect for people's personal worth as for what they accomplish
• To develop tolerance for conflict

___________________________________________________________________

So have you known yourself better now after taking this test?

Source : Graduates personal development programme by Ron Leong

How to bind Non-standard RSS Feed to DataGrid in Silverlight

I stuck at this problem for around 1 week..and finally,I had found out the solution.I see there are not much documentations about this hence I would like to share this solution with you all.

One of the disadvantages of Silverlight is it does not support the use of dataset...which we usually use it for data binding...So how are we going to bind xml to datagrid in Silverlight without using dataset?

Well,in this post,I'm gonna to focus on how to use the SyndicationFeed.ElementExtensions Class to extract the content of the non-standard RSS Feed. Usually, RSS Feed are the standard XML file with some standard parser for example : link,title,pubDate,summary and so on. However,what if your RSS Feed is a geo location feed? How are we going to set the parser to read the desire node without having to scan through the xml structure?

In this example,I'm going to use LINQ to select the node's content.LINQ is easy to be used. I like to use LINQ because we do not need to crack our head on how to creating a for-loop reading from nodes to nodes.

Here are the steps to bind your RSS Feed to DataGrid in Silverlight.

1. Download the RSS Feed to the Internet Temporarily Folder.

serviceUrl = new Uri(TextBox1.Text.Trim());

WebClient wc = new WebClient(); wc.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(wc_OpenReadCompleted);

wc.OpenReadAsync(serviceUrl);

2. In this function "wc_OpenReadCompleted" ,I include this:

using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(s))

{

feed = SyndicationFeed.Load(reader);

foreach (SyndicationItem feedItem in feed.Items)

{

feedItems.Add(feedItem);

}

var posts = from item in feedItems

select new RSSFeed()

{

title = item.Title.Text,

NavURL = item.Links[0].Uri.AbsoluteUri,

Description = item.Summary.Text,

geoPoint =item.ElementExtensions.ReadElementExtensions("point", yourNodeElementNamespace).FirstOrDefault()

};

DataGrid1.ItemsSource = posts;

DataGrid1.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;

In this part,you can see that, for the 1st argument in this method,is the node Element node name and the 2nd argument is the namespace of your desire node.

I take this as the example of my XML resource.

3. Right click the browser to view source.You can see at the 1s line, the xmlns:geo and xmlns:dc.

What if you wish to crawl the data of tag "geo:lat" ?

Ok,well,is pretty easy,you can add the namespace of the "geo" in the xmlns which is http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#

into this syntax "item.ElementExtensions.ReadElementExtensions("lat", yourNodeElementNamespace).FirstOrDefault();"

Note that the 1st argument of this method takes the name of the node,in this case, we want to crawl the tag"geo:lat" content. Hence we include "lat" as the 1st argument. The latter,we include the "geo" namespace,which is http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#

Well,it is not easy to read/consume a very dynamic yet non-standard xml file or RSS Feed in Silverlight. I haven't explored if there is any better solution in Silverlight 4.0 yet.

I hope this sharing would solve your problem.

Thanks for viewing this blog.

The Beauty of French Language...

Recently,I was doing hard in learning French language..

I found that it is quite interesting yet so hard especially in the pronunciation...

Since there are 3 French guys in my lab,I started to learn French from them.

I guess some of you might know what "bravo" means...But according to them, bravo isn't a real French word..But anyway, this is not a concern here.

I'm going to share some of the terms that I had learnt from them, Youtube and some blogs.

There are some French character that I couldn't type...for example..they are some special "e" characters and "c" with a tail on the bottom : ç

Apart from that, french doesn't pronounce the "s" sound in a word ends with s..for example : pas is not pronounced as "pas" but "pa"..hmm,strange...LOL

So I'm going to share with you all about some useful term when you speak French language to a French...and I'm sure they ll be glad when you try to speak French language to them.

Here are the terms that I'm going to share today :

salut = Hi

enchanté = Nice meeting you

Merci = Thank you

Ca va? = How are you?

Ca va bien, et toi? = I'm fine,and you?

Au revior = Good bye

Combien = How much?

A plus tard = See you later

A demain = See you tomorrow

Bonne Nuit = Good night

Bonjour = Hi or good morning

Well,some of the words are not pronounced as the same as in English..If you guys are very interested in learning French...catch up with some lessons in Youtube...I'm pretty sure there are plenty sources out there.

That's all for this post...Stay tune...more post will be up...