Master the development of 2D games by learning to use the powerful GameMaker Language and tools provided by the GameMaker: Studio workspace and engine! About This Book Rapidly develop games using the powerful yet easy easy-to to-use GameMaker: Studio engine Comprehensive: This is a comprehensive guide to help you learn and implement GameMaker’s features. Go through step-by-step tutorials to design and develop unique games Who This Book Is For If you have at least some basic programming experience of JavaScript or any other C-like languages, then this book will be great for you. No experience beyond that is assumed. If you have no game development experience and are looking for a hobby, are an experienced game developer looking to master some advanced features, or fit anywhere in that spectrum, then you will find GameMaker: Studio and this book to be very useful in helping you create exciting games. What You Will Learn Understand the GameMaker: Studio interface and tools to quickly create the various assets used in your games Translate some of the GameMaker: Studio drag and drop functions to the GameMaker language Create games with random elements for exciting gameplay Use the basic GameMaker file I/O and encryption systems Utilize the GameMaker networking functions to create multiplayer games Give AI routines to your enemies to make challenging gameplay Create particle systems to give your game exciting graphics Understand the various debugging techniques available in GameMaker: Studio In Detail This book is excellent resource for developers with any level of experience of GameMaker. At the start, we’ll provide an overview of the basic use of GameMaker: Studio, and show you how to set up a basic game where you handle input and collisions in a top-down perspective game. We continue on to showcase its more advanced features via six different example projects. The first example game demonstrates platforming with file I/O, followed by animation, views, and multiplayer networking. The next game illustrates AI and particle systems, while the final one will get you started with the built-in Box2D physics engine. By the end of this book, you have mastered lots of powerful techniques that can be utilized in various 2D games. Style and approach A This step-by-step guide that follows and with details ons different topics throughout the creation of various examples.

Improve search experiences with ElasticSearch’s powerful indexing functionality – learn how with this practical ElasticSearch tutorial, packed with tips! About This Book Improve user’s search experience with the correct configuration Deliver relevant search results – fast! Save time and system resources by creating stable clusters Who This Book Is For If you understand the importance of a great search experience this book will show you exactly how to build one with ElasticSearch, one of the world’s leading search servers. What You Will Learn Learn how ElasticSearch efficiently stores data – and find out how it can reduce costs Control document metadata with the correct mapping strategies and by configuring indices Use ElasticSearch analysis and analyzers to incorporate greater intelligence and organization across your documents and data Find out how an ElasticSearch cluster works – and learn the best way to configure it Perform high-speed indexing with low system resource cost Improve query relevance with appropriate mapping, suggest API, and other ElasticSearch functionalities In Detail Beginning with an overview of the way ElasticSearch stores data, you’ll begin to extend your knowledge to tackle indexing and mapping, and learn how to configure ElasticSearch to meet your users’ needs. You’ll then find out how to use analysis and analyzers for greater intelligence in how you organize and pull up search results – to guarantee that every search query is met with the relevant results! You’ll explore the anatomy of an ElasticSearch cluster, and learn how to set up configurations that give you optimum availability as well as scalability. Once you’ve learned how these elements work, you’ll find real-world solutions to help you improve indexing performance, as well as tips and guidance on safety so you can back up and restore data. Once you’ve learned each component outlined throughout, you will be confident that you can help to deliver an improved search experience – exactly what modern users demand and expect. Style and approach This is a comprehensive guide to performing efficient indexing and providing relevant search results using mapping, analyzers, and other ElasticSearch functionalities.

Over 50 recipes to learn how to use Pentaho Analytics and MongoDB to create powerful analysis and reporting solutions About This Book Create reports and stunning dashboards with MongoDB data Accelerate data access and maximize productivity with unique features of Pentaho for MongoDB A step-by-step recipe-based guide for making full use of Pentaho suite tools with MongoDB Who This Book Is For This book is intended for data architects and developers with a basic level of knowledge of MongoDB. Familiarity with Pentaho is not expected. What You Will Learn Extract, load, and transform data from MongoDB collections to other datasources Design Pentaho Reports using different types of connections for MongoDB Create a OLAP mondrian schema for MongoDB Explore your MongoDB data using Pentaho Analyzer Utilize the drag and drop web interface to create dashboards Use Kettle Thin JDBC with MongoDB for analysis Integrate advanced dashboards with MondoDB using different types of connections Publish and run a report on Pentaho BI server using a web interface In Detail MongoDB is an open source, schemaless NoSQL database system. Pentaho as a famous open source Analysis tool provides high performance, high availability, and easy scalability for large sets of data. The variant features in Pentaho for MongoDB are designed to empower organizations to be more agile and scalable and also enables applications to have better flexibility, faster performance, and lower costs. Whether you are brand new to online learning or a seasoned expert, this book will provide you with the skills you need to create turnkey analytic solutions that deliver insight and drive value for your organization. The book will begin by taking you through Pentaho Data Integration and how it works with MongoDB. You will then be taken through the Kettle Thin JDBC Driver for enabling a Java application to interact with a database. This will be followed by exploration of a MongoDB collection using Pentaho Instant view and creating reports with MongoDB as a datasource using Pentaho Report Designer. The book will then teach you how to explore and visualize your data in Pentaho BI Server using Pentaho Analyzer. You will then learn how to create advanced dashboards with your data. The book concludes by highlighting contributions of the Pentaho Community. Style and approach A comprehensive, recipe-based guide to take complete advantage of the Pentaho Analytics for MongoDB.

Create and develop exciting games from start to finish using SFML About This Book Familiarize yourself with the SFML library and explore additional game development techniques Craft, shape, and improve your games with SFML and common game design elements A practical guide that will teach you how to use utilize the SFML library to build your own, fully functional applications Who This Book Is For This book is intended for game development enthusiasts with at least decent knowledge of the C++ programming language and an optional background in game design. What You Will Learn Create and open a window by using SFML Utilize, manage, and apply all of the features and properties of the SFML library Employ some basic game development techniques to make your game tick Build your own code base to make your game more robust and flexible Apply common game development and programming patterns to solve design problems Handle your visual and auditory resources properly Construct a robust system for user input and interfacing Develop and provide networking capabilities to your game< In Detail Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a simple interface comprising five modules, namely, the audio, graphics, network, system, and window modules, which help to develop cross-platform media applications. By utilizing the SFML library, you are provided with the ability to craft games quickly and easily, without going through an extensive learning curve. This effectively serves as a confidence booster, as well as a way to delve into the game development process itself, before having to worry about more advanced topics such as “rendering pipelines” or “shaders.” With just an investment of moderate C++ knowledge, this book will guide you all the way through the journey of game development. The book starts by building a clone of the classical snake game where you will learn how to open a window and render a basic sprite, write well-structured code to implement the design of the game, and use the AABB bounding box collision concept. The next game is a simple platformer with enemies, obstacles and a few different stages. Here, we will be creating states that will provide custom application flow and explore the most common yet often overlooked design patterns used in game development. Last but not the least, we will create a small RPG game where we will be using common game design patterns, multiple GUI. elements, advanced graphical features, and sounds and music features. We will also be implementing networking features that will allow other players to join and play together. By the end of the book, you will be an expert in using the SFML library to its full potential. Style and approach An elaborate take on the game development process in a way that compliments the reader’s existing knowledge, this book provides plenty of examples and is kind to the uninitiated. Each chapter builds upon the knowledge gained from the previous one and offers clarifications on common issues while still remaining within the scope of its own subject and retaining clarity.

Visualize and analyze your Hadoop data using Hunk About This Book Explore your data in Hadoop and NoSQL data stores Create and optimize your reporting experience with advanced data visualizations and data analytics A comprehensive developer's guide that helps you create outstanding analytical solutions efficiently Who This Book Is For If you are Hadoop developers who want to build efficient real-time Operation Intelligence Solutions based on Hadoop deployments or various NoSQL data stores using Hunk, this book is for you. Some familiarity with Splunk is assumed. What You Will Learn Deploy and configure Hunk on top of Cloudera Hadoop Create and configure Virtual Indexes for datasets Make your data presentable using the wide variety of data visualization components and knowledge objects Design a data model using Hunk best practices Add more flexibility to your analytics solution via extended SDK and custom visualizations Discover data using MongoDB as a data source Integrate Hunk with AWS Elastic MapReduce to improve scalability In Detail Hunk is the big data analytics platform that lets you rapidly explore, analyse, and visualize data in Hadoop and NoSQL data stores. It provides a single, fluid user experience, designed to show you insights from your big data without the need for specialized skills, fixed schemas, or months of development. Hunk goes beyond typical data analysis methods and gives you the power to rapidly detect patterns and find anomalies across petabytes of raw data. This book focuses on exploring, analysing, and visualizing big data in Hadoop and NoSQL data stores with this powerful full-featured big data analytics platform. You will begin by learning the Hunk architecture and Hunk Virtual Index before moving on to how to easily analyze and visualize data using Splunk Search Language (SPL). Next you will meet Hunk Apps which can easy integrate with NoSQL data stores such as MongoDB or Sqqrl. You will also discover Hunk knowledge objects, build a semantic layer on top of Hadoop, and explore data using the friendly user-interface of Hunk Pivot. You will connect MongoDB and explore data in the data store. Finally, you will go through report acceleration techniques and analyze data in the AWS Cloud. Style and approach A step-by-step guide starting right from the basics and deep diving into the more advanced and technical aspects of Hunk.

Unleash Python and take your small readers on an adventurous ride through the world of programming About This Book Learn to start using Python for some simple programming tasks such as doing easy mathematical calculations. Use logic and control loops to build a nice interesting game. Get to grips with working with data and, once you're comfortable with that, you'll be introduced to Pygame, which will help you wrap up the book with a cool game. Who This Book Is For This book is for kids (aged 10 and over). This is book is intended for absolute beginners who lack any knowledge of computing or programming languages and want to get started in the world of programming. What You Will Learn Start fiddling with Python's variables, build functions and interact with users Build your own calculator using the Math Library Train Python to make logical decisions Work with moving 2D objects on-screen Understand the Pygame Library and build your very own game! Write a cool program to manage inventories in your backpack In Detail Kids are always the most fast-paced and enthusiastic learners, and are naturally willing to build stuff that looks like magic at the end (when it works!). Programming can be one such magic. Being able to write a program that works helps them feel they've really achieved something. Kids today are very tech-savvy and cannot wait to enter the fast-paced digital world. Because Python is one of the most popular languages and has a syntax that is quite simple to understand, even kids are eager to use it as a stepping stone to learning programming languages. This book will cover projects that are simple and fun, and teach kids how to write Python code that works. The book will teach the basics of Python programming, installation, and so on and then will move on to projects. A total of three projects, with each and every step explained carefully, without any assumption of previous experience. Style and approach The book will take a light approach in guiding the little readers through the world of Python. The main idea is to teach by example and let the readers have as much exercises to do, so that they learn faster and can apply their own ideas to the existing examples. The book should get them thinking, by the end, on where they can go next with such a powerful tool at their disposal.

Harness the power of multiple computers using Python through this fast-paced informative guide About This Book You'll learn to write data processing programs in Python that are highly available, reliable, and fault tolerant Make use of Amazon Web Services along with Python to establish a powerful remote computation system Train Python to handle data-intensive and resource hungry applications Who This Book Is For This book is for Python developers who have developed Python programs for data processing and now want to learn how to write fast, efficient programs that perform CPU-intensive data processing tasks. What You Will Learn Get an introduction to parallel and distributed computing See synchronous and asynchronous programming Explore parallelism in Python Distributed application with Celery Python in the Cloud Python on an HPC cluster Test and debug distributed applications In Detail CPU-intensive data processing tasks have become crucial considering the complexity of the various big data applications that are used today. Reducing the CPU utilization per process is very important to improve the overall speed of applications. This book will teach you how to perform parallel execution of computations by distributing them across multiple processors in a single machine, thus improving the overall performance of a big data processing task. We will cover synchronous and asynchronous models, shared memory and file systems, communication between various processes, synchronization, and more. Style and Approach This example based, step-by-step guide will show you how to make the best of your hardware configuration using Python for distributing applications.

Explore the power of React components for cutting-edge web development About This Book Learn to build better websites by creating a variety of different components in React Conceptualize the design and build maintainable web apps with the help of components A fast-paced guide to help you learn about component-based development in React Who This Book Is For This book is ideal for developers who are familiar with the basics of React and are looking for a guide to building a wide range of components as well as develop component-driven UIs. What You Will Learn How to structure an app into components Working with nested components Work with nested components Set up communication across components Style the existing components Work with Material Design as a component Render components on the server Make the best of design patterns Make the app pluggable In Detail The reader will learn how to use React and its component-based architecture in order to develop modern user interfaces. A new holistic way of thinking about UI development will establish throughout this book and the reader will discover the power of React components with many examples. After reading the book and following the example application, the reader has built a small to a mid-size application with React using a component based UI architecture. The book will take the reader through a journey to discover the benefits of component-based user interfaces over the classical MVC architecture. Throughout the book, the reader will develop a wide range of components and then bring them together to build a component-based UI. By the end of this book, readers would have learned several techniques to build powerful components and how the component-based development is beneficial over regular web development. Style and approach This book is a compact, example-driven guide that provides a step-by-step approach.

Investigate and solve problems with Nginx-powered websites using a deep understanding of the underlying principles About This Book Solve problems with your Nginx-powered websites before your audience notices anything Peek into the Nginx architecture and gain knowledge that will help you be valuable to you in the long run Gain knowledge of different types of problems in a step-by-step way Who This Book Is For The book is for technical specialists who already use Nginx to serve web pages for their users. Whether you are an experienced system administrator or a new professional, this book will help you do your job in the most efficient way. What You Will Learn Detect and investigate problems with your web servers Create correct and professional configuration files Get an in-depth understanding of the web server software Interpret Nginx log files easily and with actionable insights Make your websites respond as fast as possible Prevent problems by setting up proper monitoring and alerts In Detail Nginx is clearly winning the race to be the dominant software to power modern websites. It is fast and open source, maintained with passion by a brilliant team. This book will help you maintain your Nginx instances in a healthy and predictable state. It will lead you through all the types of problems you might encounter as a web administrator, with a special focus on performance and migration from older software. You will learn how to write good configuration files and will get good insights into Nginx logs. It will provide you solutions to problems such as missing or broken functionality and also show you how to tackle performance issues with the Nginx server. A special chapter is devoted to the art of prevention, that is, monitoring and alerting services you may use to detect problems before they manifest themselves on a big scale. The books ends with a reference to error and warning messages Nginx could emit to help you during incident investigations. Style and approach This comprehensive tutorial on Nginx troubleshooting takes an practical approach to guiding you through common issues in Nginx server.

Take your QlikView skills to the next level and master the art of creating visual data analysis for real business needs About This Book Explore how to create your own QlikView data laboratory and how to develop QlikView applications using agile project methods Implement advanced data visualization and analysis for common business requirements from the sales, finance, marketing, inventory, operations, and human resources departments Learn from real-life experience shared in this book that will give you the upper hand in your next QlikView project Who This Book Is For This book is intended for developers who want to go beyond their technical knowledge of QlikView and understand how to create analysis and data visualizations that solve real business needs. You should have a basic understanding of advanced QlikView functions. What You Will Learn Apply advanced QlikView techniques such as set analysis and nested aggregation in order to deliver common business requirements Understand real business requirements for sales, finance, marketing, and human resources departments Discover when to apply more advanced data visualization such as frequency polygons, bullet graphs, and XmR charts Go beyond native QlikView and include geographical analysis, planning, and sentiment analysis in your QlikView application Troubleshoot common errors we discover at the moment we visualize data in QlikView Develop a plan to master Qlik Sense data visualization In Detail Just because you know how to swing a hammer doesn't mean you know how to build a house. Now that you've learned how to use QlikView, it's time to learn how to develop meaningful QlikView applications that deliver what your business users need. You will explore the requirements and the data from several business departments in order to deliver the most amazing analysis and data visualizations. In doing so, you will practice using advanced QlikView functions, chart object property options, and extensions to solve real-world challenges. Style and approach This hands-on guide follows the story of a company implementing QlikView as its enterprise data discovery solution. Each chapter starts with an understanding of the business requirements and the data model, and then helps you create insightful analysis and data visualizations. Each chapter expands on what was done in the previous chapter as we follow this continuously improving iterative process.

Orchestrate the designing, development, testing, and deployment of web applications with Symfony About This Book Create a robust and reliable Symfony development pipeline using Amazon's cloud platform Cut development and maintenance costs by defining crystal clear features and possible scenarios for each feature before implementation Follow detailed examples provided in each chapter to create a task management application Who This Book Is For If you are a PHP developer with some experience in Symfony and are looking to master the framework and use it to its full potential, then this book is for you. Though experience with PHP, object-oriented techniques, and Symfony basics is assumed, this book will give you a crash course on the basics and then proceed to more advanced topics. What You Will Learn Install and configure Symfony and required third-party bundles to develop a task management application Set up a continuous integration server to orchestrate automatic builds every time you add a new feature to your project Reduce maintenance costs dramatically using Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) Create a slick user interface using the Bootstrap framework Design robust business logic using Doctrine Build a comprehensive dashboard and secure your project using the Sonata project Improve performance using Redis, Memcache, and Varnish Create customized Symfony commands and add them to your console In Detail In this book, you will learn some lesser known aspects of development with Symfony, and you will see how to use Symfony as a framework to create reliable and effective applications. You might have developed some impressive PHP libraries in other projects, but what is the point when your library is tied to one particular projectWith Symfony, you can turn your code into a service and reuse it in other projects. This book starts with Symfony concepts such as bundles, routing, twig, doctrine, and more, taking you through the request/response life cycle. You will then proceed to set up development, test, and deployment environments in AWS. Then you will create reliable projects using Behat and Mink, and design business logic, cover authentication, and authorization steps in a security checking process. You will be walked through concepts such as DependencyInjection, service containers, and services, and go through steps to create customized commands for Symfony's console. Finally, the book covers performance optimization and the use of Varnish and Memcached in our project, and you are treated with the creation of database agnostic bundles and best practices. Style and approach A step-by-step guide to mastering Symfony while developing a task management application. Each chapter comes with detailed examples.

Learn to solve scientific computing problems using Scala and its numerical computing, data processing, concurrency, and plotting libraries About This Book Parallelize your numerical computing code using convenient and safe techniques. Accomplish common high-performance, scientific computing goals in Scala. Learn about data visualization and how to create high-quality scientific plots in Scala Who This Book Is For Scientists and engineers who would like to use Scala for their scientific and numerical computing needs. A basic familiarity with undergraduate level mathematics and statistics is expected but not strictly required. A basic knowledge of Scala is required as well as the ability to write simple Scala programs. However, complicated programming concepts are not used in the book. Anyone who wants to explore using Scala for writing scientific or engineering software will benefit from the book. What You Will Learn Write and read a variety of popular file formats used to store scientific data Use Breeze for linear algebra, optimization, and digital signal processing Gain insight into Saddle for data analysis Use ScalaLab for interactive computing Quickly and conveniently write safe parallel applications using Scala's parallel collections Implement and deploy concurrent programs using the Akka framework Use the Wisp plotting library to produce scientific plots Visualize multivariate data using various visualization techniques In Detail Scala is a statically typed, Java Virtual Machine (JVM)-based language with strong support for functional programming. There exist libraries for Scala that cover a range of common scientific computing tasks – from linear algebra and numerical algorithms to convenient and safe parallelization to powerful plotting facilities. Learning to use these to perform common scientific tasks will allow you to write programs that are both fast and easy to write and maintain. We will start by discussing the advantages of using Scala over other scientific computing platforms. You will discover Scala packages that provide the functionality you have come to expect when writing scientific software. We will explore using Scala's Breeze library for linear algebra, optimization, and signal processing. We will then proceed to the Saddle library for data analysis. If you have experience in R or with Python's popular pandas library you will learn how to translate those skills to Saddle. If you are new to data analysis, you will learn basic concepts of Saddle as well. Well will explore the numerical computing environment called ScalaLab. It comes bundled with a lot of scientific software readily available. We will use it for interactive computing, data analysis, and visualization. In the following chapters, we will explore using Scala's powerful parallel collections for safe and convenient parallel programming. Topics such as the Akka concurrency framework will be covered. Finally, you will learn about multivariate data visualization and how to produce professional-looking plots in Scala easily. After reading the book, you should have more than enough information on how to start using Scala as your scientific computing platform Style and approach Examples are provided on how to use Scala to do basic numerical and scientific computing tasks. All the concepts are illustrated with more involved examples in each chapter. The goal of the book is to allow you to translate existing experience in scientific computing to Scala.

A foundational yet practical approach to UX that delivers more creative, collaborative, holistic, and mature design solutions, regardless of your background or experience About This Book Improve your UX design awareness and skills Gain greater confidence to know when you have delivered a “good” UX design Learn by example using a book designed by a UX mind for a UX mind Who This Book Is For This book is written for the beginner as well as the experienced UX practitioner, regardless of team size, company size, or job title. It is also intended for anyone with an interest in UX, engages with UX, is involved in any way in interactive problem solving and design, or simply wants to learn more about what we do, how we do it, and why those in the UX field are so passionate about wanting to do it better. What You Will Learn Awaken your UX mind and dispel the myths of non-UX thinkers Create the six optimal conditions for your best ideas to appear Identify and incorporate the ten design principles found in all good UX design Develop a broader understanding of Information Architecture (IA) to better engage, guide, and inform Develop a fundamental understanding of patterns and the properties that create them Raise your level of UX maturity with a strategy that transforms your approach to problem solving and helps others understand the true value of your work Utilize important tools of the UX trade that never go out of style Increase your knowledge of UX, incorporate valuable ideas and insights into your work, and look at design from a very unique perspective In Detail Written in an easy-to-read style, this book provides real-world examples, a historical perspective, and a holistic approach to design that will ground you in the fundamental essentials of interactive design, allow you to make more informed design decisions, and increase your understanding of UX in order to reach the highest levels of UX maturity. As you will see, UX is more than just delighting customers and users. It is also about thinking like a UX practitioner, making time for creativity, recognizing good design when you see it, understanding Information Architecture as more than just organizing and labeling websites, using design patterns to influence user behavior and decision making, approaching UX from a business perspective, transforming your client’s and company’s fundamental understanding of UX and its true value, and so much more. This book is an invaluable resource of knowledge, perspective, and inspiration for those seeking to become better UX designers, increase their confidence, become more mature design leaders, and deliver solutions that provide measurable value to stakeholders, customers, and users regardless of project type, size, and delivery method. Style and approach An in-depth, easy to read, and entertaining journey into and through the world of UX using real-world examples, thoughtful illustrations, and engaging quotes to inspire and explain fully the how and why of UX in a practical and impactful way and used immediately in your own work.

Over 80 simple but creative and structured recipes to explore the capabilities of HTML5 Canvas About This Book Develop simple to advanced recipes of your own, and ultimately produce a great application Discover a better way to use HTML5 Canvas, JavaScript, and CSS Put your creative instincts to use in your day-to-day interface developments Who This Book Is For The book is intended for readers with a preliminary knowledge of JavaScript and CSS. Whether you're a beginner or expert in this technology, the book provides recipes to help you build your own application, presentation, or game. What You Will Learn Draw basic shapes such as lines, arcs, curves, and text using the coordinate system Learn about the animation cycle and use it to animate shapes Grasp the knowledge required to create particles and use them Give various effects to images and videos and also use them in animations Discover the use of event listeners to make recipes interactive and to handle events through event handlers Create good presentation graphics with graphs and charts Learn all about 3D development, from building 3D objects to animating them Convert your knowledge into a complete working game Understand the interoperability and deployment of recipes on different browsers and on different devices In Detail With the growing popularity of HTML5 Canvas, this book offers tailored recipes to help you develop portable applications, presentations, and games. The recipes are simple yet creative and build on each other. At every step, the book inspires the reader to develop his/her own recipe. From basic to advanced, every aspect of Canvas API has been covered to guide readers to develop their own application, presentation, or game. Style and approach All the recipes are sequential and cover the basic and advanced concepts of Canvas. Every recipe is as simple as possible without compromising creativity

Familiarize yourself with probabilistic graphical models through real-world problems and illustrative code examples in R About This Book Predict and use a probabilistic graphical models (PGM) as an expert system Comprehend how your computer can learn Bayesian modeling to solve real-world problems Know how to prepare data and feed the models by using the appropriate algorithms from the appropriate R package Who This Book Is For This book is for anyone who has to deal with lots of data and draw conclusions from it, especially when the data is noisy or uncertain. Data scientists, machine learning enthusiasts, engineers, and those who curious about the latest advances in machine learning will find PGM interesting. What You Will Learn Understand the concepts of PGM and which type of PGM to use for which problem Tune the model’s parameters and explore new models automatically Understand the basic principles of Bayesian models, from simple to advanced Transform the old linear regression model into a powerful probabilistic model Use standard industry models but with the power of PGM Understand the advanced models used throughout today's industry See how to compute posterior distribution with exact and approximate inference algorithms In Detail Probabilistic graphical models (PGM, also known as graphical models) are a marriage between probability theory and graph theory. Generally, PGMs use a graph-based representation. Two branches of graphical representations of distributions are commonly used, namely Bayesian networks and Markov networks. R has many packages to implement graphical models. We’ll start by showing you how to transform a classical statistical model into a modern PGM and then look at how to do exact inference in graphical models. Proceeding, we’ll introduce you to many modern R packages that will help you to perform inference on the models. We will then run a Bayesian linear regression and you’ll see the advantage of going probabilistic when you want to do prediction. Next, you’ll master using R packages and implementing its techniques. Finally, you’ll be presented with machine learning applications that have a direct impact in many fields. Here, we’ll cover clustering and the discovery of hidden information in big data, as well as two important methods, PCA and ICA, to reduce the size of big problems. Style and approach This book gives you a detailed and step-by-step explanation of each mathematical concept, which will help you build and analyze your own machine learning models and apply them to real-world problems. The mathematics is kept simple and each formula is explained thoroughly.

Become a QGIS power user and master QGIS data management, visualization, and spatial analysis techniques About This Book Explore and create time-based visualizations and build interactive maps Maximize your use of the QGIS features, plugins and toolbox automation Packed with lots of sample datasets to enable a better understanding of the code Who This Book Is For If you are an intermediate GIS user, with either previous experience in QGIS or any other GIS application, this is the book for you. The recipes can be used to learn more advanced techniques in QGIS or to replicate the functionalities equivalent to other GIS platforms. This book assumes that you already have a working QGIS system in place. What You Will Learn Import and export common tricky spatial data formats Perform classic vector and raster analysis with QGIS Utilize spatial databases and data management tools Use and create geographic web services and maps Explore and create time-based visualizations Perform network building and routing analysis Extend QGIS capabilities with popular plugins and toolbox automation Make beautiful and unique maps with customized cartography In Detail QGIS is a user-friendly, cross-platform desktop geographic information system used to make maps and analyze spatial data. QGIS allows users to understand, question, interpret, and visualize spatial data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps. This book is a collection of simple to advanced techniques that are needed in everyday geospatial work, and shows how to accomplish them with QGIS. You will begin by understanding the different types of data management techniques, as well as how data exploration works. You will then learn how to perform classic vector and raster analysis with QGIS, apart from creating time-based visualizations. Finally, you will learn how to create interactive and visually appealing maps with custom cartography. By the end of this book, you will have all the necessary knowledge to handle spatial data management, exploration, and visualization tasks in QGIS. Style and approach This book covers practical examples, with step-by-step instructions on how to use real world data covering common GIS operations and the different analysis techniques. It provides detailed explanations and applications of QGIS concepts that will allow the user to effectively analyze spatial data.

Affiliate Marketing 2018: Beginners Guide Book to Making Money Online

Master the art of identifying vulnerabilities within the Windows OS and develop the desired solutions for it using Kali Linux. Key Features *Identify the vulnerabilities in your system using Kali Linux 2018.02 *Discover the art of exploiting Windows kernel drivers *Get to know several bypassing techniques to gain control of your Windows environment Book Description Windows has always been the go-to platform for users around the globe to perform administration and ad hoc tasks, in settings that range from small offices to global enterprises, and this massive footprint makes securing Windows a unique challenge. This book will enable you to distinguish yourself to your clients. In this book, you'll learn advanced techniques to attack Windows environments from the indispensable toolkit that is Kali Linux. We'll work through core network hacking concepts and advanced Windows exploitation techniques, such as stack and heap overflows, precision heap spraying, and kernel exploitation, using coding principles that allow you to leverage powerful Python scripts and shellcode. We'll wrap up with post-exploitation strategies that enable you to go deeper and keep your access. Finally, we'll introduce kernel hacking fundamentals and fuzzing testing, so you can discover vulnerabilities and write custom exploits. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed in identifying vulnerabilities within the Windows OS and developing the desired solutions for them. What you will learn *Get to know advanced pen testing techniques with Kali Linux *Gain an understanding of Kali Linux tools and methods from behind the scenes *See how to use Kali Linux at an advanced level *Understand the exploitation of Windows kernel drivers *Understand advanced Windows concepts and protections, and how to bypass them using Kali Linux *Discover Windows exploitation techniques, such as stack and heap overflows and kernel exploitation, through coding principles Who this book is for This book is for penetration testers, ethical hackers, and individuals breaking into the pentesting role after demonstrating an advanced skill in boot camps. Prior experience with Windows exploitation, Kali Linux, and some Windows debugging tools is necessary

Build modern, fast, and progressive web applications using modern features of PHP 7 and TypeScript Key Features *Explore the latest features of Angular and Laravel to build applications that are powerful, consistent, and maintainable *Develop modern user interfaces with a reusable component-based architecture using Angular 6 and Bootstrap 4 *Learn how to build secure backend APIs with Laravel Book Description Angular, considered as one of the most popular and powerful frontend frameworks, has undergone a major overhaul to embrace emerging web technologies so that developers can build cutting-edge web applications. This book gives you practical knowledge of building modern full-stack web apps from scratch using Angular with a Laravel Restful back end. The book begins with a thorough introduction to Laravel and Angular and its core concepts like custom errors messages, components, routers, and Angular-cli, with each concept being explained first, and then put into practice in the case-study project. With the basics covered, you will learn how sophisticated UI features can be added using NgBootstrao and a component-based architecture. You will learn to extend and customize variables from Bootstrap CSS framework. You will learn how to create secure web application with Angular and Laravel using token based authentication. Finally, you will learn all about progressive web applications and build and deploy a complete fullstack application using Docker and Docker-compose. By the end of this book, you'll gain a solid understanding of Angular 6 and how it interacts with a Laravel 5.x backend What you will learn *Explore the core features of Angular 6 to create sophisticated user interfaces *Use Laravel 5 to its full extent to create a versatile backend layer based on RESTful APIs *Configure a web application in order to accept user-defined data and persist it into the database using server-side APIs *Build an off-line-first application using service-worker and manifest file *Deal with token based authentication on single page application (SPA). *Secure your application against threats and vulnerabilities in a time efficient way *Deploy using Docker and Docker-compose Who this book is for This book targets developers who are new to Angular, Laravel, or both, and are seeking a practical, best-practice approach to development with these technologies. They must have some knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Familiarity of PHP is assumed to get the most from this book.

With Hands-On Recommendation Systems with Python, learn the tools and techniques required in building various kinds of powerful recommendation systems (collaborative, knowledge and content based) and deploying them to the web Key Features *Build industry-standard recommender systems *Only familiarity with Python is required *No need to wade through complicated machine learning theory to use this book Book Description Recommendation systems are at the heart of almost every internet business today; from Facebook to Net?ix to Amazon. Providing good recommendations, whether it's friends, movies, or groceries, goes a long way in defining user experience and enticing your customers to use your platform. This book shows you how to do just that. You will learn about the different kinds of recommenders used in the industry and see how to build them from scratch using Python. No need to wade through tons of machine learning theory—you'll get started with building and learning about recommenders as quickly as possible.. In this book, you will build an IMDB Top 250 clone, a content-based engine that works on movie metadata. You'll use collaborative filters to make use of customer behavior data, and a Hybrid Recommender that incorporates content based and collaborative filtering techniques? With this book, all you need to get started with building recommendation systems is a familiarity with Python, and by the time you're fnished, you will have a great grasp of how recommenders work and be in a strong position to apply the techniques that you will learn to your own problem domains. What you will learn *Get to grips with the different kinds of recommender systems *Master data-wrangling techniques using the pandas library *Building an IMDB Top 250 Clone *Build a content based engine to recommend movies based on movie metadata *Employ data-mining techniques used in building recommenders *Build industry-standard collaborative filters using powerful algorithms *Building Hybrid Recommenders that incorporate content based and collaborative fltering Who this book is for If you are a Python developer and want to develop applications for social networking, news personalization or smart advertising, this is the book for you. Basic knowledge of machine learning techniques will be helpful, but not mandatory.

Develop intelligent voice-empowered applications and Chatbots that not only understand voice commands but also respond to it Key Features *Target multiple platforms by creating voice interactions for your applications *Explore real-world examples of how to produce smart and practical virtual assistants *Build a virtual assistant for cars using Android Auto in Xamarin Book Description From touchscreen and mouse-click, we are moving to voice- and conversation-based user interfaces. By adopting Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), you can create a more compelling and engaging experience for your users. Voice User Interface Projects teaches you how to develop voice-enabled applications for desktop, mobile, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. This book explains in detail VUI and its importance, basic design principles of VUI, fundamentals of conversation, and the different voice-enabled applications available in the market. You will learn how to build your first voice-enabled application by utilizing DialogFlow and Alexa’s natural language processing (NLP) platform. Once you are comfortable with building voice-enabled applications, you will understand how to dynamically process and respond to the questions by using NodeJS server deployed to the cloud. You will then move on to securing NodeJS RESTful API for DialogFlow and Alexa webhooks, creating unit tests and building voice-enabled podcasts for cars. Last but not the least you will discover advanced topics such as handling sessions, creating custom intents, and extending built-in intents in order to build conversational VUIs that will help engage the users. By the end of the book, you will have grasped a thorough knowledge of how to design and develop interactive VUIs. What you will learn *Understand NLP platforms with machine learning *Exploit best practices and user experiences in creating VUI *Build voice-enabled chatbots *Host, secure, and test in a cloud platform *Create voice-enabled applications for personal digital assistant devices *Develop a virtual assistant for cars Who this book is for Voice User Interface Projects is for you if you are a software engineer who wants to develop voice-enabled applications for your personal digital assistant devices such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, along with your car’s virtual assistant systems. Some experience with JavaScript is required.