Becoming Richard Pryor is a book that breaks new ground. . . . Saul details the amazing way that Richard found his way out of the life for which he seemed destined and into the world of the performing arts. New York Times Richard Pryor may have been the most unlikely star in Hollywood history. Raised in his family's brothels, in Peoria, Illinois, by a grandmother who often threatened to kick him upstairs with her size-twelve shoes, he always considered himself a bottom dog. He took to the stage originally to escape the tough realities of his childhood but later discovered he could alchemize his stand-up by delving fully, even painfully, into the off-color life he'd known. He brought that vitality to a movie career whose best moments Blazing Saddles, Blue Collar, the buddy comedies with Gene Wilder flowed directly out of his spirit of creative improvisation. The major studios considered him dangerous. Audiences felt plugged directly into the socket of life.Built on groundbreaking research, Becoming Richard Pryor brings into sharp focus the man and his genius as never before. From his heartbreaking childhood, his trials in the army, and his improv days in Greenwich Village to his soul-searching interlude in Berkeley and his rise in the New Hollywood of the 1970s, Becoming Richard Pryor sheds light on an entertainer who, by uniting the spirits of the Black Power movement and the counterculture, forever altered the cultural DNA of America. A fascinating, exhilarating read. Michael Chabon

Have you ever wondered if there is there life after death? If so, where do people go when they die? Whether it’s possible to keep in contact with your loved ones after they die? And are they able to help you? Will you meet them again? There Are No Goodbyes provides answers and comfort for all of these questions, and more. What happens to us when we die is bound to be a matter of curiosity for most, if not all people. Some believe that when you're dead, you're dead. Others believe that we go on - but to what? There Are No Goodbyes provides reassurance and answers to this and many other questions. The main object is to help people go through their existence on Earth secure in the knowledge that life continues as an adventure towards complete freedom of spirit, so that there's no reason whatever to be afraid of death. For decades, Paddy McMahon has acted as a bridge between the spiritual and human realms, helping people to connect with their angels, or spirit guides. He believes that we are born with spiritual connections to one or more angels, and if we want their help in life we need to be open to receiving their assistance.

If you loved A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, you’ll love The Fine Colour of Rust. Single mother Loretta Boskovic may have fantasies about dumping her two kids in the orphanage and riding off on a Harley with her dream lover, but her reality is life in a dusty country town called Gunapan. A self-dubbed ‘old scrag’, Loretta’s got a big heart and a strong sense of injustice. So, when Gunapan’s primary school is threatened with closure, and there’s a whiff of corruption wafting through the corridors of the local council, she stirs into action. She's short of money, influence and a fully functioning car, but she does have loyal friends who’ll do whatever it takes to hold on to the scrap of world that is home. The Fine Colour of Rust is a wryly funny, beautifully observed, life-affirming novel about friendship, love and fighting for things that matter. In Loretta Boskovic, Paddy O’Reilly (writing as P A O'Reilly) has created a truly endearing heroine who gives us all permission to dream.

There's nothing better than a book you can't put down or better yet, a book you'll never forget. This book puts the power of transformational reading into your hands. Jack Canfield, cocreator of the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and self-actualization pioneer Gay Hendricks have invited notable people to share personal stories of books that changed their lives. What book shaped their outlook and habitsHelped them navigate rough seasSpurred them to satisfaction and successThe contributors include Dave Barry, Stephen Covey, Malachy McCourt, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Mark Victor Hansen, John Gray, Christiane Northrup, Bernie Siegel, Craig Newmark, Michael E. Gerber, Lou Holtz, and Pat Williams, to name just a few. Their richly varied stories are poignant, energizing, and entertaining.Author and actor Malachy McCourt tells how a tattered biography of Gandhi, stumbled on in his youth, offered a shining example of true humility and planted the seeds that would help support his sobriety decades later. Bestselling author and physician Bernie Siegel, M.D., tells how William Saroyan's The Human Comedy helped him realize that, in order to successfully treat his patients with life-threatening illnesses, "I had to help them live not just prevent them from dying."Actress Catherine Oxenberg reveals how, at a life crossroads and struggling with bulimia, a book taught her the transforming difference one person could make in the life of another and why that person for her was Richard Burton.Rafe Esquith, the award-winning teacher whose inner-city students have performed Shakespeare all over the world, recounts his deep self-doubt in the midst of his success and how reading To Kill a Mockingbird strengthened him to continue teaching.Beloved librarian and bestselling author Nancy Pearl writes how, at age ten, Robert Heinlein's science fiction book Space Cadet impressed on her the meaning of personal integrity and gave her a vision of world peace she'd never imagined possible. Two years later, she marched in her first civil rights demonstration and learned that there's always a way to make "a small contribution to intergalactic harmony."If you're looking for insight and illumination or simply for that next great book to read You've Got to Read This Book! has treasures in store for you.

With her skill in selling real estate, her expertise in marketing, and her drive to succeed, Kendra Todd has mapped out an exciting and lucrative future for herself one that included taking the right kind of risks, profiting from them, and sharing her knowledge with others. Todd understands that the one thing that keeps people from making the big, bold moves that can improve their lives is a fear of risk, even more than lack of capital. The willingness to try new and different things, and the ability to keep your head on straight while your heart is pounding, is something that Todd knows well. Without risk, she doesn't have a business. Todd will address how men and women view risk from opposite sides of the galaxy, how anyone can become an entrepreneur, how you can set yourself up for success and what the ten steps are for turning risk into opportunity. With quizzes to test what kind of risk taker you are, and examples of successful risks that paid off, Todd is poised to become the hot voice of investment to her generation.

On the morning of February 24, 1942, on the Black Sea near Istanbul, an explosion ripped through a decrepit former cattle barge filled with Jewish refugees. One man clung fiercely to a piece of deck, fighting to survive. Nearly eight hundred others -- among them, more than one hundred children -- perished.In Death on the Black Sea, the story of the Struma, its passengers, and the events that led to its destruction are investigated and fully revealed in two vivid, parallel accounts, set six decades apart. One chronicles the international diplomatic maneuvers and callousness that resulted in the largest maritime loss of civilian life during World War II. The other recounts a recent attempt to locate the Struma at the bottom of the Black Sea, an effort initiated and pursued by the grandson of two of the victims. A vivid reconstruction of a grim exodus aboard a doomed ship, Death on the Black Sea illuminates a forgotten episode of World War II and pays tribute to the heroes, past and present, who keep its memory alive.

James Watson, J. Craig Venter, Francis Collins, Cynthia Kenyon . . . you may not know them, but you should. They are the masterminds of genetics and biotechnology who want you to live to be 150 years old, to regenerate your heart and brain, to create synthetic life. For better or worse, they are about to alter life on earth forever.Award-winning journalist David Ewing Duncan tells the remarkable stories of cutting-edge bioscientists, revealing their quirky, uniquely fascinating, sometimes vaguely unsettling personas as a means to understand their science and the astonishing implications of their work. This book seamlessly combines myth, biography, scholarship, and wit that poses the all-important question: Can we actually trust these masterminds?

Create fast, scalable, and high performance applications with C#, ASP.NET Core 1.0, and MVC 6 About This Book Learn the importance of measuring, profiling, and locating the most impactful problems Discover the common areas you might encounter performance problems and areas you don’t need to worry about Understand the differences between development workstations and production infrastructure and how these can amplify problems Design workflows that run asynchronously and are resilient to transient performance issues Who This Book Is For This book is for ASP.NET and C# developers who have experience with the MVC framework for web application development and are looking to deploy applications that will perform well in live production environments. These could be virtual machines or hosted by a cloud service provider such as AWS or Azure. What You Will Learn Why performance matters and when it should be considered Use different tools to measure performance Spot common performance issues, their root causes, and how to easily mitigate them Improve performance at the network level and I/O level, and how to optimize the application as a whole Work with caching and message queuing tools, including patterns and strategies Discover the dark side of performance improvement and find out how to manage complexity Monitor performance as part of continuous integration and regression testing Assess and solve performance issues with other advanced technologies In Detail ASP.NET Core is the new, open source, and cross-platform, web-application framework from Microsoft. It's a stripped down version of ASP.NET that's lightweight and fast. This book will show you how to make your web apps deliver high performance when using it. We'll address many performance improvement techniques from both a general web standpoint and from a C#, ASP.NET Core, and .NET Core perspective. This includes delving into the latest frameworks and demonstrating software design patterns that improve performance. We will highlight common performance pitfalls, which can often occur unnoticed on developer workstations, along with strategies to detect and resolve these issues early. By understanding and addressing challenges upfront, you can avoid nasty surprises when it comes to deployment time. We will introduce performance improvements along with the trade-offs that they entail. We will strike a balance between premature optimization and inefficient code by taking a scientific- and evidence-based approach. We'll remain pragmatic by focusing on the big problems. By reading this book, you'll learn what problems can occur when web applications are deployed at scale and know how to avoid or mitigate these issues. You'll gain experience of how to write high-performance applications without having to learn about issues the hard way. You'll see what's new in ASP.NET Core, why it's been rebuilt from the ground up, and what this means for performance. You will understand how you can now develop on and deploy to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux using cross-platform tools, such as Visual Studio Code. Style and approach Starting with a drill down into the nuts and bolts of various performance parameters, you will get an understanding of the ASP.NET MVC 6 framework with the help of rich code-based examples that will equip you to build highly scalable and optimized applications.

Build scalable microservices with Spring, Docker, and Mesos About This Book Learn how to efficiently build and implement microservices in Spring, and how to use Docker and Mesos to push the boundaries of what you thought possible Examine a number of real-world use cases and hands-on code examples. Distribute your microservices in a completely new way Who This Book Is For If you are a Spring developers and want to build cloud-ready, internet-scale applications to meet modern business demands, then this book is for you Developers will understand how to build simple Restful services and organically grow them to truly enterprise grade microservices ecosystems. What You Will Learn Get to know the microservices development lifecycle process See how to implement microservices governance Familiarize yourself with the microservices architecture and its benefits Use Spring Boot to develop microservices Find out how to avoid common pitfalls when developing microservices Be introduced to end-to-end microservices written in Spring Framework and Spring Boot In Detail The Spring Framework is an application framework and inversion of the control container for the Java platform. The framework's core features can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions to build web applications on top of the Java EE platform. This book will help you implement the microservice architecture in Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and Spring Cloud. Written to the latest specifications of Spring, you'll be able to build modern, Internet-scale Java applications in no time. We would start off with the guidelines to implement responsive microservices at scale. We will then deep dive into Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, Docker, Mesos, and Marathon. Next you will understand how Spring Boot is used to deploy autonomous services, server-less by removing the need to have a heavy-weight application server. Later you will learn how to go further by deploying your microservices to Docker and manage it with Mesos. By the end of the book, you'll will gain more clarity on how to implement microservices using Spring Framework and use them in Internet-scale deployments through real-world examples. Style and approach The book follows a step by step approach on how to develop microservices using Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and a set of Spring Cloud components that will help you scale your applications.

Get to grips with 3D printing and learn to model designs using Blender About This Book From the author who brought you the first practical look at 3D printing with 3D Printing Blueprints Get a comprehensive coverage of the prototyping techniques you need to know to start printing your own 3D designs Rekindle your mathematical genius to design personalized objects for complex puzzles Who This Book Is For If you’re new to the world of 3D printing, this is the book for you. Some basic knowledge of Blender and geometry would be helpful, but is not necessary. What You Will Learn Get to know about the different types of 3D printers and their limitations See how Y, H, and T shapes illustrate different ideas of successful 3D design for home 3D printers Set up and configure Blender to model a file for 3D printing Understand material characteristics, printing specifications, tolerances, and design tips Work through the techniques of editing complex meshes, smoothing, combining shapes, and exporting them into STL files for printing Break down complex geometries into multiple simple shapes and model them in layers using Blender Design, manipulate, and export 3D models for 3D printing with Blender Master the art of creating meshes, scaling, subdivision, and adding detail with the Boolean modifier as well as sculpting a custom shape Cut a model into small pieces and understand how to design complex interlocking joints that form a part of a jigsaw puzzle In Detail 3D printing has revolutionized the way that global industries conceptualize and design products for mass consumption. Considered as the next “trillion-dollar” business, every industry is in the race to equip its personnel with techniques to prototype and simplify complex manufacturing process. This book will take you through some simple to complex and effective principles of designing 3D printed objects using Blender. There is a comprehensive coverage of projects such as a 3D print-ready octopus pencil holder, which will teach you how to add basic geometric shapes, and use techniques such as extruding and subdividing to transform these shapes into complex meshes. Furthermore, you’ll learn to use various techniques to derive measurements for an object, model these objects using Blender, organize the parts into layers, and later combine them to create the desired object with the help of a 3D printable SD card holder ring design project. The final project will help you master the techniques of designing simple to complex puzzles models for 3D printing. Through the course of the book, we'll explore various robust sculpting methods supported by Blender to create objects. You’ll move, rotate, and scale the object, and manipulate the view. You’ll edit objects with actions such as bends or curves, similar to drawing or building up a clay structure of different shapes and sizes. By the end of the book, you will have gained thorough practical hands-on experience to be able to create a real-world 3D printable object of your choice. Style and approach This is a hands-on guide to the world of 3D printing. With the help of simple to complex projects, you'll learn various techniques to design 3D printable objects using Blender.

Over 75 practical recipes to confidently design an efficient virtual datacenter with VMware vSphere 6.x About This Book Get the first book on the market that helps you design a virtualized data center with VMware vSphere 6 Achieve enhanced compute, storage, network, and management capabilities for your virtual data center Exciting and practical recipes help you to design a virtual data easily by leveraging the features of VMware vSphere 6 Who This Book Is For If you are an administrator or consultant interested in designing virtualized datacenter environments using VMware vSphere 6.x or previous versions of vSphere and the supporting components, this book is for you. It will help both new and experienced architects deliver professional VMware vSphere virtual datacenter designs. What You Will Learn Identify key factors related to a vSphere design and apply them to every step of the design process Mitigate security risks and meet compliance requirements in a vSphere design. Create a vSphere conceptual design by identifying technical and business requirements Determine the type of database to use based on the deployment size. Design for performance, availability, recoverability, manageability, and security Map the logical resource design into the physical vSphere design Create professional vSphere design documentation to ensure a successful implementation of the vSphere design Leverage the latest vSphere 6.x features to ensure manageability, performance, availability, and security in a virtual datacenter design In Detail VMware is the industry leader in data center virtualization. The vSphere 6.x suite of products provides a robust and resilient platform to virtualize server and application workloads. With the release of 6.x a whole range of new features has come along such as ESXi Security enhancements, fault tolerance, high availability enhancements, and virtual volumes, thus simplifying the secure management of resources, the availability of applications, and performance enhancements of workloads deployed in the virtualized datacenter. This book provides recipes to create a virtual datacenter design using the features of vSphere 6.x by guiding you through the process of identifying the design factors and applying them to the logical and physical design process. You’ll follow steps that walk you through the design process from beginning to end, right from the discovery process to creating the conceptual design; calculating the resource requirements of the logical storage, compute, and network design; mapping the logical requirements to a physical design; security design; and finally creating the design documentation. The recipes in this book provide guidance on making design decisions to ensure the successful creation, and ultimately the successful implementation, of a VMware vSphere 6.x virtual data center design. Style and Approach The book follows a recipe-based approach that consists of practical recipes to effectively design a virtual data center.

Master the art of building analytical models using R About This Book Load, wrangle, and analyze your data using the world's most powerful statistical programming language Build and customize publication-quality visualizations of powerful and stunning R graphs Develop key skills and techniques with R to create and customize data mining algorithms Use R to optimize your trading strategy and build up your own risk management system Discover how to build machine learning algorithms, prepare data, and dig deep into data prediction techniques with R Who This Book Is For This course is for data scientist or quantitative analyst who are looking at learning R and take advantage of its powerful analytical design framework. It’s a seamless journey in becoming a full-stack R developer. What You Will Learn Describe and visualize the behavior of data and relationships between data Gain a thorough understanding of statistical reasoning and sampling Handle missing data gracefully using multiple imputation Create diverse types of bar charts using the default R functions Familiarize yourself with algorithms written in R for spatial data mining, text mining, and so on Understand relationships between market factors and their impact on your portfolio Harness the power of R to build machine learning algorithms with real-world data science applications Learn specialized machine learning techniques for text mining, big data, and more In Detail The R learning path created for you has five connected modules, which are a mini-course in their own right. As you complete each one, you'll have gained key skills and be ready for the material in the next module! This course begins by looking at the Data Analysis with R module. This will help you navigate the R environment. You'll gain a thorough understanding of statistical reasoning and sampling. Finally, you'll be able to put best practices into effect to make your job easier and facilitate reproducibility. The second place to explore is R Graphs, which will help you leverage powerful default R graphics and utilize advanced graphics systems such as lattice and ggplot2, the grammar of graphics. You'll learn how to produce, customize, and publish advanced visualizations using this popular and powerful framework. With the third module, Learning Data Mining with R, you will learn how to manipulate data with R using code snippets and be introduced to mining frequent patterns, association, and correlations while working with R programs. The Mastering R for Quantitative Finance module pragmatically introduces both the quantitative finance concepts and their modeling in R, enabling you to build a tailor-made trading system on your own. By the end of the module, you will be well-versed with various financial techniques using R and will be able to place good bets while making financial decisions. Finally, we'll look at the Machine Learning with R module. With this module, you'll discover all the analytical tools you need to gain insights from complex data and learn how to choose the correct algorithm for your specific needs. You'll also learn to apply machine learning methods to deal with common tasks, including classification, prediction, forecasting, and so on. Style and approach Learn data analysis, data visualization techniques, data mining, and machine learning all using R and also learn to build models in quantitative finance using this powerful language.

Advance your skills in efficient data analysis and data processing using the powerful tools of Scala, Spark, and Hadoop About This Book This is a primer on functional-programming-style techniques to help you efficiently process and analyze all of your data Get acquainted with the best and newest tools available such as Scala, Spark, Parquet and MLlib for machine learning Learn the best practices to incorporate new Big Data machine learning in your data-driven enterprise to gain future scalability and maintainability Who This Book Is For Mastering Scala Machine Learning is intended for enthusiasts who want to plunge into the new pool of emerging techniques for machine learning. Some familiarity with standard statistical techniques is required. What You Will Learn Sharpen your functional programming skills in Scala using REPL Apply standard and advanced machine learning techniques using Scala Get acquainted with Big Data technologies and grasp why we need a functional approach to Big Data Discover new data structures, algorithms, approaches, and habits that will allow you to work effectively with large amounts of data Understand the principles of supervised and unsupervised learning in machine learning Work with unstructured data and serialize it using Kryo, Protobuf, Avro, and AvroParquet Construct reliable and robust data pipelines and manage data in a data-driven enterprise Implement scalable model monitoring and alerts with Scala In Detail Since the advent of object-oriented programming, new technologies related to Big Data are constantly popping up on the market. One such technology is Scala, which is considered to be a successor to Java in the area of Big Data by many, like Java was to C/C++ in the area of distributed programing. This book aims to take your knowledge to next level and help you impart that knowledge to build advanced applications such as social media mining, intelligent news portals, and more. After a quick refresher on functional programming concepts using REPL, you will see some practical examples of setting up the development environment and tinkering with data. We will then explore working with Spark and MLlib using k-means and decision trees. Most of the data that we produce today is unstructured and raw, and you will learn to tackle this type of data with advanced topics such as regression, classification, integration, and working with graph algorithms. Finally, you will discover at how to use Scala to perform complex concept analysis, to monitor model performance, and to build a model repository. By the end of this book, you will have gained expertise in performing Scala machine learning and will be able to build complex machine learning projects using Scala. Style and approach This hands-on guide dives straight into implementing Scala for machine learning without delving much into mathematical proofs or validations. There are ample code examples and tricks that will help you sail through using the standard techniques and libraries. This book provides practical examples from the field on how to correctly tackle data analysis problems, particularly for modern Big Data datasets.

A practical, indispensable security guide that will navigate you through the complex realm of securely building and deploying systems in our IoT-connected world About This Book Learn to design and implement cyber security strategies for your organization Learn to protect cyber-physical systems and utilize forensic data analysis to beat vulnerabilities in your IoT ecosystem Learn best practices to secure your data from device to the cloud Gain insight into privacy-enhancing techniques and technologies Who This Book Is For This book targets IT Security Professionals and Security Engineers (including pentesters, security architects and ethical hackers) who would like to ensure security of their organization's data when connected through the IoT. Business analysts and managers will also find it useful. What You Will Learn Learn how to break down cross-industry barriers by adopting the best practices for IoT deployments Build a rock-solid security program for IoT that is cost-effective and easy to maintain Demystify complex topics such as cryptography, privacy, and penetration testing to improve your security posture See how the selection of individual components can affect the security posture of the entire system Use Systems Security Engineering and Privacy-by-design principles to design a secure IoT ecosystem Get to know how to leverage the burdgening cloud-based systems that will support the IoT into the future. In Detail With the advent of Intenret of Things (IoT), businesses will be faced with defending against new types of threats. The business ecosystem now includes cloud computing infrastructure, mobile and fixed endpoints that open up new attack surfaces, a desire to share information with many stakeholders and a need to take action quickly based on large quantities of collected data. . It therefore becomes critical to ensure that cyber security threats are contained to a minimum when implementing new IoT services and solutions. . The interconnectivity of people, devices, and companies raises stakes to a new level as computing and action become even more mobile, everything becomes connected to the cloud, and infrastructure is strained to securely manage the billions of devices that will connect us all to the IoT. This book shows you how to implement cyber-security solutions, IoT design best practices and risk mitigation methodologies to address device and infrastructure threats to IoT solutions. This book will take readers on a journey that begins with understanding the IoT and how it can be applied in various industries, goes on to describe the security challenges associated with the IoT, and then provides a set of guidelines to architect and deploy a secure IoT in your Enterprise. The book will showcase how the IoT is implemented in early-adopting industries and describe how lessons can be learned and shared across diverse industries to support a secure IoT. Style and approach This book aims to educate readers on key areas in IoT security. It walks readers through engaging with security challenges and then provides answers on how to successfully manage IoT security and build a safe infrastructure for smart devices. After reading this book, you will understand the true potential of tools and solutions in order to build real-time security intelligence on IoT networks.

Become an expert at using Python for advanced statistical analysis of data using real-world examples About This Book Clean, format, and explore data using graphical and numerical summaries Leverage the IPython environment to efficiently analyze data with Python Packed with easy-to-follow examples to develop advanced computational skills for the analysis of complex data Who This Book Is For If you are a competent Python developer who wants to take your data analysis skills to the next level by solving complex problems, then this advanced guide is for you. Familiarity with the basics of applying Python libraries to data sets is assumed. What You Will Learn Read, sort, and map various data into Python and Pandas Recognise patterns so you can understand and explore data Use statistical models to discover patterns in data Review classical statistical inference using Python, Pandas, and SciPy Detect similarities and differences in data with clustering Clean your data to make it useful Work in Jupyter Notebook to produce publication ready figures to be included in reports In Detail Python, a multi-paradigm programming language, has become the language of choice for data scientists for data analysis, visualization, and machine learning. Ever imagined how to become an expert at effectively approaching data analysis problems, solving them, and extracting all of the available information from your dataWell, look no further, this is the book you want! Through this comprehensive guide, you will explore data and present results and conclusions from statistical analysis in a meaningful way. You’ll be able to quickly and accurately perform the hands-on sorting, reduction, and subsequent analysis, and fully appreciate how data analysis methods can support business decision-making. You’ll start off by learning about the tools available for data analysis in Python and will then explore the statistical models that are used to identify patterns in data. Gradually, you’ll move on to review statistical inference using Python, Pandas, and SciPy. After that, we’ll focus on performing regression using computational tools and you’ll get to understand the problem of identifying clusters in data in an algorithmic way. Finally, we delve into advanced techniques to quantify cause and effect using Bayesian methods and you’ll discover how to use Python’s tools for supervised machine learning. Style and approach This book takes a step-by-step approach to reading, processing, and analyzing data in Python using various methods and tools. Rich in examples, each topic connects to real-world examples and retrieves data directly online where possible. With this book, you are given the knowledge and tools to explore any data on your own, encouraging a curiosity befitting all data scientists.

Bring life to your robot using ROS robotic applications About This Book .This book will help you boost your knowledge of ROS and give you advanced practical experience you can apply to your ROS robot platforms.This is the only book that offers you step-by-step instructions to solidify your ROS understanding and gain experience using ROS tools.From eminent authors, this book offers you a plethora of fun-filled examples to make your own quadcopter, turtlebot, and two-armed robots Who This Book Is For If you are a robotics developer, whether a hobbyist, researchers or professional, and are interested in learning about ROS through a hands-on approach, then this book is for you. You are encouraged to have a working knowledge of GNU/Linux systems and Python. What You Will Learn .Get to know the fundamentals of ROS and apply its concepts to real robot examples.Control a mobile robot to navigate autonomously in an environment.Model your robot designs using URDF and Xacro, and operate them in a ROS Gazebo simulation.Control a 7 degree-of-freedom robot arm for visual servoing.Fly a quadcopter to autonomous waypoints.Gain working knowledge of ROS tools such as Gazebo, rviz, rqt, and Move-It.Control robots with mobile devices and controller boards In Detail The visionaries who created ROS developed a framework for robotics centered on the commonality of robotic systems and exploited this commonality in ROS to expedite the development of future robotic systems. From the fundamental concepts to advanced practical experience, this book will provide you with an incremental knowledge of the ROS framework, the backbone of the robotics evolution. ROS standardizes many layers of robotics functionality from low-level device drivers to process control to message passing to software package management. This book provides step-by-step examples of mobile, armed, and flying robots, describing the ROS implementation as the basic model for other robots of these types. By controlling these robots, whether in simulation or in reality, you will use ROS to drive, move, and fly robots using ROS control. Style and approach This is an easy-to-follow guide with hands-on examples of ROS robots, both real and in simulation.

Harness actionable insights from your data with computational statistics and simulations using R About This Book Learn five different simulation techniques (Monte Carlo, Discrete Event Simulation, System Dynamics, Agent-Based Modeling, and Resampling) in-depth using real-world case studies A unique book that teaches you the essential and fundamental concepts in statistical modeling and simulation Who This Book Is For This book is for users who are familiar with computational methods. If you want to learn about the advanced features of R, including the computer-intense Monte-Carlo methods as well as computational tools for statistical simulation, then this book is for you. Good knowledge of R programming is assumed/required. What You Will Learn The book aims to explore advanced R features to simulate data to extract insights from your data. Get to know the advanced features of R including high-performance computing and advanced data manipulation See random number simulation used to simulate distributions, data sets, and populations Simulate close-to-reality populations as the basis for agent-based micro-, model- and design-based simulations Applications to design statistical solutions with R for solving scientific and real world problems Comprehensive coverage of several R statistical packages like boot, simPop, VIM, data.table, dplyr, parallel, StatDA, simecol, simecolModels, deSolve and many more. In Detail Data Science with R aims to teach you how to begin performing data science tasks by taking advantage of Rs powerful ecosystem of packages. R being the most widely used programming language when used with data science can be a powerful combination to solve complexities involved with varied data sets in the real world. The book will provide a computational and methodological framework for statistical simulation to the users. Through this book, you will get in grips with the software environment R. After getting to know the background of popular methods in the area of computational statistics, you will see some applications in R to better understand the methods as well as gaining experience of working with real-world data and real-world problems. This book helps uncover the large-scale patterns in complex systems where interdependencies and variation are critical. An effective simulation is driven by data generating processes that accurately reflect real physical populations. You will learn how to plan and structure a simulation project to aid in the decision-making process as well as the presentation of results. By the end of this book, you reader will get in touch with the software environment R. After getting background on popular methods in the area, you will see applications in R to better understand the methods as well as to gain experience when working on real-world data and real-world problems. Style and approach This book takes a practical, hands-on approach to explain the statistical computing methods, gives advice on the usage of these methods, and provides computational tools to help you solve common problems in statistical simulation and computer-intense methods.

A tv tie-in with Lorraine Pascale, the model baker. Supermodel turned patisserie chef Lorraine Pascale is the BBC's new home baking heroine. In this gorgeous new cookbook to accompany the series, Lorraine shares her expertise, passion and her all time favourite sweet and savoury recipes. Baking is back and as a qualified baker with years of experience in some of the country's hottest restaurants, Lorraine knows just how to create modern, delicious and inspiring recipes. Here you'll find 100 mouth watering recipes for every kind of baked goody – including breads, cakes, tarts, pies and much much more. Lorraine draws on her training to reveal all her top baking shortcuts, cheats, confessions and tips on how to create wonderful tasting food that will inspire both seasoned cooks and novices. Whether for time crunch suppers, dinner parties for your closest friends, laid back tea parties or lazy breakfasts for your loved one, there are recipes for every occasion. You'll find new twists on old favourites – like Lorraine 's Incredibly Naughty Mini Toad-in-the-Hole or her Baked Alaska with Champagne Strawberries, along with modern classics like Parmesan Lollipops and Pumpkin and Chestnut Empanadas. So, whether you're a kitchen adventurer or cautious cook, get the oven on, it's time to discover the modern delights of baking. Urban, sexy, independent and effortlessly stylish Lorraine will be a breath of fresh air to the world of cookery.

Addictions to iphones, painkillers, cupcakes, alcohol and sex are taking over our lives. Our most casual daily habits can quickly become obsessions that move beyond our control. Damian Thompson, who has himself struggled with a range of addictions, argues that human desire is in the process of being reshaped. Shunning the concept of addiction as disease, he shows how manufacturers are producing substances like ipads, muffins and computer games that we learn to like too much and supplement tradition addictions to alcohol, drugs and gambling. He argues that addictive behaviour is becoming a substitute for family and work bonds that are being swept away by globalisation and urbanisation. This battle to control addiction will soon overshadow familiar ideological debates about how to run the economy, and as whole societies set about “fixing” themselves, the architecture of human relations will come under strain as never before. The Fix offers a truly frightening glimpse of the future and is essential reading for fans of Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’, Oliver James’s ‘Affluenza’ and Francis Wheen’s ‘How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World’.

If you’re a man of a certain age you’ll know there comes a point in life when getting a sports car and over-analysing your contribution to society sounds like a really good idea. With a good job in sales and marketing and a nice house in Manchester that he shared with his wife and kids, John Bishop was no different when he turned the dreaded 4-0. But instead of spanking a load of cash on a car that would have made him look like a senior stylist at Vidal Sassoon, he stumbled onto a pathway that ultimately lead him to become one of the nation’s best loved comedians. It was a gamble, but boy, did it pay off. How Did All This Happen? is the story of how a boy who, growing up on a council estate dreaming of ousting Kenny Dalglish from Liverpool FC’s starting line-up, suddenly found himself on stage in front of thousands of people nationwide, at an age when he should have known better. In his own inimitable style, John guides us through his life from leaving the estate and travelling the globe on a shoe string, to marriage, kids and the split that led him to being on a stage complaining to strangers one night – the night that changed his life and started his journey to stardom. Wonderfully entertaining and packed with colourful reminiscences and comical anecdotes, this is a heart-warming, life-affirming and ultimately very, very funny memoir from one of the nation’s greatest comedians.

This is the definitive practical guide to getting the most out of your digital SLR camera, written by top working photographer, John Freeman. Full of inspiring photography and professional tips, it is ideal for all keen amateur photographers and those aspiring to move over from using a traditional film SLR camera. The digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera is now the must-have camera for all serious amateur photographers. Whether you already own one or are thinking of making the move from a point-and-shoot digital camera or a film SLR, this practical guide will provide all the help, advice and inspiration you need. Chapters include: understanding the DSLR system, seeing the picture, photographing landscapes, nature, people, architecture, still life, action, getting more from your DSLR and post-production techniques.