In this electrifying autobiography, Rik stands naked in front of his vast legions of fans and disciples and invites them to take communion with the blood he has spilled for them during his thirty year war on show business. He invented alternative comedy with The Young Ones, he brought down the Thatcher administration with The New Statesman and he changed the face of global culture with his masterpiece Bottom. Not only was his number one single ‘Living Doll’ the saviour of rock 'n' roll but he also rescued the British film industry with the vast revenues created by his legendary movie Drop Dead Fred. In 1998, he survived an assassination attempt and spent five days in a coma before he literally came back from the dead. Having completed countless phenomenal feature films, TV series, live extravaganzas and radio voice-overs since then, Rik Mayall is now poised on the brink of a whole new epoch-shattering revolution. For the first time ever, Rik reveals in print the deep inner truth behind his gargantuan ascent to the pinnacle of international light entertainment – the mental hospitals he has broken out of, the television executives he has assaulted, the drugs he has definitely not taken, the charities he has bankrupted, the countless pregnancies he has engendered, and so much more.

The story of the 19th-century ice trade, in which ice from the lakes of New England – valued for its incredible purity – revolutionised domestic life around the world. In the days before artificial refrigeration, it was thought impossible to transport ice for long distances. But one man, Frederic Tudor, was convinced it could be done. This is the story of how, almost single-handedly, and in the face of near-universal mockery, he established a vast industry that would introduce the benefits of fresh ice to large parts of the globe. Thanks to Tudor, the American fashion for drinks ‘on the rocks’ spread to tropical areas such as the West Indies and British India. By the 1830s fleets of schooners carried the frozen cargo, packed with sawdust and tarpaulins for insulation, to all corners of the world. The harvesting of the ice from New England’s lakes employed thousands of men. The frozen water trade had a profound influence on the tastes of a large part of the world, but with the development of artificial cooling systems in the first quarter of the 20th century, the huge industry established by Frederic Tudor vanished as if it had never been. Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

Guaradian award winning novel about courage, friendship and war. Reissued into the Essential Modern Classic list. When a bomb during an air raid destroys Harry's home and kills his family, he knows that he is all alone in the world and has only himself to rely on. Anxious that he will be sent to live with his fussy Cousin Elsie he goes on the run across the war-battered land of North East England, his only friend in his journey a stray dog that he meets on the beach. Will Harry ever find a place to call home again, or will he be on the run forever?

Jimmy’s back in the electrifying sequel to Jimmy Coates: Killer. Stand back for this high-speed adventure, packed with surprises, danger and escape against the odds. “Jimmy's fingers were slipping. Smeared with blood, he had hardly any grip. He had to hold on. Mitchell chopped his hand down hard into Jimmy's shoulder, cutting off the nerves to his fingers. Staring up into Mitchell's ice-cold eyes, Jimmy fell into the shredder.” Jimmy Coates is still on the run – and this time NJ7 are pulling no punches. They’re out for blood, and even though Jimmy has gone into hiding in France, they still track him down. Jimmy might think that life could hold no further surprises for him – but he’s very, very wrong.

The inside story of the ‘reluctant medium’, finally available in a mass-market A-format edition Betty Shine was originally an opera singer, but studied all forms of alternative healing, becoming a vitamin and mineral therapist. Guided by spirit voices from the age of two, she became a world-famous medium. This is the story of how she became the best known medium and healer in the UK. Through her books, tapes and absent healing service, she is in touch with thousands of people worldwide. The hardback publication of her book produced a tremendous response from both the media and the general public and this A-format edition will bring her story to an even wider audience.

Nine-year-old Meena can’t wait to grow up and break free from her parents. But, as the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the mining village of Tollington, her struggle for independence is different from most. Meena wants fishfingers and chips, not chapati and dhal; she wants an English Christmas, not the usual interminable Punjabi festivities – but more than anything, she wants to roam the backyards of working-class Tollington with feisty Anita Rutter and her gang. Blonde, cool, aloof, outrageous and sassy, Anita is everything Meena thinks she wants to be. Meena wheedles her way into Anita’s life, but the arrival of a baby brother, teenage hormones, impending entrance exams for the posh grammar school and a motorcycling rebel without a future threaten to turn Anita’s salad days sour. Anita and Me paints a comic, poignant, compassionate and colourful portrait of village life in the era of flares, power cuts, glam rock, decimalisation and Ted Heath. It is a unique vision of a British childhood in the Seventies, a childhood caught between two cultures, each on the brink of change.

From Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the sequel to one of her most celebrated novels, ‘The Fifth Child’. ‘The Fifth Child’, Doris Lessing’s 1988 novel, made a powerful impact on publication. Its account of idyllic marital and parental bliss shattered by the arrival of the feral fifth child of the Lovatts made for unnerving and compulsive reading. That child, Ben, is the central character of this sequel, which picks up the fable at the end of his childhood and takes our primal, misunderstood, maladjusted teenager out into the world. He meets mostly with mockery, fear and incomprehension, but with just enough kindness and openness to keep him afloat as his adventures take him from London to the south of France and on to South America in his restless quest for community, companionship and peace. Lessing employs a plain, unadorned prose fit for fables; again, we have a childlike perspective at the heart of the book; again, the world in all its malevolence and misapprehension swirls around at the edge, while, occasionally, a strong character steps forward to try to set a good example.

The inside story of the one of the most successful British stand-up comedians, as told by the person best qualified to reveal all about the man behind the comic, his wife of over 20 years – Pamela Stephenson. Once in a lifetime, there strides upon the stage someone who can truly be called a legend. Such a person is the inimitable, timeless genius who is Billy Connolly. His effortlessly wicked whimsy has entranced, enthralled – and split the sides of – thousands upon thousands of adoring audiences. And when he isn't doing that…he's turning in award-winning performances on film and television. He's the man who needs no introduction, and yet he is the ultimate enigma. From a troubled and desperately poor childhood in the docklands of Glasgow he is now the intimate of household names the world over. How did this happen, who is the real Billy Connolly? Only one person can answer that question: his wife, Pamela Stephenson. Pamela’s writing combines the very personal with a frank objectivity that makes for a compelling, moving and hugely entertaining biography. This is the real Billy Connolly. This genre-defining book is now released as an ebook for a new generation of comedy fans, with a new Foreword from the author. Pamela’s vision of Billy is as true now as it ever was – as groundbreaking, as moving and as laugh-out-loud funny – and here she brings the book fully into its context, as one of the most influential biographies ever written.

The ultimate biography of this ever-popular star and icon, from a young Cambridge don who has already made his name with a much praised biography of Marilyn Monroe. Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea. Tall, dark and handsome with a rare gift for light comedy, he played a leading man who liked to be led, a man of the world who was a man of the people. Cary Grant was Hollywood’s quintessential democratic gentleman. Born in England as Archie Leach, made famous in America as Cary Grant, he was a star for more than 30 years, in more than 70 movies, his popularity still intact when he brought his career to a close. He was never replaced: nobody else talked like that, looked like that, behaved like that. He was a class apart. Cary Grant never explained how he came to play ‘Cary Grant’ so well. ‘Nobody is every truthful about his own life,’ he said. ‘There are always ambiguities.’ This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Cary Grant: a working class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Cary Grant’s broad and enduring appeal.

‘Snort up “Cocaine Nights”. It’s disorientating, deranging and knocks the work of other avant-garde writers into a hatted cock’ Will Self Five people die in an unexplained house fire in the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, an exclusive enclave for the rich, retired British, centred on the thriving Club Nautico. The club manager, Frank Prentice, pleads guilty to charges of murder – yet not even the police believe him. When his Charles arrives to unravel the truth, he gradually discovers that behind the resort’s civilized fa?ade flourishes a secret world of crime, drugs and illicit sex. At once an engrossing mystery and a novel of ideas, ‘Cocaine Nights’ is a stunningly original work, a vision of a society coming to terms with a life of almost unlimited leisure. This edition is part of a new commemorative series of Ballard’s works, featuring introductions from a number of his admirers (including Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, John Lanchester and Martin Amis) and brand-new cover designs.

Get to grips with the essentials of deep learning by leveraging the power of Python About This Book ? Your one-stop solution to get started with the essentials of deep learning and neural network modeling ? Train different kinds of neural networks to tackle various problems in Natural Language Processing, computer vision, speech recognition, and more ? Covers popular Python libraries such as Tensorflow, Keras, and more, along with tips on training, deploying and optimizing your deep learning models in the best possible manner Who This Book Is For Aspiring data scientists and machine learning experts who have limited or no exposure to deep learning will find this book to be very useful. If you are looking for a resource that gets you up and running with the fundamentals of deep learning and neural networks, this book is for you. As the models in the book are trained using the popular Python-based libraries such as Tensorflow and Keras, it would be useful to have sound programming knowledge of Python. What You Will Learn ? Get to grips with the core concepts of deep learning and neural networks ? Set up deep learning library such as TensorFlow ? Fine-tune your deep learning models for NLP and Computer Vision applications ? Unify different information sources, such as images, text, and speech through deep learning ? Optimize and fine-tune your deep learning models for better performance ? Train a deep reinforcement learning model that plays a game better than humans ? Learn how to make your models get the best out of your GPU or CPU In Detail Deep Learning a trending topic in the field of Artificial Intelligence today and can be considered to be an advanced form of machine learning, which is quite tricky to master. This book will help you take your first steps in training efficient deep learning models and applying them in various practical scenarios. You will model, train, and deploy different kinds of neural networks such as Convolutional Neural Network, Recurrent Neural Network, and will see some of their applications in real-world domains including computer vision, natural language processing, speech recognition, and so on. You will build practical projects such as chatbots, implement reinforcement learning to build smart games, and develop expert systems for image captioning and processing. Popular Python library such as TensorFlow is used in this book to build the models. This book also covers solutions for different problems you might come across while training models, such as noisy datasets, small datasets, and more. This book does not assume any prior knowledge of deep learning. By the end of this book, you will have a firm understanding of the basics of deep learning and neural network modeling, along with their practical applications. Style and approach This step-by-step guide is filled with real-world practical examples and use cases to solve various deep learning problems.

Learn, develop, and design applications using the new features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM About This Book ? Implement business logic using processes, plugins, and client-side *s with MS Dynamics 365 ? Develop custom CRM solutions to improve your business applications ? A comprehensive guide that covers the new features of Microsoft Dynamics 365 and increasingly advanced topics. Who This Book Is For This book targets skilled developers who are looking to build business-solution software and are new to application development in Microsoft Dynamics 365, especially for CRM. What You Will Learn ? Discover new designers tools included in Dynamics 365 CRM ? Develop apps using the platform-agnostic Web API ? Leverage Azure Extensions to design cloud-aware applications ? Learn how to implement CRUD operation ? Create integrated real-world apps using Microsoft PowerApps and Flow by combining services such as Twitter, Facebook, and SharePoint ? Configure and use Artificial Intelligence Azure Cognitive Services for Recommendation and Text Analytic services In Detail Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is the most trusted name in enterprise-level customer relationship management. Thelatest version of Dynamics CRM comes with the important addition of exciting features guaranteed to make your life easier. It comes straight off the shelf with a whole new frontier of updated business rules, process enhancements, SDK methods, and other enhancements. This book will introduce you to the components of the new designer tools, such as SiteMap, App Module, and Visual Designer for Business Processes. Going deeper, this book teaches you how to develop custom SaaS applications leveraging the features of PowerApps available in Dynamics 365.Further, you will learn how to automate business processes using Microsoft Flow, and then we explore Web API, the most important platform update in Dynamics 365 CRM. Here, you'll also learn how to implement Web API in custom applications. You will learn how to write an Azure-aware plugin to design and integrate cloud-aware solutions. The book concludes with configuring services using newly released features such as Editable grids, Data Export Service, LinkedIn Integration, Relationship Insights, and Live Assist. Style and approach The book takes a pragmatic approach, exploring Dynamics 365 and its CRM features with the help of real-world scenarios.

Enhance your organization’s secure posture by improving your attack and defense strategies About This Book ? Gain a clear understanding of the attack methods, and patterns to recognize abnormal behavior within your organization with Blue Team tactics. ? Learn to unique techniques to gather exploitation intelligence, identify risk and demonstrate impact with Red Team and Blue Team strategies. ? A practical guide that will give you hands-on experience to mitigate risks and prevent attackers from infiltrating your system. Who This Book Is For This book aims at IT professional who want to venture the IT security domain. IT pentester, Security consultants, and ethical hackers will also find this course useful. Prior knowledge of penetration testing would be beneficial. What You Will Learn ? Learn the importance of having a solid foundation for your security posture ? Understand the attack strategy using cyber security kill chain ? Learn how to enhance your defense strategy by improving your security policies, hardening your network, implementing active sensors, and leveraging threat intelligence ? Learn how to perform an incident investigation ? Get an in-depth understanding of the recovery process ? Understand continuous security monitoring and how to implement a vulnerability management strategy ? Learn how to perform log analysis to identify suspicious activities In Detail The book will start talking about the security posture before moving to Red Team tactics, where you will learn the basic syntax for the Windows and Linux tools that are commonly used to perform the necessary operations. You will also gain hands-on experience of using new Red Team techniques with powerful tools such as python and PowerShell, which will enable you to discover vulnerabilities in your system and how to exploit them. Moving on, you will learn how a system is usually compromised by adversaries, and how they hack user's identity, and the various tools used by the Red Team to find vulnerabilities in a system. In the next section, you will learn about the defense strategies followed by the Blue Team to enhance the overall security of a system. You will also learn about an in-depth strategy to ensure that there are security controls in each network layer, and how you can carry out the recovery process of a compromised system. Finally, you will learn how to create a vulnerability management strategy and the different techniques for manual log analysis. By the end of this book, you will be well-versed with Red Team and Blue Team techniques and will have learned the techniques used nowadays to attack and defend systems. Style and approach This book uses a practical approach of the cybersecurity kill chain to explain the different phases of the attack, which includes the rationale behind each phase, followed by scenarios and examples that brings the theory into practice.

Explore the concepts and tools you need to discover the world of microservices with various design patterns About This Book ? Get to grips with the microservice architecture and build enterprise-ready microservice applications ? Learn design patterns and the best practices while building a microservice application ? Obtain hands-on techniques and tools to create high-performing microservices resilient to possible fails Who This Book Is For This book is for architects and senior developers who would like implement microservice design patterns in their enterprise application development. The book assumes some prior programming knowledge. What You Will Learn ? How to break monolithic application into microservices ? Implement caching strategies, CQRS and event sourcing, and circuit breaker patterns ? Incorporate different microservice design patterns, such as shared data, aggregator, proxy, and chained ? Utilize consolidate testing patterns such as integration, signature, and monkey tests ? Secure microservices with JWT, API gateway, and single sign on ? Deploy microservices with continuous integration or delivery, Blue-Green deployment In Detail Microservices are a hot trend in the development world right now. Many enterprises have adopted this approach to achieve agility and the continuous delivery of applications to gain a competitive advantage. This book will take you through different design patterns at different stages of the microservice application development along with their best practices. Microservice Patterns and Best Practices starts with the learning of microservices key concepts and showing how to make the right choices while designing microservices. You will then move onto internal microservices application patterns, such as caching strategy, asynchronism, CQRS and event sourcing, circuit breaker, and bulkheads. As you progress, you'll learn the design patterns of microservices. The book will guide you on where to use the perfect design pattern at the application development stage and how to break monolithic application into microservices. You will also be taken through the best practices and patterns involved while testing, securing, and deploying your microservice application. At the end of the book, you will easily be able to create interoperable microservices, which are testable and prepared for optimum performance. Style and approach Comprehensive guide that uses architectural patterns with the best choices involved in application development

Get command of your organizational Big Data using the power of data science and analytics About This Book ? A perfect companion to boost your Big Data storing, processing, analyzing skills to help you take informed business decisions ? Work with the best tools such as Apache Hadoop, R, Python, and Spark for NoSQL platforms to perform massive online analyses ? Get expert tips on statistical inference, machine learning, mathematical modeling, and data visualization for Big Data Who This Book Is For The book is intended for existing and aspiring Big Data professionals who wish to become the go-to person in their organization when it comes to Big Data architecture, analytics, and governance. While no prior knowledge of Big Data or related technologies is assumed, it will be helpful to have some programming experience. What You Will Learn ? Get a 360-degree view into the world of Big Data, data science and machine learning ? Broad range of technical and business Big Data analytics topics that caters to the interests of the technical experts as well as corporate IT executives ? Get hands-on experience with industry-standard Big Data and machine learning tools such as Hadoop, Spark, MongoDB, KDB+ and R ? Create production-grade machine learning BI Dashboards using R and R Shiny with step-by-step instructions ? Learn how to combine open-source Big Data, machine learning and BI Tools to create low-cost business analytics applications ? Understand corporate strategies for successful Big Data and data science projects ? Go beyond general-purpose analytics to develop cutting-edge Big Data applications using emerging technologies In Detail Big Data analytics relates to the strategies used by organizations to collect, organize and analyze large amounts of data to uncover valuable business insights that otherwise cannot be analyzed through traditional systems. Crafting an enterprise-scale cost-efficient Big Data and machine learning solution to uncover insights and value from your organization's data is a challenge. Today, with hundreds of new Big Data systems, machine learning packages and BI Tools, selecting the right combination of technologies is an even greater challenge. This book will help you do that. With the help of this guide, you will be able to bridge the gap between the theoretical world of technology with the practical ground reality of building corporate Big Data and data science platforms. You will get hands-on exposure to Hadoop and Spark, build machine learning dashboards using R and R Shiny, create web-based apps using NoSQL databases such as MongoDB and even learn how to write R code for neural networks. By the end of the book, you will have a very clear and concrete understanding of what Big Data analytics means, how it drives revenues for organizations, and how you can develop your own Big Data analytics solution using different tools and methods articulated in this book. Style and approach This book equips you with a knowledge of various NoSQL tools, R, Python programming, cloud platforms, and techniques so you can use them to store, analyze, and deliver meaningful insights from your data.

Deploy and manage VMware vSphere 6.5 components with ease. About This Book ? Simplified and to-the-point theory and practical recipes to deploy and manage vSphere 6.5 ? Discover the best ways to deploy stateless and stateful ESXi hosts and upgrade them ? Storage and network resource management ? Certificate management using VMCA ? Monitor the performance of a vSphere environment. Who This Book Is For If you are a system administrator, support professional, or anyone interested in learning how to install, configure, and manage a vSphere environment, then this book is for you. This task-oriented reference guide will also benefit consultants or infrastructure architects who design and deploy vSphere 6.5 environments. What You Will Learn ? Upgrade your existing vSphere environment or perform a fresh deployment. ? Automate the deployment and management of large sets of ESXi hosts in your vSphere Environment ? Configure and manage FC, iSCSI, and NAS storage, and get more control over how storage resources are allocated and managed ? Configure vSphere networking by deploying host-wide and data center-wide switches in your vSphere environment ? Configure high availability on a host cluster and learn how to enable the fair distribution and utilization of compute resources ? Patch and upgrade the vSphere environment ? Handle certificate request generation and renew component certificates ? Monitor performance of a vSphere environment In Detail VMware vSphere is a complete and robust virtualization product suite that helps transform data centers into simplified on-premises cloud infrastructures, providing for the automation and orchestration of workload deployment and life cycle management of the infrastructure. This book focuses on the latest release of VMware vSphere and follows a recipe-based approach, giving you hands-on instructions required to deploy and manage a vSphere environment. The book starts with the procedures involved in upgrading your existing vSphere infrastructure to vSphere 6.5, followed by deploying a new vSphere 6.5 environment. Then the book delves further into the procedures involved in managing storage and network access to the ESXi hosts and the virtual machines running on them. Moving on, the book covers high availability and fair distribution/utilization of clustered compute and storage resources. Finally, the book covers patching and upgrading the vSphere infrastructure using VUM, certificate management using VMCA, and finishes with a chapter covering the tools that can be used to monitor the performance of a vSphere infrastructure. Style and approach This book will quickly get you started with managing VMware components.

Master the capabilities of PostgreSQL 10 to efficiently manage and maintain your database About This Book ? Your one-stop guide to mastering advanced concepts in PostgreSQL 10 with ease ? Master query optimization, replication, and high availability with PostgreSQL ? Extend the functionalities of your PostgreSQL instance to suit your organizational needs with minimal effort Who This Book Is For If you are a PostgreSQL data architect or an administrator and want to understand how to implement advanced functionalities and master complex administrative tasks with PostgreSQL 10, then this book is perfect for you. Prior experience of administrating a PostgreSQL database and a working knowledge of SQL are required to make the best use of this book. What You Will Learn ? Get to grips with the advanced features of PostgreSQL 10 and handle advanced SQL ? Make use of the indexing features in PostgreSQL and fine-tune the performance of your queries ? Work with stored procedures and manage backup and recovery ? Master replication and failover techniques ? Troubleshoot your PostgreSQL instance for solutions to common and not-so-common problems ? Learn how to migrate your database from MySQL and Oracle to PostgreSQL without any hassle In Detail PostgreSQL is an open source database used for handling large datasets (big data) and as a JSON document database. This book highlights the newly introduced features in PostgreSQL 10, and shows you how you can build better PostgreSQL applications, and administer your PostgreSQL database more efficiently. We begin by explaining advanced database design concepts in PostgreSQL 10, along with indexing and query optimization. You will also see how to work with event triggers and perform concurrent transactions and table partitioning, along with exploring SQL and server tuning. We will walk you through implementing advanced administrative tasks such as server maintenance and monitoring, replication, recovery, high availability, and much more. You will understand common and not-so-common troubleshooting problems and how you can overcome them. By the end of this book, you will have an expert-level command of advanced database functionalities and will be able to implement advanced administrative tasks with PostgreSQL 10. Style and approach This mastering-level guide delves into the advanced functionalities of PostgreSQL 10

A practical guide designed to get you from basics to current state of art in computer vision systems. About This Book ? Master the different tasks associated with Computer Vision and develop your own Computer Vision applications with ease ? Leverage the power of Python, Tensorflow, Keras, and OpenCV to perform image processing, object detection, feature detection and more ? With real-world datasets and fully functional code, this book is your one-stop guide to understanding Computer Vision Who This Book Is For This book is for machine learning practitioners and deep learning enthusiasts who want to understand and implement various tasks associated with Computer Vision and image processing in the most practical manner possible. Some programming experience would be beneficial while knowing Python would be an added bonus. What You Will Learn ? Learn the basics of image manipulation with OpenCV ? Implement and visualize image filters such as smoothing, dilation, histogram equalization, and more ? Set up various libraries and platforms, such as OpenCV, Keras, and Tensorflow, in order to start using computer vision, along with appropriate datasets for each chapter, such as MSCOCO, MOT, and Fashion-MNIST ? Understand image transformation and downsampling with practical implementations. ? Explore neural networks for computer vision and convolutional neural networks using Keras ? Understand working on deep-learning-based object detection such as Faster-R-CNN, SSD, and more ? Explore deep-learning-based object tracking in action ? Understand Visual SLAM techniques such as ORB-SLAM In Detail In this book, you will find several recently proposed methods in various domains of computer vision. You will start by setting up the proper Python environment to work on practical applications. This includes setting up libraries such as OpenCV, TensorFlow, and Keras using Anaconda. Using these libraries, you'll start to understand the concepts of image transformation and filtering. You will find a detailed explanation of feature detectors such as FAST and ORB; you'll use them to find similar-looking objects. With an introduction to convolutional neural nets, you will learn how to build a deep neural net using Keras and how to use it to classify the Fashion-MNIST dataset. With regard to object detection, you will learn the implementation of a simple face detector as well as the workings of complex deep-learning-based object detectors such as Faster R-CNN and SSD using TensorFlow. You'll get started with semantic segmentation using FCN models and track objects with Deep SORT. Not only this, you will also use Visual SLAM techniques such as ORB-SLAM on a standard dataset. By the end of this book, you will have a firm understanding of the different computer vision techniques and how to apply them in your applications. Style and approach Step-by-step guide filled with real-world, practical examples for understanding and applying various Computer Vision techniques

5 real-world projects to help you master deep learning concepts About This Book ? Master the different deep learning paradigms and build real-world projects related to text generation, sentiment analysis, fraud detection, and more ? Get to grips with R's impressive range of Deep Learning libraries and frameworks such as deepnet, MXNetR, Tensorflow, H2O, Keras, and text2vec ? Practical projects that show you how to implement different neural networks with helpful tips, tricks, and best practices Who This Book Is For Machine learning professionals and data scientists looking to master deep learning by implementing practical projects in R will find this book a useful resource. A knowledge of R programming and the basic concepts of deep learning is required to get the best out of this book. What You Will Learn ? Instrument Deep Learning models with packages such as deepnet, MXNetR, Tensorflow, H2O, Keras, and text2vec ? Apply neural networks to perform handwritten digit recognition using MXNet ? Get the knack of CNN models, Neural Network API, Keras, and TensorFlow for traffic sign classification ? Implement credit card fraud detection with Autoencoders ? Master reconstructing images using variational autoencoders ? Wade through sentiment analysis from movie reviews ? Run from past to future and vice versa with bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks ? Understand the applications of Autoencoder Neural Networks in clustering and dimensionality reduction In Detail R is a popular programming language used by statisticians and mathematicians for statistical analysis, and is popularly used for deep learning. Deep Learning, as we all know, is one of the trending topics today, and is finding practical applications in a lot of domains. This book demonstrates end-to-end implementations of five real-world projects on popular topics in deep learning such as handwritten digit recognition, traffic light detection, fraud detection, text generation, and sentiment analysis. You'll learn how to train effective neural networks in R—including convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, and LSTMs—and apply them in practical scenarios. The book also highlights how neural networks can be trained using GPU capabilities. You will use popular R libraries and packages—such as MXNetR, H2O, deepnet, and more—to implement the projects. By the end of this book, you will have a better understanding of deep learning concepts and techniques and how to use them in a practical setting. Style and approach This book's unique, learn-as-you-do approach ensures the reader builds on his understanding of deep learning progressively with each project. This book is designed in such a way that implementing each project will empower you with a unique skillset and enable you to implement the next project more confidently.

Become an Ethereum Blockchain developer using a blend of concepts and hands-on implementations About This Book ? Understand the Ethereum Ecosystem and its differences from its rich cousin Bitcoin ? Explore the Solidity programming language and smart contract optimizations ? Get a developer’s perspective of Blockchain-as-a-technology with exposure to common challenges faced while building decentralized applications Who This Book Is For If you want to know the ins and outs of the Ethereum network and build your own decentralized applications, then this book is what you need! This book is for anyone who is interested in blockchain and wants to become an Ethereum developer. It’s ideal for existing Ethereum developers who want to develop Ethereum using smart contracts. Basic knowledge of cryptography is expected but is not mandatory. What You Will Learn ? Know how to build your own smart contracts and cryptocurrencies ? Understand the Solidity language ? Find out about data types, control structure, functions, inheritance, mathematical operations, and much more ? See the various types of forks and discover how they are related to Ethereum ? Get to know the various concepts of web3.js and its APIs so you can build client-side apps ? Build a DAO from scratch and acquire basic knowledge of DApps on Ethercast ? Be guided through the project so you can optimize EVM for smart contracts ? Build your own decentralized applications (DApps) by taking a practical approach In Detail Ethereum is a public, blockchain-based distributed computing platform featuring smart contract functionality. This book is your one-stop guide to blockchain and Ethereum smart contract development. We start by introducing you to the basics of blockchain. You'll learn about hash functions, Merkle trees, forking, mining, and much more. Then you'll learn about Ethereum and smart contracts, and we'll cover Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) in detail. Next, you'll get acquainted with DApps and DAOs and see how they work. We'll also delve into the mechanisms of advanced smart contracts, taking a practical approach. You'll also learn how to develop your own cryptocurrency from scratch in order to understand the business behind ICO. Further on, you'll get to know the key concepts of the Solidity programming language, enabling you to build decentralized blockchain-based applications. We'll also look at enterprise use cases, where you'll build a decentralized microblogging site. At the end of this book, we discuss blockchain-as-a-service, the dark web marketplace, and various advanced topics so you can get well versed with the blockchain principles and ecosystem. Style and approach This comprehensive guide takes a practical approach by showing you how to implement Blockchain in different Enterprise use cases. You’ll quickly brush up on the basics of the blockchain database, then learn the advanced intricacies of smart contract development.

Gain comprehensive insight into WPF mechanics and capabilities. About This Book ? Gain a strong foundation in WPF features and patterns ? Leverage the MVVM pattern to build decoupled, maintainable apps ? Increase efficiency through Performance tuning and UI automation Who This Book Is For The book is intended for developers who are relatively new to WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), or those who have been working with WPF for some time, but want to get a deeper understanding of its foundation and concepts to gain practical knowledge. Basic knowledge of C# and Visual Studio is assumed. What You Will Learn ? Understand the fundamentals of WPF ? Explore the major controls and manage element layout ? Implement data binding ? Create custom elements that lead to a particular implementation path ? Customize controls, styles, and templates in XAML ? Leverage the MVVM pattern to maintain a clean and reusable structure in your code ? Master practical animations ? Integrate WCF services in a WPF application ? Implement WPFs support for debugging and asynchronous operations In Detail Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is Microsoft's development tool for building rich Windows client user experiences that incorporate UIs, media, and documents. With the updates in .NET 4.7, Visual Studio 2017, C# 7, and .NET Standard 2.0, WPF has taken giant strides and is now easier than ever for developers to use. If you want to get an in-depth view of WPF mechanics and capabilities, then this book is for you. The book begins by teaching you about the fundamentals of WPF and then quickly shows you the standard controls and the layout options. It teaches you about data bindings and how to utilize resources and the MVVM pattern to maintain a clean and reusable structure in your code. After this, you will explore the animation capabilities of WPF and see how they integrate with other mechanisms. Towards the end of the book, you will learn about WCF services and explore WPF's support for debugging and asynchronous operations. By the end of the book, you will have a deep understanding of WPF and will know how to build resilient applications. Style and approach This book takes a recipe-based approach to teaching you how to create fault-tolerant WPF applications.