Bitcoin Essentials. Gain insights into Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency and a powerful technology, to optimize your Bitcoin mining techniques

Albert Szmigielski

Blockchain is being billed as the technology of the future. Bitcoin is the first application of that technology. Mining is what makes it all possible. Exploring mining from a practical perspective will help you make informed decisions about your mining setup. Understanding what the future may hold for blockchains, and therefore for mining, will help you position yourself to take advantage of the impending changes.This practical guide starts with an introduction to Bitcoin wallets, as well as mining hardware and software. You will move on to learn about different mining techniques using the CPU, GPU, FPGA, and ultimately the ASIC as an example. After this, you will gain an insight into solo mining and pool mining, and see the differences between the two. The book will then walk you through large-scale mining and the challenges faced during such operations. Finally, you will take a look into the future to see a world where blockchain-based applications are commonplace and mining is ubiquitous.

Blazor WebAssembly By Example. Use practical projects to start building web apps with .NET 7, Blazor WebAssembly, and C# - Second Edition

Toi B. Wright, Scott Hanselman

Blazor WebAssembly helps developers build web applications without the need for JavaScript, plugins, or add-ons. With its continued growth in popularity, getting started with Blazor now can open doors to new career paths and exciting projects – and Blazor WebAssembly by Example will make your first steps easier. This is a project-based guide that will teach you how to build single-page web applications with Blazor, focusing heavily on the practical over the theoretical by providing detailed step-by-step instructions for each project. The author also includes a video for each project showing her following the step-by-step instructions, so readers can use them if they're unsure about any particular step.In this updated edition, you'll start by building simple standalone web applications and gradually progress to developing more advanced hosted web applications with SQL Server backends. Each project will cover a different aspect of the Blazor WebAssembly ecosystem, such as Razor components, JavaScript interop, security, event handling, debugging on the client, application state, and dependency injection. The book’s projects get more challenging as you progress, but you don’t have to complete them in order, which makes this book a valuable resource for beginners as well as those who just want to dip into specific topics.By the end of this book, you will have experience and lots of know-how on how to build a wide variety of single-page web applications with .NET, Blazor WebAssembly, and C#.

Blender 3D Printing Essentials. Learn 3D printing using the free open-source Blender software. This book gives you both an overview and practical instructions, enabling you to learn how to scale, build, color, and detail a model for a 3D printer

Gordon Fisher, Ton Roosendaal

Like computing, 3D printing has been around for decades but it was expensive and was only used for making complex prototypes. Now, prices have dropped and third-party printing services such as Shapeways have become available, making the technology available to everyone.Blender is an open source modeling and animation program popular in the 3D printing community. 3D printing demands more of a modeler than animation or virtual reality. The model maker must engineer their model to work in the real world. They must keep in mind the particular needs of the materials and printers that they are planning to use to print their model. This practical guide gives Blender users all the information they need to design high-quality 3D printed objects. With a solid exploration of the 3D modeling process, design considerations for 3D printing, plus step-by-step exercises, you will soon be comfortable making 3D objects for real-world enjoyment. Starting with an overview of 3D printing, this guide moves onto to precision measurement, fixing problems in a 3D model, and how to make it light and strong enough for real-world use.You will learn how to scale, build, and detail a model for a 3D printer. You will learn to color and decorate it, as well as making parts precisely in the size you want them, so that multi-part objects fit together smoothly. You will also learn tips on saving money when you have printed your model.With the help of this guide, you will be able to complete your project and learn how to export the file so it is ready for a variety of 3D printers.

Bootstrap 4 - Responsive Web Design. A step-by-step practical course enabling you to nail Bootstrap and make your web designs responsive

Silvio Moreto, Matt Lambert, Benjamin Jakobus, Jason Marah

Bootstrap framework's ease-of-use (along with its cross-browser compatibility, support for mobile user interfaces, and responsive web design capabilities) makes it an essential building block for any modern web application. With the first module, plunge into the Bootstrap frontend framework with the help of examples that will illustrate the use of each element and component in a proper way. You will get a better understanding of what is happening and where you want to reach. Also, you will gain confidence with the framework and develop some very common examples using Bootstrap. All these examples are explained step by step and in depth. The second module is a comprehensive tutorial; we'll teach you everything that you need to know to start building websites with Bootstrap 4 in a practical way. You'll learn about build tools such as Node, Grunt, and many others. You'll also discover the principles of mobile-first design in order to ensure that your pages can fit any screen size and meet responsive requirements. Learn Bootstrap's grid system and base CSS to ensure that your designs are robust and that your development process is speedy and efficient. Right from the first chapter of the third module, you'll delve into building a customized Bootstrap website from scratch. Get to grips with Bootstrap's key features and quickly discover the various ways in which Bootstrap can help you develop web interfaces. Once you reach the final pages of this book, you should have mastered the framework's ins and outs, and should be building highly customizable and optimized web interfaces. The course will enable you to rapidly build elegant, powerful, and responsive interfaces for professional-level web pages using Bootstrap 4.This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products:? Bootstrap by Example – by Silvio Moreto? Learning Bootstrap 4, Second Edition – by Matt Lambert ? Mastering Bootstrap 4 – by Benjamin Jakobus and Jason Marah

Bootstrap 4 Site Blueprints. Design mobile-first responsive websites with Bootstrap 4 - Second Edition

Bass Jobsen, Ian Whitney, David Cochran

Packed with trade secrets, this second edition is your one-stop solution to creating websites that will provide the best experience for your users. We cover six popular, real-world examples, where each project teaches you about the various functionalities of Bootstrap 4 and their implementation.The book starts off by getting you up and running with the new features of Bootstrap 4 before gradually moving on to customizing your blog with Bootstrap and SASS, building a portfolio site, and turning it into a WordPress theme. In the process, you will learn to recompile Bootstrap files using SASS, design a user interface, and integrate JavaScript plugins. Towards the end of the book, you will also be introduced to integrating Bootstrap 4 with popular application frameworks such as Angular 2, Ruby on Rails, and React.

Bootstrap for ASP.NET MVC. Click here to enter text. - Second Edition

Pieter van der Westhuizen

One of the leading open source frontend frameworks, Bootstrap has undergone a significant change and introduced several features that make designing compelling, next-generation UIs much simpler. Integrating Bootstrap with ASP.NET's powerful components can further enhance its capabilities.This book guides you through the process of creating an ASP.NET MVC website from scratch using Bootstrap. After a primer on the fundamentals of Bootstrap, you will learn your way around and create a new ASP.NET MVC project in Visual Studio. You will move on to learn about the various Bootstrap components as well as techniques to include them in your own projects. The book includes practical examples to show you how to use open-source plugins with Bootstrap and ASP.NET MVC and guides you through building an ASP.NET MVC website using Bootstrap, utilizing layout and user-interface components. At the end of this book, you will find some valuable tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your Bootstrap-integrated and ASP.NET MVC-integrated website.

BPEL and Java Cookbook. Written by an SOA guru to help you orchestrate web services, the 100 recipes in this book will make integrating Java and BPEL a smooth process. Using the examples you'll avoid common problems and learn sophisticated techniques

Jurij Laznik

The Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) has become the de-facto standard for orchestrating web services. BPEL and web services are both clamped into Service-oriented Architecture (SOA). Development of efficient SOA composites too often requires usage of other technologies or languages, like Java. This Cookbook explains through the use of examples how to efficiently integrate BPEL with custom Java functionality.If you need to use BPEL programming to develop web services in SOA development, this book is for you.BPEL and Java Cookbook will show you how to efficiently integrate custom Java functionality into BPEL processes. Based on practical examples, this book shows you the solutions to a number of issues developers come across when designing SOA composite applications. The integration between the two technologies is shown two-fold; the book focuses on the ways that Java utilizes the BPEL and vice-versa.With this book, you will take a journey through a number of recipes that solve particular problems with developing SOA composite applications. Each chapter works on a different set of recipes in a specific area. The recipes cover the whole lifecycle of developing SOA composites: from specification, through design, testing and deployment.BPEL and Java Cookbook starts off with recipes that cover initiation of BPEL from Java and vice-versa. It then moves on to logging and tracing facilities, validation and transformation of BPEL servers, embedding of third-party Java libraries into BPEL. It also covers manipulation with variables in BPEL different techniques of Java code wrapping for web service usage and utilization of XML fa?ßades.After reading BPEL and Java Cookbook you will be able to circumvent many of the issues that developers experience during SOA composite application development. 

Budowanie mikrousług

Sam Newman

Wykorzystaj potencjał architektury usług! Architektura mikrousług to sposób na odejście od dużych, monolitycznych aplikacji. Wyspecjalizowane usługi realizujące konkretne zadania i komunikujące się z otoczeniem pozwalają na lepsze zapanowanie nad kodem, są łatwiejsze do przetestowania oraz bardziej elastyczne. Jednak oprócz zalet mają też wady. Sięgnij po tę książkę i dowiedz się, jak najlepiej radzić sobie z architekturą mikrousług! Autor przedstawia w książce skuteczne techniki projektowania i korzystania z architektury mikrousług. W trakcie lektury kolejnych rozdziałów poznasz w szczegółach ideę mikrousług, korzyści ich stosowania, sposoby modelowania usług oraz skuteczne techniki dzielenia dużej aplikacji na mikrousługi. Ponadto zapoznasz się z możliwymi sposobami integracji: zdalne wywołanie procedur, REST i zdarzenia — to tylko niektóre z poruszanych kwestii. Na sam koniec zaznajomisz się z najlepszymi metodami testowania i monitorowania usług, zapewnisz im bezpieczeństwo dzięki kluczom API oraz innym technikom. Ta książka jest obowiązkową lekturą dla wszystkich osób chcących tworzyć nowoczesne systemy bazujące na architekturze mikrousług. Odkryj, jak można dostosować projekt systemu do celów Twojej organizacji stosując architekturę mikrousług Zapoznaj się z możliwościami integracji usług z pozostałą częścią systemu Zastosuj przyrostowe podejście do podziału monolitycznych baz kodu Wdrażaj pojedyncze mikrousługi korzystając z techniki ciągłej integracji Zbadaj złożoność testowania i monitorowania rozproszonych usług Zarządzaj zabezpieczeniami stosując modele użytkownik-usługa oraz usługa-usługa Zapoznaj się z wyzwaniami skalowania architektury mikrousług Przekonaj się, jak architektura mikrousług zmieni Twoje spojrzenie na aplikacje!

Budowanie mikrousług. Projektowanie drobnoziarnistych systemów. Wydanie II

Sam Newman

Mikrousługi są dla wielu organizacji wspaniałą alternatywą. Systemy rozproszone złożone ze współpracujących ze sobą mikrousług pozwalają na efektywne i elastyczne dostarczanie oprogramowania, które ściśle odpowiada na wymagania użytkowników. Dodatkową zaletą jest możliwość relatywnie szybkiego wprowadzania modyfikacji w systemie, co ułatwia płynne zaspokajanie zmieniających się potrzeb. Pewnym wyzwaniem dla programistów jednak może być złożoność powodowana przez właściwości architektury systemów rozproszonych, a także pojawiające się wciąż nowe technologie i metodyki, które znacząco zmieniają sposób korzystania z mikrousług. To drugie wydanie praktycznego przewodnika po projektowaniu, tworzeniu, wdrażaniu, skalowaniu i utrzymaniu systemów opartych na drobnoziarnistych mikrousługach. Publikacja została uzupełniona o informacje dotyczące najnowszych trendów i technologii związanych z mikrousługami. Sporo miejsca poświęcono na staranne przeanalizowanie przykładów dotyczących opisywanych koncepcji, a także pokazanie optymalnych sposobów rozwiązywania różnych problemów. Opisano również najnowsze rozwiązania dotyczące modelowania, integracji, testowania, wdrażania i monitorowania autonomicznych usług. Bardzo interesującą częścią są studia przypadków, w których przeanalizowano, jak organizacjom udaje się w praktyce w pełni wykorzystywać możliwości mikrousług. Dzięki książce dowiesz się, jak: przeprowadzać orkiestrację kontenerów i wdrażać rozwiązania bezserwerowe dostosowywać projekt systemu do potrzeb organizacji wybrać najlepszy sposób integracji usługi z systemem samodzielnie wdrażać mikrousługi skutecznie testować i monitorować usługi rozproszone zarządzać zabezpieczeniami dla rozszerzonej zawartości Architektura mikrousług: naucz się podejmować najlepsze decyzje projektowe!

Build Gamified Websites with PHP and jQuery. Using gaming principles to make learning more engaging, motivating, and interactive is a growing trend in web development. It's called gamification, and this book is the complete introduction to its theory and practice

Detrick DeBurr

Gamification involves the process of leveraging the features of real games into real life. A gamified website has the potential to increase user engagement, ROI, and learning. This book will help you build gamified websites with PHP and jQuery by making you understand the gamification design process to implement game mechanics in practical applications.Gamified websites are very popular amongst Internet users. The gamification of a web content draws users into action to empower them and help them develop new skills. Games engage user attention into the task and each task accomplished will mean the development and enhancement of new skills. This book will help you to apply the essence of games into real word applications such as business and education.Build Gamified Websites with PHP and jQuery aims at empowering and educating the users with an educational gamified website. The book walks through the process of developing a gamified website. Through the course of the book, you will learn gamification development process. The book emphasizes on the application of game mechanics to motivate the user. You will then use the Fogg behaviour model to influence the user behaviour. By the end of the book, you will see yourself building more engaging yet simple websites based on rational principles.

Building a 3D Game with LibGDX. Click here to enter text

Sebastián Di Giuseppe, Andreas Krühlmann, Elmar van Rijnswou

LibGDX is a hugely popular open source, cross-platform, Java-based game development framework built for the demands of cross-platform game development. This book will teach readers how the LibGDX framework uses its 3D rendering API with the OpenGL wrapper, in combination with Bullet Physics, 3D Particles, and Shaders to develop and deploy a game application to different platformsYou will start off with the basic Intellij environment, workflow and set up a LibGDX project with necessary APIs for 3D development. You will then go through LibGDX’s 3D rendering API main features and talk about the camera used for 3D. Our next step is to put everything together to build a basic 3D game with Shapes, including basic gameplay mechanics and basic UI. Next you will go through modeling, rigging, and animation in Blender. We will then talk about refining mechanics, new input implementations, implementing enemy 3D models, mechanics, and gameplay balancing. The later part of this title will help you to manage secondary resources like audio, music and add 3D particles in the game to make the game more realistic. You will finally test and deploy the app on a multitude of different platforms, ready to start developing your own titles how you want!

Building AI Applications with Microsoft Semantic Kernel. Easily integrate generative AI capabilities and copilot experiences into your applications

Lucas A. Meyer

In the fast-paced world of AI, developers are constantly seeking efficient ways to integrate AI capabilities into their apps. Microsoft Semantic Kernel simplifies this process by using the GenAI features from Microsoft and OpenAI.Written by Lucas A. Meyer, a Principal Research Scientist in Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, this book helps you get hands on with Semantic Kernel. It begins by introducing you to different generative AI services such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, demonstrating their integration with Semantic Kernel. You’ll then learn to craft prompt templates for reuse across various AI services and variables. Next, you’ll learn how to add functionality to Semantic Kernel by creating your own plugins. The second part of the book shows you how to combine multiple plugins to execute complex actions, and how to let Semantic Kernel use its own AI to solve complex problems by calling plugins, including the ones made by you. The book concludes by teaching you how to use vector databases to expand the memory of your AI services and how to help AI remember the context of earlier requests. You’ll also be guided through several real-world examples of applications, such as RAG and custom GPT agents.By the end of this book, you'll have gained the knowledge you need to start using Semantic Kernel to add AI capabilities to your applications.

Building an RPG with Unreal 4.x. Get to grips with building the foundations of an RPG using Unreal Engine 4.x

Alan R. Stagner, Steve Santello

Now that Unreal Engine 4 has become one of the most cutting edge game engines in the world, developers are looking for the best ways of creating games of any genre in the engine. This book will lay out the foundation of creating a turn-based RPG in Unreal Engine 4.12. The book starts by walking you through creating a turn-based battle system that can hold commands for party members and enemies. You’ll get your hands dirty by creating NPCs such as shop owners, and important mechanics, that make up every RPG such as a currency system, inventory, dialogue, and character statistics. Although this book specifically focuses on the creation of a turn-based RPG, there are a variety of topics that can be utilized when creating many other types of genres.By the end of the book, you will be able to build upon core RPG framework elements to create your own game experience.

Building Blazor WebAssembly Applications with gRPC. Learn how to implement source generators and gRPC in your Blazor apps for better performance

Václav Pekárek

Building Blazor WebAssembly Applications with gRPC will take you to the next level in your web development career. After working through all the essentials of gRPC, Blazor, and source generators, you will be far from a beginner C# developer and would qualify as a developer with intermediate knowledge of the Blazor ecosystem.After a quick primer on the basics of Blazor technology, REST, gRPC, and source generators, you’ll dive straight into building Blazor WASM applications. You’ll learn about everything from two-way bindings and Razor syntax to project setup. The practical emphasis continues throughout the book as you steam through creating data repositories, working with REST, and building and registering gRPC services. The chapters also cover how to manage source generators, C# and debugging best practices, and more. There is no shorter path than this book to solidify your gRPC-enabled web development knowledge.By the end of this book, your knowledge of building Blazor applications with one of the most modern and powerful frameworks around will equip you with a highly sought-after skill set that you can leverage in the best way possible.

Building Minecraft Server Modifications. Create and customize your very own Minecraft server using Java and the Spigot API - Second Edition

Cody M. Sommer

Minecraft is a sandbox game that allows you to play it in any way you want. Coupled with a multiplayer server powered by Spigot, you can customize the game even more! Using the Bukkit API, anyone interested in learning how to program can control their Minecraft world by developing server plugins.This book is a great introduction to software development through the wonderful world of Minecraft. We start by instructing you through how to set up your home PC for Minecraft server development. This includes an IDE complete with the required libraries as well as a Spigot server to test on. You will be guided through writing code for several different plugins. Each chapter teaches you new skills to create plugins of increasing complexity, and each plugin adds a new concept of the Bukkit API By the end of the book, you will have all the knowledge you need about the API to successfully create any type of plugin. You can then practice and build your Java skills through developing more mods for their server.

Building Minecraft Server Modifications. Discover how to program your own server plugins and augment your Minecraft server with Bukkit

Cody M. Sommer

If you have ever played Minecraft on a public server then the chances are that the server was powered by Bukkit. Bukkit plugins allow a server to be modified in more ways than you can imagine. Learning to program your own server mods will allow you to customize the game to your own liking.Building Minecraft Server Modifications is a complete guide that walks you through the creation of Minecraft server mods. From setting up a server, to testing your newly made plugins, this book teaches you everything you need to know. With the help of this book you can start practising for a career in software development or simply create something awesome to play with your friends.This book walks you through installing your own Minecraft server for you and your friends. Once your server is running, it will aid you in modifying the game by programming Bukkit plugins. You will learn how to program simple plugin features such as player commands and permissions. You will also learn more complex features including listening for events, creating a configurable plugin, and utilizing the Bukkit scheduler. All of this will be accomplished while writing your own server mods.You will become familiar with the most important aspects of the Bukkit API. Additional API features will become a breeze to learn after tackling these more complicated tasks.