Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On. Apply modern RL methods to practical problems of chatbots, robotics, discrete optimization, web automation, and more - Second Edition

Maxim Lapan

Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On, Second Edition is an updated and expanded version of the bestselling guide to the very latest reinforcement learning (RL) tools and techniques. It provides you with an introduction to the fundamentals of RL, along with the hands-on ability to code intelligent learning agents to perform a range of practical tasks.With six new chapters devoted to a variety of up-to-the-minute developments in RL, including discrete optimization (solving the Rubik's Cube), multi-agent methods, Microsoft's TextWorld environment, advanced exploration techniques, and more, you will come away from this book with a deep understanding of the latest innovations in this emerging field.In addition, you will gain actionable insights into such topic areas as deep Q-networks, policy gradient methods, continuous control problems, and highly scalable, non-gradient methods. You will also discover how to build a real hardware robot trained with RL for less than $100 and solve the Pong environment in just 30 minutes of training using step-by-step code optimization.In short, Deep Reinforcement Learning Hands-On, Second Edition, is your companion to navigating the exciting complexities of RL as it helps you attain experience and knowledge through real-world examples.

Sage ACT! 2011 Dashboard and Report Cookbook. Take your Customer Relations Management to new levels of efficiency with the 65+ recipes in this indispensable Cookbook. You’ll be creating and customizing superb dashboards and reports from your Sage ACT! data in no time

Karen Fredricks, Roy Laudenslager

Sage ACT! is the top selling CRM software application, and it helps businesses to centralize contact information, organize their calendars and notes, and ultimately maximize contact relationships to optimize business efficiency and profitability. In ACT! 2011, a variety of new dashboards and reports are available for producing graphical representations of client information and for measuring the success of your sales force.This cookbook is full of practical and immediately applicable recipes that will take you from being an ACT! report and dashboard novice to a report-writing pro in no time. The recipes will show you how to create custom dashboards and reports, as well as utilize the new templates available in recent ACT! versions. You will learn to use ACT!'s Report Editor and Dashboard Designer so that you will be able to easily view important information about your business and your sales force.The recipes begin by covering the most basic elements of the ACT! reports and continue to include several recipes that will guide you through creating brand-new reports. If you have an ACT! database, you need to be able to access it quickly and logically; this book will help you do just that.

HLSL Development Cookbook. Implement stunning 3D rendering techniques using the power of HLSL and DirectX 11

Doron Feinstein, Doron Feinstein

3D graphics are becoming increasingly more realistic and sophisticated as the power of modern hardware improves. The High Level Shader Language (HLSL) allows you to harness the power of shaders within DirectX 11, so that you can push the boundaries of 3D rendering like never before.HLSL Development Cookbook will provide you with a series of essential recipes to help you make the most out of different rendering techniques used within games and simulations using the DirectX 11 API.This book is specifically designed to help build your understanding via practical example. This essential Cookbook has coverage ranging from industry-standard lighting techniques to more specialist post-processing implementations such as bloom and tone mapping. Explained in a clear yet concise manner, each recipe is also accompanied by superb examples with full documentation so that you can harness the power of HLSL for your own individual requirements.

Instant Galleria How-to. Recipes to make you an expert user of the Galleria JavaScript framework

Nathan Van Gheem

Providing beautiful and usable galleries is an important aspect of the Web today. A gallery solution needs to integrate into your web application easily and seamlessly. Users expect mobile sites that function on par with their desktop counterparts‚Äîespecially for image galleries. In order to accomplish these tasks, you need to use a JavaScript (not Flash) that is extensible and scales to mobile devices.Instant Galleria How-to will teach you how to use Galleria in advanced scenarios to become an expert and integrate Galleria into your next project using themes and plugins to accomplish any task.This book teaches you how to use and create themes and plugins,  using the Galleria API through a series of recipes that include a plethora of code examples. You'll be taken through detailed instructions on the usage of JavaScript to customize Galleria.You will create your own theme (mobile friendly), plugin, and learn all the configuration options of Galleria. You'll learn how to customize Galleria by using its extensive API, optimize Galleria, integrate with Google Analytics, create tests for your customization, and integrate into your web application.You'll become an expert user of the Galleria framework, which will enable you to deploy beautiful, mobile friendly galleries for your next web project.

Backbase 4 RIA Development. Create Enterprise-grade Rich Internet Applications using the Backbase client framework

Ghica van Emde, Sergey Ilinsky, Ghica van Emde Boas

Backbase is a very powerful and complex JavaScript library, with many user interface components to help make web development easier. It allows the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that run within all major browsers but its powers and complexity mean that the choice of component can be overwhelming. Understanding when and how to use the right component might not always be straightforward. This book makes that easier.This is a practical book that teaches you how to use the Backbase Client Framework effectively, with a complete overview and many examples. A core developer of the framework puts the technologies used into a wider perspective of existing web standards and a seasoned software architect explains why XML-based UI definition produces better web applications.The transparent use of AJAX technologies, for example to submit forms, or to retrieve updates for data grids, can be taken for granted with the Backbase framework. Packed with examples, the book shows you how to get the most from the library of UI components, and then extend the library with its own custom language. With this book in hand, it is easy to enable AJAX within your web application. You will be able to use the Backbase framework effectively, from basic applications to complex, custom-defined UI components.This book contains a complete overview of all the UI libraries available within the Backbase framework and shows examples for each element described.The Backbase framework offers an innovative Tag Definition Language (TDL), which allows developers to create new UI components that can be used as XML elements, in the same way as using the built-in GUI library. Using TDL brings considerable development advantages, and this book explains how.Significant attention is also given to architectural aspects of designing a web-application, showing sample applications using a model-view-controller approach.

Mastering pandas for Finance. Master pandas, an open source Python Data Analysis Library, for financial data analysis

Michael Heydt

Oracle Information Integration, Migration, and Consolidation. The definitive guide to information integration and migration in a heterogeneous world

Prakash Nauduri, Tom Laszewski, Jason Williamson

The book covers data migration, data consolidation, and data integration, the three scenarios that are typically part of the information integration life cycle. Organizations typically find themselves migrating data to Oracle and either later, or at the same time, consolidating multiple database instances into a single global instance for a department, or even an entire company. The business savings and technical benefits of data consolidation cannot be overlooked, and this book will help you to use Oracle's technology to achieve these goals.This highly practical and business-applicable book will teach you to be successful with the latest Oracle data and application integration, migration, information life-cycle management, and consolidation products and technologies.In this book, you will gain hands-on advice about data consolidation, integration, and migration using tools and best practices. Along the way you will leverage products like Oracle Data Integrator, Oracle GoldenGate, and SQL Developer, as well as Data Hubs and 11gR2 Database.The book covers everything from the early background of information integration and the impact of SOA, to products like Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator. By the end you'll have a clear idea of where information and application integration is headed and how to plan your own projects.

Vulkan 3D Graphics Rendering Cookbook. Implement expert-level techniques for high-performance graphics with Vulkan - Second Edition

Sergey Kosarevsky, Alexey Medvedev, Viktor Latypov, Anton Kaplanyan

Written by experts with decades of rendering experience, this cookbook equips you with practical, hands-on recipes to master modern 3D graphics development by using bindless Vulkan.Focusing on Vulkan 1.3, this second edition starts by setting up your development environment, and quickly transitions to building a robust 3D rendering framework using self-contained recipes. Each recipe helps you incrementally enhance your codebase, integrating a variety of 3D rendering techniques and algorithms into a cohesive project. You’ll get to grips with core techniques, such as glTF 2.0 physically based rendering, image-based lighting, and GPU-driven rendering. The chapters help you grasp advanced topics, including glTF animations, screen-space rendering techniques, and optimization strategies. You’ll also learn how to use glTF 2.0 advanced PBR extensions and handle complex geometry data, ensuring your rendering engine is both powerful and performant. These new additions will enable you to create dynamic and realistic 3D graphics environments, fully utilizing Vulkan’s capabilities.By the end of this 3D rendering book, you’ll have gained an improved understanding of best practices used in modern graphic APIs and be able to create fast and versatile 3D rendering frameworks.

Instant IntroJs. Learn how to work with the IntroJs library to create useful, step-by-step help and introductions for websites and applications

Ehsan Arasteh, Afshin Mehrabani

IntroJs is a JavaScript and CSS3 library, used to create simple step-by-step help pages or introductions for websites and applications to show the users new features or whole application parts quickly and concisely. Instant IntroJs is a reference to get started with IntroJs right away.Instant IntroJs teaches you how to work with key IntroJs methods and events to create awesome step-by-step introductions. This book contains numerous examples of introductions and help pages with detailed explanations. It also shows you how to customize the library with your preferred stylesheet or integrate it with other server-side frameworks.Instant IntroJs teaches you how to work with the IntroJs API, methods, and events to create step-by-step introductions for websites and applications.This book will give you the knowledge to make the preferred changes to IntroJs in order to build a customized introduction. Instant IntroJs provides many examples of introductions and helps you with using HTML attributes and JSON configurations, as well as some descriptions about how to use and integrate IntroJs with other server-side libraries, such as Ruby on Rails and PHP Yii. You will be provided with information about the latest features of IntroJs that include multi-page introductions, creating introductions using JSON configuration and HTML attributes, methods to change or customize the library, and more.Instant IntroJs provides full and detailed examples of step-by-step introductions to help you easily learn and use the latest version of the IntroJs library.

Increasing Autodesk Revit Productivity for BIM Projects. A practical guide to using Revit workflows to improve productivity and efficiency in BIM projects

Fabio Roberti, Decio Ferreira

Increasing Autodesk Revit Productivity for BIM Projects takes a hands-on approach to implementing Revit effectively for everyone curious about this new and exciting methodology.Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples, this Revit book begins by explaining the principles of productivity in Revit and data management for BIM projects. You'll get to grips with the primary BIM documentation to start a BIM project, including the contract, Exchange Information Requirements (EIR), and BIM Execution Plan (BEP/BXP). Later, you'll create a Revit template, start a Revit project, and explore the core functionalities of Revit to increase productivity. Once you've built the foundation, you'll learn about Revit plugins and use Dynamo for visual programming and Power BI for analyzing BIM information.By the end of this book, you'll have a solid understanding of Revit as construction and design software, how to increase productivity in Revit, and how to apply multiple workflows in your project to manage BIM.

Hands-On Domain-Driven Design with .NET Core. Tackling complexity in the heart of software by putting DDD principles into practice

Alexey Zimarev

Developers across the world are rapidly adopting DDD principles to deliver powerful results when writing software that deals with complex business requirements. This book will guide you in involving business stakeholders when choosing the software you are planning to build for them. By figuring out the temporal nature of behavior-driven domain models, you will be able to build leaner, more agile, and modular systems.You’ll begin by uncovering domain complexity and learn how to capture the behavioral aspects of the domain language. You will then learn about EventStorming and advance to creating a new project in .NET Core 2.1; you’ll also and write some code to transfer your events from sticky notes to C#. The book will show you how to use aggregates to handle commands and produce events. As you progress, you’ll get to grips with Bounded Contexts, Context Map, Event Sourcing, and CQRS. After translating domain models into executable C# code, you will create a frontend for your application using Vue.js. In addition to this, you’ll learn how to refactor your code and cover event versioning and migration essentials.By the end of this DDD book, you will have gained the confidence to implement the DDD approach in your organization and be able to explore new techniques that complement what you’ve learned from the book.

Raspberry Pi Computer Vision Programming. Design and implement computer vision applications with Raspberry Pi, OpenCV, and Python 3 - Second Edition

Ashwin Pajankar

Raspberry Pi is one of the popular single-board computers of our generation. All the major image processing and computer vision algorithms and operations can be implemented easily with OpenCV on Raspberry Pi. This updated second edition is packed with cutting-edge examples and new topics, and covers the latest versions of key technologies such as Python 3, Raspberry Pi, and OpenCV. This book will equip you with the skills required to successfully design and implement your own OpenCV, Raspberry Pi, and Python-based computer vision projects.At the start, you'll learn the basics of Python 3, and the fundamentals of single-board computers and NumPy. Next, you'll discover how to install OpenCV 4 for Python 3 on Raspberry Pi, before covering major techniques and algorithms in image processing, manipulation, and computer vision. By working through the steps in each chapter, you'll understand essential OpenCV features. Later sections will take you through creating graphical user interface (GUI) apps with GPIO and OpenCV. You'll also learn to use the new computer vision library, Mahotas, to perform various image processing operations. Finally, you'll explore the Jupyter Notebook and how to set up a Windows computer and Ubuntu for computer vision.By the end of this book, you'll be able to confidently build and deploy computer vision apps.

Corporate Learning with Moodle Workplace. Explore concepts, implementation, and strategies for adopting Moodle Workplace in your organization

Alex Büchner

Moodle Workplace is a comprehensive extension to Standard Moodle, the world's most used learning management system (LMS) platform, empowering millions of learners worldwide. Moodle Workplace is suitable for businesses and organizations, from small enterprises to global corporations.Corporate Learning with Moodle Workplace is a comprehensive introduction to this latest product from Moodle, which facilitates collaborative learning in enterprises and larger teams. Complete with detailed descriptions, a variety of diagrams, and real working examples, this easy-to-follow guide will teach you everything you need to know to manage a Moodle Workplace system. You’ll learn how to manage your users along reporting lines and organize them in to tenants, organizations, positions, job assignments, and teams, before setting up typical HR processes such as induction, compliance, and reporting. Filled with real-world examples, the book covers blended and offline scenarios, including appointments and the Moodle Workplace mobile app.By the end of this Moodle book, you’ll have learned how to fully manage a Moodle Workplace instance.

FPGA Programming for Beginners. Bring your ideas to life by creating hardware designs and electronic circuits with SystemVerilog

Frank Bruno

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have now become a core part of most modern electronic and computer systems. However, to implement your ideas in the real world, you need to get your head around the FPGA architecture, its toolset, and critical design considerations. FPGA Programming for Beginners will help you bring your ideas to life by guiding you through the entire process of programming FPGAs and designing hardware circuits using SystemVerilog.The book will introduce you to the FPGA and Xilinx architectures and show you how to work on your first project, which includes toggling an LED. You’ll then cover SystemVerilog RTL designs and their implementations. Next, you’ll get to grips with using the combinational Boolean logic design and work on several projects, such as creating a calculator and updating it using FPGA resources. Later, the book will take you through the advanced concepts of AXI and show you how to create a keyboard using PS/2. Finally, you’ll be able to consolidate all the projects in the book to create a unified output using a Video Graphics Array (VGA) controller that you’ll design.By the end of this SystemVerilog FPGA book, you’ll have learned how to work with FPGA systems and be able to design hardware circuits and boards using SystemVerilog programming.

Learning QGIS 2.0. This book takes you through every stage you need to create superb maps using QGIS 2.0 – from installation on your favorite OS to data editing and spatial analysis right through to designing your print maps

Anita Graser

QGIS is a user friendly open source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. The popularity of open source geographic information systems and QGIS in particular has been growing rapidly over the last few years. More and more companies and institutions are adopting QGIS and even switching to QGIS as their main GIS.Learning QGIS 2.0 is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with clear, step-by-step exercises that will help you to apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. Containing a number of clear, practical exercises, this book will introduce you to working with QGIS, quickly and painlessly. If you want to take advantage of the wide range of functionalities that QGIS offers, then this is the book for you.This book takes you from installing and configuring QGIS, through handling spatial data to creating great maps. You will learn how to load and visualize existing spatial data and how to create data from scratch. You will perform common geoprocessing and spatial analysis tasks and automate them. We will cover how to achieve great cartographic output and print maps. You will learn everything you need to know to handle spatial data management, processing, and visualization tasks in QGIS.

Moodle 1.9 Teaching Techniques. Creative ways to build powerful and effective online courses

Moodle Trust, Susan Smith Nash, William Rice, William Rice

Moodle is the world's most popular, free open-source Learning Management System (LMS). It is vast and has lots to offer. More and more colleges, universities, and training providers are using Moodle, which has helped revolutionize e-learning with its flexible, reusable platform and components. It works best when you feel confident that the tools you have at hand will allow you to create exactly what you need.This book brings together step-by-step, easy-to-follow instructions and learning theory to give you new tools and new power with Moodle. It will show you how to connect with your online students, and how and where they develop an enthusiastic, open, and trusting relationship with their fellow students and with you, their instructor. With this book, you'll learn to get the best from Moodle.This book helps you develop good, solid, dynamic courses that will last by making sure that your instructional design is robust, and that they are built around satisfying learning objectives and course outcomes. With this book, you'll have excellent support and step-by-step guidance for putting together courses that incorporate your choice of the many features that Moodle offers. You will also find the best way to create effective assessments, and how to create them for now and in the future. The book will also introduce you to many modules, which you can use to make your course unique and create an environment where your students will get maximum benefit. In addition, you will learn how you can save time and reuse your best ideas by taking advantage of Moodle's unique features.