Blender 3D Incredible Machines. Design, model, and texture complex mechanical objects in Blender

Christopher Kuhn, Allan Brito

Blender 3D is one of the top pieces of 3D animation software. Machine modeling is an essential aspect of war games, space games, racing games, and animated action films. As the Blender software grows more powerful and popular, there is a demand to take your modeling skills to the next level. This book will cover all the topics you need to create professional models and renders. This book will help you develop a comprehensive skill set that covers the key aspects of mechanical modeling. Through this book, you will create many types of projects, including a pistol, spacecraft, robot, and a racer. We start by making a Sci-fi pistol, creating its basic shape and adding details to it. Moving on, you’ll discover modeling techniques for larger objects such as a space craft and take a look at how different techniques are required for freestyle modeling. After this, we’ll create the basic shapes for the robot and combine the meshes to create unified objects. We'll assign materials and explore the various options for freestyle rendering. We’ll discuss techniques to build low-poly models, create a low-poly racer, and explain how they differ from the high poly models we created previously. By the end of this book, you will have mastered a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations.

Engineering Data Mesh in Azure Cloud. Implement data mesh using Microsoft Azure's Cloud Adoption Framework

Aniruddha Deswandikar

Decentralizing data and centralizing governance are practical, scalable, and modern approaches to data analytics. However, implementing a data mesh can feel like changing the engine of a moving car. Most organizations struggle to start and get caught up in the concept of data domains, spending months trying to organize domains. This is where Engineering Data Mesh in Azure Cloud can help.The book starts by assessing your existing framework before helping you architect a practical design. As you progress, you’ll focus on the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework for Azure and the cloud-scale analytics framework, which will help you quickly set up a landing zone for your data mesh in the cloud.The book also resolves common challenges related to the adoption and implementation of a data mesh faced by real customers. It touches on the concepts of data contracts and helps you build practical data contracts that work for your organization. The last part of the book covers some common architecture patterns used for modern analytics frameworks such as artificial intelligence (AI).By the end of this book, you’ll be able to transform existing analytics frameworks into a streamlined data mesh using Microsoft Azure, thereby navigating challenges and implementing advanced architecture patterns for modern analytics workloads.

Puppet Cookbook. Jump-start your Puppet deployment using engaging and practical recipes

John Arundel, Thomas Uphill

PowerShell Troubleshooting Guide. Minimize debugging time and maximize troubleshooting efficiency by leveraging the unique features of the PowerShell language

Mike Shepard

Machine Learning for Algorithmic Trading. Predictive models to extract signals from market and alternative data for systematic trading strategies with Python - Second Edition

Stefan Jansen

The explosive growth of digital data has boosted the demand for expertise in trading strategies that use machine learning (ML). This revised and expanded second edition enables you to build and evaluate sophisticated supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning models.This book introduces end-to-end machine learning for the trading workflow, from the idea and feature engineering to model optimization, strategy design, and backtesting. It illustrates this by using examples ranging from linear models and tree-based ensembles to deep-learning techniques from cutting edge research.This edition shows how to work with market, fundamental, and alternative data, such as tick data, minute and daily bars, SEC filings, earnings call transcripts, financial news, or satellite images to generate tradeable signals. It illustrates how to engineer financial features or alpha factors that enable an ML model to predict returns from price data for US and international stocks and ETFs. It also shows how to assess the signal content of new features using Alphalens and SHAP values and includes a new appendix with over one hundred alpha factor examples.By the end, you will be proficient in translating ML model predictions into a trading strategy that operates at daily or intraday horizons, and in evaluating its performance.

Mastering Customer Success. Discover tactics to decrease churn and expand revenue

Jeff Mar, Peter Armaly, Mark Stouse

The rapidly evolving customer success landscape has left many Customer Success Managers (CSMs) struggling to keep pace with the complexities of this dynamic role. This Customer Success book bridges the gap by providing a comprehensive framework for mastering the essential skills required to excel.You’ll find out why the Customer Success function is indispensable today and gain expert insights into account segmentation, financial tiering, ideal customer profiles, and the complexity of customer engagement process design. You’ll then delve into playbook development, where you’ll find practical guidance for CSMs and Customer Success Operations Managers who want to improve their ability to drive desired business outcomes. Through insightful case studies, the authors illustrate their own experience of successful Customer Success implementation, showing you what it takes to exceed customer expectations with well-designed, proactive services. The journey doesn’t end there—it extends to highlighting the resilience required to build and operate successful Customer Success organizations.By the end of this guide, you’ll be equipped with the tactics and mindset necessary to stand out as a world-class Customer Success leader in your organization, driving growth at every turn.

Mastering Python High Performance. Learn how to optimize your code and Python performance with this vital guide to Python performance profiling and benchmarking

Fernando Donglio, Fernando Andres D Turissini

Exploring SE for Android. Discover Security Enhancements (SE) for Android to build your own protected Android-based systems

William Roberts, William Confer

Godot 4 Game Development Cookbook. Over 50 solid recipes for building high-quality 2D and 3D games with improved performance

Jeff Johnson

Want to transition from Godot 3 to 4? Look no further than the Godot 4 Game Development Cookbook. This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to become proficient with the latest GUI, GDscript 2.0, Vulkan 2D/3D rendering, shaders, audio, physics, TileSet/TileMap, importing, sound/music, animation, and multiplayer workflows. With its detailed recipes, the book leaves no stone unturned.The Godot 4 Cookbook begins by exploring the updated graphical user interface and helps you familiarize yourself with the new features of GDscript 2.0. Next, it delves into the efficient rendering of 2D and 3D graphics using the Vulkan renderer. As it guides you in navigating the new Godot 4 platform, the book offers an in-depth understanding of shaders, including the latest enhancements to the shader language. Moreover, it covers a range of other topics, including importing from Blender, working with audio, and demystifying the new Vulkan Renderer and the physics additions for 2D and 3D. The book also shows you how the new changes to TileSet and TileMap make 2D game development easy. Advanced topics such as importing in Godot 4, adding sound and music to games, making changes in the Animation editor, and including workflows for multiplayer in Godot 4 are covered in detail.By the end of this game development book, you’ll have gained a better understanding of Godot 4 and will be equipped with various powerful techniques to enhance your Godot game development efficiency.

Supercharge Your Slack Productivity. Discover hacks and tips for managing and automating your workflow with Slack and Slack bots

Moshe Markovich

Slack is an online communication tool that allows workplace teams to collaborate efficiently, effectively, and securely. It’s the leading channel-based messaging platform used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems, and drive their businesses forward. As a developer, you can use Slack to create tools such as bots that handle and maintain routine and time-consuming tasks. If you’re looking to set up a Slack workplace or build a Slack bot or app, this is the book for you.In this book, you’ll explore scenarios that show you how to set up a Slack workplace, build a Slack bot, or integrate your favorite tools. You’ll also learn how Slack can help you create a more collaborative, efficient, and coordinated work environment from any location. As you advance through the chapters, you'll find out how to manage your tasks and boost your business productivity by automating the trivial tasks. You'll also cover more advanced features such as using a Slack bot to complete tasks, including automating message responses and accessing personal reminders.By the end of this Slack book, you'll have learned how to use Slack effectively to communicate with your team and build bots and have gained a solid understanding of how the platform can help you to progress in your industry.

101 UX Principles. Actionable Solutions for Product Design Success - Second Edition

Will Grant

Design is everywhere. Take a look around you right now and consider the products and services we use every day. You'll notice that our computer and phone operating systems, our web browsers, and the apps we use to work, order food, socialize and even date have been designed by UX specialists to offer you the best experiences when using their products and services.Of course, not all online experiences are designed with our best interests in mind. That's exactly why UX design is such an exciting and rewarding field?by learning the logic behind what people engage with and implementing it in your UX work, you can craft intuitive, accessible, and highly functional designs for your digital products.The 2nd edition of 101 UX Principles is the perfect companion when working on digital projects and making the right decisions for your users. From landing pages and checkout basket UIs to startup launch products and enterprise software solutions, a rich user experience design will maximize the success of your product.The audiobook includes an exclusive invitation to join an online UX designers' community, where you can read the book alongside peers and other UX designers, and participate in various challenges and discussions with the author. See you there!

Grome Terrain Modeling with Ogre3D, UDK, and Unity3D. Create massive terrains and export them to the most popular game engines

Richard A. Hawley

Java Projects. Learn the fundamentals of Java 11 programming by building industry grade practical projects - Second Edition

Peter Verhas

Java is one of the most commonly used software languages by programmers and developers. In this book, you’ll learn the new features of Java 11 quickly and experience a simple and powerful approach to software development. You’ll see how to use the Java runtime tools, understand the Java environment, and create a simple namesorting Java application. Further on, you'll learn about advanced technologies that Java delivers, such as web programming and parallel computing, and will develop a mastermind game. Moving on, we provide more simple examples, to build a foundation before diving into some complex data structure problems that will solidify your Java 11 skills. With a special focus on the features of new projects: Project Valhalla, Project Panama, Project Amber, and Project Loom, this book will help you get employed as a top-notch Java developer. By the end of the book, you’ll have a firm foundation to continue your journey toward becoming a professional Java developer.

Pragmatic Microservices with C# and Azure. Build, deploy, and scale microservices efficiently to meet modern software demands

Christian Nagel

Pragmatic Microservices with C# and Azure introduces .NET Aspire for microservices, focusing on defining an app model, utilizing service discovery, and integrating with Azure's native cloud services. Written by a Microsoft MVP and seasoned software architect with over two decades of experience in .NET, this book will help you get to grips with robust service development using .NET features like minimal APIs, gRPC, and SignalR for real-time communication. Aside from covering essential aspects of DevOps, including testing methodologies such as unit, integration, and load testing, you’ll also explore logging and monitoring including OpenTelemetry using tools like Azure Log Analytics, Application Insights, Prometheus, and Grafana. You'll learn about asynchronous communication leveraging queues and events through Azure Event Hub and Apache. Throughout the book, theoretical aspects will be complemented by practical skills gained from building and deploying a fully functional microservices-based application. By the end, you’ll possess a deep understanding of microservices architecture, hands-on experience with various .NET technologies and Azure services, and the ability to design, build, deploy, and manage microservices applications effectively in both on-premises and cloud environments.

40 Algorithms Every Programmer Should Know. Hone your problem-solving skills by learning different algorithms and their implementation in Python

Imran Ahmad

Algorithms have always played an important role in both the science and practice of computing. Beyond traditional computing, the ability to use algorithms to solve real-world problems is an important skill that any developer or programmer must have. This book will help you not only to develop the skills to select and use an algorithm to solve real-world problems but also to understand how it works.You’ll start with an introduction to algorithms and discover various algorithm design techniques, before exploring how to implement different types of algorithms, such as searching and sorting, with the help of practical examples. As you advance to a more complex set of algorithms, you'll learn about linear programming, page ranking, and graphs, and even work with machine learning algorithms, understanding the math and logic behind them. Further on, case studies such as weather prediction, tweet clustering, and movie recommendation engines will show you how to apply these algorithms optimally. Finally, you’ll become well versed in techniques that enable parallel processing, giving you the ability to use these algorithms for compute-intensive tasks.By the end of this book, you'll have become adept at solving real-world computational problems by using a wide range of algorithms.

The Road to Azure Cost Governance. Techniques to tame your monthly Azure bill with a continuous optimization journey for your apps

Paola E. Annis, Giuliano Caglio, Marco Barra Caracciolo

Cloud teams and ICT cost controllers working with Azure will be able to put their knowledge to work with this practical guide, introducing a process model for structured cost governance. The Road to Azure Cost Governance is a must-read if you find yourself facing the harsh reality of monthly cloud costs gradually getting out of control.Starting with how resources are created and managed, everything you need to know in order to track, display, optimize, rightsize, and clean up cloud resources will be tackled with a workflow approach that will leave the choice of operation to you (be it the Azure CLI, automation, logic apps, or even custom code). Using real-world datasets, you'll learn everything from basic cost management to modeling your cloud spend across your technical resources in a sustainable way. The book will also show you how to create a recursive optimization process that will give you full control of spending and savings, while helping you reserve budget for future cloud projects and innovation.By the end of this Azure book, you'll have a clear understanding and control of your cloud spend along with knowledge of a number of cost-saving techniques used by companies around the world, application optimization patterns, and the carbon impact of your cloud infrastructure.