His work is adored by readers—one proclaims him “the greatest sportswriter who has ever walked the planet,” and another recently wrote in to nominate him for president of the United States in 2008—and his peers have recognized his work with two prestigious National Magazine Award nominations. If You Didn’t Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? is the first collection of Heavey’s sidesplitting observations on life as a hardcore (but often hapless) outdoorsman. Whether he’s hunting cougars in the southwest desert, scheming to make his five-year-old daughter fall in love with fishing, or chronicling his father’s slow decline through the lens of the numerous dogs he’s owned over seventy-five years, Heavey is a master at blending humor and pathos—and wide-ranging outdoor enthusiasms that run the gamut from elite to ordinary—into a poignant and potent cocktail. Funny, warmhearted, and supremely entertaining, this book is an uproarious addition to the literature of the outdoors.

    We know that it can make us healthier, nicer, a kinder parent, a better coworker, a more thoughtful spouse. But there’s a catch—you actually have to do it.Written for the many, many people whose schedule or skepticism has kept them from trying meditation, Just Sit is an approachable and visually engaging beginner's guide. Assuaging fears, answering questions, and providing real-world information to demystify the process, Sukey and Elizabeth Novogratz provide a hands-on look at what meditation really is, what is does, and how to do it. The authors make clear that meditation doesn't have to be complicated or follow a specific protocol. The most important part, to "just sit," can lead to a lifelong practice, tailored to anyone's lifestyle.A perfect blend of information and instruction, Just Sit covers everything you wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Sukey and Elizabeth address meditation myths and realities, offer advice on how to combat awkwardness, extoll the physical and emotional benefits of meditation, show readers how to find those precious minutes to meditate every day, and more. They also include an eight-week plan to get help readers kick start—and stay with—their own daily practice.Time to ditch the excuses. With this warm, encouraging, sassy guide, everyone will want to show up—and sit down—every day.

    Enhanced with gorgeous photography, this book covers subjects such as growing-medium options, rooftop gardening, cost-effective gardening solutions, planting tips, watering strategies (automatic water drip systems and hand watering), and more. The process of creating and building raised beds is a cinch, too, thanks to the extensive gallery of design ideas and step-by-step projects. This gardening strategy is taking serious root. Why? Several reasons:Raised beds allow gardeners to practice space efficiency as well as accessibility (the beds can be customized to be any height).Raised beds permit gardeners to use their own soil, and they can be designed with wheels for easy portability if partial sunlight is a problem.Water conservation is easier for gardeners who use raised beds.Pest control is assisted because most garden pests can’t make the leap up into the raised bed. For yards that struggle with drainage, raised bed gardening offers a no-brainer solution. Raised beds simply create a more interesting yard!Find out more about why everyone is joining the raised bed revolution, roll up your sleeves and join in!

    In November 2018, the largest number of women ever was elected to the 116th Congress, resulting in a grand total of 87 in the House and 23 in the Senate. Ushered in on a groundswell of grassroots support, diverse in background, age, professional experience, and ideology, the new freshmen immediately began making history—and noise. These include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman to be elected to the House; Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland, the first Native American women in Congress; Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim women representatives; and Abigail Spanberg, a former CIA agent. The Firsts will tell their stories--their triumphs and obstacles, alliances and controversies--as they arrive in Washington, D.C., ready to carry their historic legacy into institutional change.  Veteran Hill reporter Jennifer Steinhauer will follow these women’s attempts to transcend the partisan rancor and dysfunction of Congress from their positions as upstarts and backbenchers in a Democratic caucus directed by leaders old enough to be their grandparents. Moving on from their trailblazing campaigns to the daily work of governance, these women will confront whether a gender and generational shift in the House can overcome institutional inertia. Will they work with their party’s leadership, or will they work to overthrow it? Will their protests of the power structure fizzle, or will they create a lasting legislative framework for their ideas? How will they get on with their older peers, some of whom may feel resentful or pushed aside? What do their new roles mean for their lives back home, and how do they adjust to the weird, exciting, and often toxically seductive trappings of public office in the age of the twenty-four-hour news cycle?  Above all, will Washington change the changemakers—or will these women, many already social media stars and political punching bags, truly rock the boat?

    This book covers a range of genres, including action, adventure, and puzzle games complete with professional quality sound effects and visuals. It discusses game design theory and features practical examples of how this can be applied to making games that are more fun to play. Game Maker allows games to be created using a simple drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to have any prior coding experience. It includes an optional programming language for adding advanced features to your games, when you feel ready to do so. You can obtain more information by visiting book.gamemaker.nl. The authors include the creator of the Game Maker tool and a former professional game programmer, so you'll glean understanding from their expertise. The book also includes a DVD containing Game Maker software and all of the game projects that are created in the book—plus a host of professional-quality graphics and sound effects that you can use in your own games.

    As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience.Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than "good enough to ship."

    This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole--a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code.Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables.When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:SyntaxObjectsFunctionsInheritanceArraysRegular expressionsMethodsStyleBeautiful featuresThe real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

    Over the past five years, authors Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher have analyzed hundreds of examples of "bad code" (much of it their own) to determine why they’re bad and how they could be improved. Their conclusion? You need to write code that minimizes the time it would take someone else to understand it—even if that someone else is you.This book focuses on basic principles and practical techniques you can apply every time you write code. Using easy-to-digest code examples from different languages, each chapter dives into a different aspect of coding, and demonstrates how you can make your code easy to understand.Simplify naming, commenting, and formatting with tips that apply to every line of codeRefine your program’s loops, logic, and variables to reduce complexity and confusionAttack problems at the function level, such as reorganizing blocks of code to do one task at a timeWrite effective test code that is thorough and concise—as well as readable"Being aware of how the code you create affects those who look at it later is an important part of developing software. The authors did a great job in taking you through the different aspects of this challenge, explaining the details with instructive examples." —Michael Hunger, passionate Software Developer

    You can podcast to boost your business, promote your passion, share your opinions, or just have fun. The point is to say what you want to say to those who want to hear it. With step-by-step explanations, screen shots, and tons of examples, this guide clues you in on recording, producing, and hosting your very own podcast with info on:Finding your voice and your niche, whether you want to talk tech, make your own kinds of music, educate listeners, make people laugh, do soundseeing tours, serialize your novel, or invent a new podcasting genre Getting the bare necessities (if you don't already have them), including a microphone, recording software, and an audio card Audio editing software such as Audacity, Cakewalk for PCs, GarageBand for musicality, and Audio HiJack Pro for Macs Recording, including understanding dB (decibel levels), capturing or minimizing ambient noise, and more Editing with GarageBand or Audacity, adding bed music, and including intros and outros for a signature finishing touch You want your podcast to be heard. Podcasting For Dummies helps you launch and promote it with info on how to:Downsize your audio files with MP3 compression Change bit rates and sample rates in Audacity and iTunes Create and edit your ID3 tags in Audacity or iTunes Post your show notes using Movable Type or Libsyn Simplify the RSS 2.0 feed by using blogging software or a podcast-hosting company such as Audioblog.com, Podcastamatic, and Feeder Ping for publicity Communicate with your listeners on your blog, through online discussion groups such as Yahoo! Groups or Google Groups, or on online forums Of course, if you want to be a podcatcher (a listener) and subscribe to podcasts, this guide shows you how to do that, too! Complete with a companion podcast--a free weekly audio commentary that will keep you up to speed on the podsphere--this guide helps you get your message heard, loud and clear.

    With "React: Up and Running" you'll learn how to get off the ground with React, with no prior knowledge.This book teaches you how to build components, the building blocks of your apps, as well as how to organize the components into large-scale apps. In addition, you ll learn about unit testing and optimizing performance, while focusing on the application s data (and letting the UI take care of itself)."

    This book isn't about that - it's about everything else. As such, there's very little code inside, meaning everyone from PHP hackers to hardcore embedded C programmers will get a lot out of it.This book covers 10 topics crucial to being an amazing developer:Focus on Delivering ResultsFix Bugs Efficiently and CleanlyAdd Features with EaseDeal With Technical Debt and SlopPlay Well With OthersMake Technical DecisionsBootstrap a Greenfield SystemLearn to WriteInterview Potential Co-WorkersLead a Team

    The Story of Food is a sumptuously illustrated exploration of our millennia-old relationship with nearly 200 foods.A true celebration of food in all its forms, this book explores the early efforts of humans in their quest for sustenance through the stories of individual foods. Covering all food types including nuts and grains, fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, and herbs and spices, this fascinating reference provides the facts on all aspects of a food's history.Discover how foods have become a part of our culture, from their origins and how they are eaten to their place in world cuisine today.

    But do we really have more to do than the women who came before us? Maybe not.In Taming the To-Do List, Glynnis Whitwer exposes a seismic shift in society: from one in which most of us were proactive to one in which we carry the burden of having to respond—to every email, text, tweet, and message we receive. This creates a cycle where everyone else sets the priorities for our days rather than us directing our own lives. The result? We procrastinate, putting off the important stuff for later while we tend to the “urgent” stuff right now.It’s time to take back your schedule! Ready to tame that to-do list? This book shows you how.

    unsigned numbers- Floating point and fixed point arithmeticThis short, easily understood book will quickly get you thinking like a programmer.

    As a modern application developer you need to understand the emerging field of data management, both RDBMS and NoSQL. Seven Databases in Seven Weeks takes you on a tour of some of the hottest open source databases today. In the tradition of Bruce A. Tate's Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, this book goes beyond your basic tutorial to explore the essential concepts at the core each technology. Redis, Neo4J, CouchDB, MongoDB, HBase, Riak and Postgres. With each database, you'll tackle a real-world data problem that highlights the concepts and features that make it shine. You'll explore the five data models employed by these databases-relational, key/value, columnar, document and graph-and which kinds of problems are best suited to each. You'll learn how MongoDB and CouchDB are strikingly different, and discover the Dynamo heritage at the heart of Riak. Make your applications faster with Redis and more connected with Neo4J. Use MapReduce to solve Big Data problems. Build clusters of servers using scalable services like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Discover the CAP theorem and its implications for your distributed data. Understand the tradeoffs between consistency and availability, and when you can use them to your advantage. Use multiple databases in concert to create a platform that's more than the sum of its parts, or find one that meets all your needs at once.Seven Databases in Seven Weeks will take you on a deep dive into each of the databases, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to choose the ones that fit your needs.What You Need: To get the most of of this book you'll have to follow along, and that means you'll need a *nix shell (Mac OSX or Linux preferred, Windows users will need Cygwin), and Java 6 (or greater) and Ruby 1.8.7 (or greater). Each chapter will list the downloads required for that database.