A celebrated writing coach with a sense of humor and a gentle touch, she’s also a master writer herself with a long and distinguished career in both teaching and practicing the art of writing.The Book on Writing contains 25 chapters in three sections: A dozen essential but easy-to-apply guidelines to good writing, from the importance of clarity to the value of a conversational tone. Paula LaRocque believes learning is easier and more successful when we are not only told but also shown. So her Book on Writing is chockfull of actual writing examples that supplement and illustrate principles that apply as naturally to fiction as they do to nonfiction.How to tell a story—from building suspense, to effective description, to the uses of metaphor and literary devices. Paula LaRocque also deals with the narrative “engine” and the value of the archetype in plotting and characterization—as well as with pace and speed and leveling what she terms writing’s “speedbumps.” A clear and concise handbook that deals with common problems in grammar, usage, punctuation, and style—the kind of problems that often trouble even wordsmiths. The handbook also debunks pesky language “rules” that are actually myths. The Book on Writing is one-stop shopping for writers. Read it once, and you’ll be a better writer. Read it often, and you’ll be among the best.

    Discover how to * Plan and implement a Web database application * Design and build a MySQL 5 database * Build dynamic HTML forms * Create scripts that store, retrieve, and update database information * Display database information in a Web page

    The preeminent expert in his field, Mr.Black draws upon years of experience as president of both theInternational and American Software Testing Qualifications boardsto offer this extensive resource of all the standards, methods, andtools you'll need.The book covers core testing concepts and thoroughly examinesthe best test management practices and tools of leading hardwareand software vendors. Step-by-step guidelines and real-worldscenarios help you follow all necessary processes and avoidmistakes.Producing high-quality computer hardware and software requirescareful, professional testing; Managing the Testing Process, Third Edition explains how to achieve that by following adisciplined set of carefully managed and monitored practices andprocessesThe book covers all standards, methods, and tools you need forprojects large and smallPresents the business case for testing products and reviews theauthor's latest test assessmentsTopics include agile testing methods, risk-based testing, IEEEstandards, ISTQB certification, distributed and outsourced testing, and moreOver 100 pages of new material and case studies have been addedto this new editionIf you're responsible for managing testing in the real world, Managing the Testing Process, Third Edition is the valuablereference and guide you need.

    It also covers add-on utilities and how to take advantage of clever features in the most popular UNIX utilities.Loaded with even more practical advice about almost every aspect of UNIX, this edition addresses the technology that UNIX users face today, differing from the first edition in a number of important ways.First, it slants the blend of options and commands more toward the POSIX utilities, including the GNU versions; the bash and tcsh shells have greater coverage, but we've kept the first edition's emphasis on the core concepts of sh and csh that will help you use all UNIX shells; and, Perl is more important than awk these days, so we've de-emphasized awk in this edition.This is a browser's book...like a magazine that you don't read from start to finish, but leaf through repeatedly until you realize that you've read it all. The book is structured so that it bursts at the seams with cross references. Interesting "sidebars" explore syntax or point out other directions for exploration, including relevant technical details that might not be immediately apparent. You'll find articles abstracted from other O'Reilly books, new information that highlights program "tricks" and "gotchas," tips posted to the Net over the years, and other accumulated wisdom.The 53 chapters in this book discuss topics like file management, text editors, shell programming -- even office automation. Overall, there's plenty of material here to satisfy even the most voracious appetites. The bottom line? UNIX Power Tools is loaded with practical advice about almost every aspect of UNIX. It will help you think creatively about UNIX, and will help you get to the point where you can analyze your own problems. Your own solutions won't be far behind.The CD-ROM includes all of the scripts and aliases from the book, plus perl, GNU emacs, netpbm (graphics manipulation utilities), ispell,screen, the sc spreadsheet, and about 60 other freeware programs. In addition to the source code, all the software is precompiled for Sun4, Digital UNIX, IBM AIX, HP/UX, Red Hat Linux, Solaris, and SCO UNIX.

    sed, awk, and regular expressions allow programmers and system administrators to automate editing tasks that need to be performed on one or more files, to simplify the task of performing the same edits on multiple files, and to write conversion programs.The sed & awk Pocket Reference is a companion volume to sed & awk, Second Edition, Unix in a Nutshell, Third Edition, and Effective awk Programming, Third Edition. This new edition has expanded coverage of gawk (GNU awk), and includes sections on:An overview of sed and awk's command line syntaxAlphabetical summaries of commands, including nawk and gawkProfiling with pgawkCoprocesses and sockets with gawkInternationalization with gawkA listing of resources for sed and awk usersThis small book is a handy reference guide to the information presented in the larger volumes. It presents a concise summary of regular expressions and pattern matching, and summaries of sed and awk.Arnold Robbins, an Atlanta native now happily living in Israel, is a professional programmer and technical author and coauthor of various O'Reilly Unix titles. He has been working with Unix systems since 1980, and currently maintains gawk and its documentation.

    With this practical book, you'll explore text-mining techniques with tidytext, a package that authors Julia Silge and David Robinson developed using the tidy principles behind R packages like ggraph and dplyr. You'll learn how tidytext and other tidy tools in R can make text analysis easier and more effective.The authors demonstrate how treating text as data frames enables you to manipulate, summarize, and visualize characteristics of text. You'll also learn how to integrate natural language processing (NLP) into effective workflows. Practical code examples and data explorations will help you generate real insights from literature, news, and social media.Learn how to apply the tidy text format to NLPUse sentiment analysis to mine the emotional content of textIdentify a document's most important terms with frequency measurementsExplore relationships and connections between words with the ggraph and widyr packagesConvert back and forth between R's tidy and non-tidy text formatsUse topic modeling to classify document collections into natural groupsExamine case studies that compare Twitter archives, dig into NASA metadata, and analyze thousands of Usenet messages

    It is also a practical, modern introduction to scientific computing in Python, tailored for data-intensive applications. This is a book about the parts of the Python language and libraries you'll need to effectively solve a broad set of data analysis problems. This book is not an exposition on analytical methods using Python as the implementation language.Written by Wes McKinney, the main author of the pandas library, this hands-on book is packed with practical cases studies. It's ideal for analysts new to Python and for Python programmers new to scientific computing.Use the IPython interactive shell as your primary development environmentLearn basic and advanced NumPy (Numerical Python) featuresGet started with data analysis tools in the pandas libraryUse high-performance tools to load, clean, transform, merge, and reshape dataCreate scatter plots and static or interactive visualizations with matplotlibApply the pandas groupby facility to slice, dice, and summarize datasetsMeasure data by points in time, whether it's specific instances, fixed periods, or intervalsLearn how to solve problems in web analytics, social sciences, finance, and economics, through detailed examples

    Learn how to leverage the Django web framework to its full potential in this advanced tutorial and reference. Endorsed by Django, Pro Django more or less picks up where The Definitive Guide to Django left off and examines in greater detail the unusual and complex problems that Python web application developers can face and how to solve them.Provides in-depth information about advanced tools and techniques available in every Django installation Runs the gamut from the theory of Django's internal operations to actual code that solves real-world problems for high-volume environments Goes above and beyond other books, leaving the basics behind Shows how Django can do things even its core developers never dreamed possible

    A daily tool of the trade for specialists. Handbook of Usability Testing gives you practical, step-by-step guidelines in plain English. Written by Jeffrey Rubin, it arms beginners with the full complement of proven testing tools and techniques. From software, GUIs, and technical documentation, to medical instruments, VCRs, and exercise bikes, no matter what your product, you'll learn to design and administer extremely reliable tests to ensure that people find it easy and desirable to use. * Requires no engineering or human factors training * A rigorous, step-by-step approach--with an eye to common gaffes and pitfalls--saves you months of trial and error * Liberally peppered with real-life examples and case histories taken from a wide range of industries * Packed with extremely usable templates, models, tables, test plans, and other indispensable tools of the trade

    You'd like to learn how to do more work with SQL inside the database before pushing data across the network to your applications. You'd like to take your SQL skills to the next level.Let's face it, SQL is a deceptively simple language to learn, and many database developers never go far beyond the simple statement: SELECT columns FROM table WHERE conditions. But there is so much more you can do with the language. In the SQL Cookbook, experienced SQL developer Anthony Molinaro shares his favorite SQL techniques and features. You'll learn about:Window functions, arguably the most significant enhancement to SQL in the past decade. If you're not using these, you're missing outPowerful, database-specific features such as SQL Server's PIVOT and UNPIVOT operators, Oracle's MODEL clause, and PostgreSQL's very useful GENERATE_SERIES functionPivoting rows into columns, reverse-pivoting columns into rows, using pivoting to facilitate inter-row calculations, and double-pivoting a result setBucketization, and why you should never use that term in Brooklyn.How to create histograms, summarize data into buckets, perform aggregations over a moving range of values, generate running-totals and subtotals, and other advanced, data warehousing techniquesThe technique of walking a string, which allows you to use SQL to parse through the characters, words, or delimited elements of a stringWritten in O'Reilly's popular Problem/Solution/Discussion style, the SQL Cookbook is sure to please. Anthony's credo is: When it comes down to it, we all go to work, we all have bills to pay, and we all want to go home at a reasonable time and enjoy what's still available of our days. The SQL Cookbook moves quickly from problem to solution, saving you time each step of the way.

    The aim of The Node Beginner Book is to get you started with developing applications for Node.js, teaching you everything you need to know about advanced JavaScript along the way on 59 pages.

    It contains sample programs to illustrate practical solutions to the type of real-world problems professional developers encounter.

    This completely revised edition shows you how to master key JavaScript concepts such as functions, closures, objects, prototypes, and promises. It covers APIs such as the DOM, events, and timers. You’ll discover best practice techniques such as testing, and cross-browser development, all taught from the perspective of skilled JavaScript practitioners.

    But you don't need to commit every XML syntax, API, or XSLT transformation to memory; you only need to know where to find it. And if it's a detail that has to do with XML or its companion standards, you'll find it--clear, concise, useful, and well-organized--in the updated third edition of XML in a Nutshell.With XML in a Nutshell beside your keyboard, you'll be able to: Quick-reference syntax rules and usage examples for the core XML technologies, including XML, DTDs, Xpath, XSLT, SAX, and DOM Develop an understanding of well-formed XML, DTDs, namespaces, Unicode, and W3C XML Schema Gain a working knowledge of key technologies used for narrative XML documents such as web pages, books, and articles technologies like XSLT, Xpath, Xlink, Xpointer, CSS, and XSL-FO Build data-intensive XML applications Understand the tools and APIs necessary to build data-intensive XML applications and process XML documents, including the event-based Simple API for XML (SAX2) and the tree-oriented Document Object Model (DOM) This powerful new edition is the comprehensive XML reference. Serious users of XML will find coverage on just about everything they need, from fundamental syntax rules, to details of DTD and XML Schema creation, to XSLT transformations, to APIs used for processing XML documents. XML in a Nutshell also covers XML 1.1, as well as updates to SAX2 and DOM Level 3 coverage. If you need explanation of how a technology works, or just need to quickly find the precise syntax for a particular piece, XML in a Nutshell puts the information at your fingertips.Simply put, XML in a Nutshell is the critical, must-have reference for any XML developer.

    Cryptography is vital to keeping information safe, in an era when the formula to do so becomes more and more challenging. Written by a team of world-renowned cryptography experts, this essential guide is the definitive introduction to all major areas of cryptography: message security, key negotiation, and key management. You'll learn how to think like a cryptographer. You'll discover techniques for building cryptography into products from the start and you'll examine the many technical changes in the field.After a basic overview of cryptography and what it means today, this indispensable resource covers such topics as block ciphers, block modes, hash functions, encryption modes, message authentication codes, implementation issues, negotiation protocols, and more. Helpful examples and hands-on exercises enhance your understanding of the multi-faceted field of cryptography.An author team of internationally recognized cryptography experts updates you on vital topics in the field of cryptography Shows you how to build cryptography into products from the start Examines updates and changes to cryptography Includes coverage on key servers, message security, authentication codes, new standards, block ciphers, message authentication codes, and more Cryptography Engineering gets you up to speed in the ever-evolving field of cryptography.