Built From Scratch

One of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories of the past twenty years When a friend told Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank that “you’ve just been hit in the ass by a golden horseshoe,” they thought he was crazy. After all, both had just been fired. What the friend, Ken Langone, meant was that they now had the opportunity to create the kind of wide-open warehouse store that would help spark a consumer revolution through low prices, excellent customer service, and wide availability of products. Built from Scratch is the story of how two incredibly determined and creative people—and their associates—built a business from nothing to 761 stores and $30 billion in sales in a mere twenty years. Built from Scratch tells many colorful stories associated with The Home Depot’s founding and meteoric rise; shows that a company can be a tough, growth-oriented competitor and still maintain a high sense of responsibility to the community; and provides great lessons useful to people in any business, from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

* An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller * From founder Kent Taylor, the incredible made-from-scratch success story of Texas Roadhouse. In Made From Scratch, the late business maverick Kent Taylor tells the legendary story of Texas Roadhouse and in the process reveals its recipe for success: embracing unorthodox business practices. Because isn’t it a little unusual for a company to do almost no advertising? Is it wild to give away free peanuts and rolls and keep prices low, even as costs rise, or to keep the menu basically the same since it opened? Does it fly in the face of reason to prohibit coats and ties at headquarters and to have a CEO who dressed like he was part of the landscaping crew? These business practices might be unconventional, but for Kent and Texas Roadhouse, they worked. What Kent and his Roadies cooked up is an island of misfits who are cool with being different. They love to have fun, but are serious about following meticulous recipes to serve up hand-cut steaks, fall-off-the-bone ribs, made-from-scratch sides, ice-cold beer, and irresistible fresh-baked bread. It’s Legendary Food, Legendary Service, the Texas Roadhouse way. To show how this company became a staple of American dining and survived a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, Kent took a trip back in time to offer the lessons learned from his pathbreaking life, revealing how a distracted kid from Louisville, Kentucky, created anything worthwhile at all.

With the resurgence of neural networks in the 2010s, deep learning has become essential for machine learning practitioners and even many software engineers. This book provides a comprehensive introduction for data scientists and software engineers with machine learning experience. You’ll start with deep learning basics and move quickly to the details of important advanced architectures, implementing everything from scratch along the way. Author Seth Weidman shows you how neural networks work using a first principles approach. You’ll learn how to apply multilayer neural networks, convolutional neural networks, and recurrent neural networks from the ground up. With a thorough understanding of how neural networks work mathematically, computationally, and conceptually, you’ll be set up for success on all future deep learning projects. This book provides: Extremely clear and thorough mental models—accompanied by working code examples and mathematical explanations—for understanding neural networks Methods for implementing multilayer neural networks from scratch, using an easy-to-understand object-oriented framework Working implementations and clear-cut explanations of convolutional and recurrent neural networks Implementation of these neural network concepts using the popular PyTorch framework

Now a limited Netflix series starring Zoe Saldana! This Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller is “a captivating story of love lost and found” (Kirkus Reviews) set in the lush Sicilian countryside, where one woman discovers the healing powers of food, family, and unexpected grace in her darkest hours. It was love at first sight when actress Tembi met professional chef, Saro, on a street in Florence. There was just one problem: Saro’s traditional Sicilian family did not approve of his marrying a black American woman. However, the couple, heartbroken but undeterred, forged on. They built a happy life in Los Angeles, with fulfilling careers, deep friendships, and the love of their lives: a baby girl they adopted at birth. Eventually, they reconciled with Saro’s family just as he faced a formidable cancer that would consume all their dreams. From Scratch chronicles three summers Tembi spends in Sicily with her daughter, Zoela, as she begins to piece together a life without her husband in his tiny hometown hamlet of farmers. Where once Tembi was estranged from Saro’s family, now she finds solace and nourishment—literally and spiritually—at her mother-in-law’s table. In the Sicilian countryside, she discovers the healing gifts of simple fresh food, the embrace of a close knit community, and timeless traditions and wisdom that light a path forward. All along the way she reflects on her and Saro’s romance—an incredible love story that leaps off the pages. In Sicily, it is said that every story begins with a marriage or a death—in Tembi Locke’s case, it is both. “Locke’s raw and heartfelt memoir will uplift readers suffering from the loss of their own loved ones” (Publishers Weekly), but her story is also about love, finding a home, and chasing flavor as an act of remembrance. From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and those who needed a powerful reminder that life is...delicious.

"Hello, my name is Thomas Thwaites, and I have made a toaster." So begins The Toaster Project, the author's nine-month-long journey from his local appliance store to remote mines in the UK to his mother's backyard, where he creates a crude foundry. Along the way, he learns that an ordinary toaster is made up of 404 separate parts, that the best way to smelt metal at home is by using a method found in a fifteenth-century treatise, and that plastic is almost impossible to make from scratch. In the end, Thwaites's homemade toaster—a haunting and strangely beautiful object—cost 250 times more than the toaster he bought at the store and involved close to two thousand miles of travel to some of Britain's remotest locations. The Toaster Project may seem foolish, even insane. Yet, Thwaites's quixotic tale, told with self-deprecating wit, helps us reflect on the costs and perils of our cheap consumer culture, and in so doing reveals much about the organization of the modern world.

Computer Graphics from Scratch demystifies the algorithms used in modern graphics software and guides beginners through building photorealistic 3D renders. Computer graphics programming books are often math-heavy and intimidating for newcomers. Not this one. Computer Graphics from Scratch takes a simpler approach by keeping the math to a minimum and focusing on only one aspect of computer graphics, 3D rendering. You’ll build two complete, fully functional renderers: a raytracer, which simulates rays of light as they bounce off objects, and a rasterizer, which converts 3D models into 2D pixels. As you progress you’ll learn how to create realistic reflections and shadows, and how to render a scene from any point of view. Pseudocode examples throughout make it easy to write your renderers in any language, and links to live JavaScript demos of each algorithm invite you to explore further on your own. Learn how to: Use perspective projection to draw 3D objects on a 2D plane Simulate the way rays of light interact with surfaces Add mirror-like reflections and cast shadows to objects Render a scene from any camera position using clipping planes Use flat, Gouraud, and Phong shading to mimic real surface lighting Paint texture details onto basic shapes to create realistic-looking objects Whether you’re an aspiring graphics engineer or a novice programmer curious about how graphics algorithms work, Gabriel Gambetta’s simple, clear explanations will quickly put computer graphics concepts and rendering techniques within your reach. All you need is basic coding knowledge and high school math. Computer Graphics from Scratch will cover the rest.

A brilliant but socially inept robotics engineer builds her own wedding date--and learns more about love than she ever expected--in this hilarious and heartwarming debut novel. "Prepare to fall in love!" --Aimee Agresti, author of Campaign Widows When she couldn't find Mr. Right, she built him. Dating is hard. Being dateless at your perfect sister's wedding is harder. Meet Kelly. Twenty-nine, go-getter, a brilliant robotics engineer, and perpetually single. So when her younger sister's wedding looms and her attempts to find a date become increasingly cringeworthy, Kelly does the only logical thing: she builds her own boyfriend. Ethan is perfect: gorgeous, attentive, and smart--all topped off by a mechanical heart endlessly devoted to her. Not to mention he's good with her mother. When she's with him, Kelly discovers a more confident, spontaneous version of herself--the person she'd always dreamed she could be. But as the struggle to keep Ethan's identity secret threatens to detonate her career, Kelly knows she has to kiss her perfect man good-bye. There's just one problem: she's falling for him.

Scratch 3.0 has landed! Stay ahead of the curve with this fully updated guide for beginner coders. Coding is not only a highly sought-after skill in our digital world, but it also teaches kids valuable skills for life after school. This book teaches important strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas, all while creating games to play with their friends. Children will enjoy the step-by-step visual approach that makes even the most difficult coding concepts easy to master. They will discover the fundamentals of computer programming and learn to code through a blend of coding theory and the practical task of building computer games themselves. The reason coding theory is taught through practical tasks is so that young programmers don't just learn how computer code works - they learn why it's done that way. With Coding Games in Scratch, kids can build single and multiplayer platform games, create puzzles and memory games, race through mazes, add animation, and more. It also supports STEM education initiatives and the maker movement. Follow Simple Steps – Improve Your Skills – Share Your Games! If you like playing computer games, why not create your own? Essential coding concepts are explained using eight build-along game projects. Coding Games In Scratch guides young coders step-by-step, using visual samples, easy-to-follow instructions, and fun pixel art. This coding book for kids has everything you need to build amazing Scratch 3.0 games, including thrilling racing challenges, zany platform games, and fiendish puzzles. Follow the simple steps to become an expert coder using the latest version of the popular programming language Scratch 3.0 in this new edition. Improve your coding skills and create your own games before remixing and customizing them. Share your games online and challenge friends and family to beat each other's scores! In this book, you will: - Learn about setting the scene, what makes a good game and playability - Discover objects, rules, and goals - Explore hacks and tweaks, camera angles, fine-tuning and controls - And much more Computer coding teaches kids how to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically, and is quickly becoming a necessary and sought-after skill. DK's computer coding books for kids are full of fun exercises with step-by-step guidance, making them the perfect introductory tools for building vital skills in computer programming. Add Coding Projects in Scratch and Coding Projects in Python to your collection.