Ryan Watkins

The Southeastern United States features some of the most serene and scenic hiking and backpacking opportunities anywhere in the country.In this collection, author and outdoorsman Ryan Watkins explores many of the area's hidden and not-so-hidden gems throughout Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and North Carolina.From the sprawling Chattahoochee National Forest to the eerie Dawson Forest Wildlife Management Area and beyond, Ryan recounts the historical and geographical aspects of some of the Southeast's greatest outdoor resources while sharing his personal tales from southern trails.

For nine days in early May, Ryan Watkins along with two brothers, Jeremy and Chris Jones, backpack the world-famous Appalachian Trail through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. From his very first steps into the Smokies, Ryan quickly learns the seventy-mile stretch of trail is far more difficult than he ever imagined.The trio battles through torrential rains, lightning, snow, fatigue, multiple encounters with bears and a standoff with a timber rattlesnake as they march more than eighty miles from Standing Bear Farms, a small hostel north of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, to Fontana Dam on the park's southern tip.Along the way, the group meets a colorful cast of hikers while experiencing the most physically demanding and personally rewarding nine days of their lives.This story is a painfully honest, unadulterated and sometimes raunchy retelling of a hike that is definitely not suitable for readers of all ages.

Harness the power of procedural content generation to design unique games with Unity About This Book • Learn the basics of PCG development • Develop a 2D game from start to finish • Explore all the different ways PCG can be applied in games Who This Book Is For This book is for Unity game developers, especially those who work on indie games. You should be familiar with Unity and C# scripting but you'll be able to jump in and start learning PCG straightaway. What You Will Learn • Understand the theory of Procedural Content Generation • Learn the uses of Pseudo Random Numbers • Create reusable algorithm designs for PCG • Evaluate the data structures for PCG • Develop smaller games with larger amounts of content • Generate content instead of spending time designing every minute detail • Learn when and how to add PCG to your game • Learn the fundamental techniques of PCG In Detail Procedural Content Generation is a process by which game content is developed using computer algorithms, rather than through the manual efforts of game developers. This book teaches readers how to develop algorithms for procedural generation that they can use in their own games. These concepts are put into practice using C# and Unity is used as the game development engine. This book provides the fundamentals of learning and continued learning using PCG. You'll discover the theory of PCG and the mighty Pseudo Random Number Generator. Random numbers such as die rolls and card drafting provide the chance factor that makes games fun and supplies spontaneity. This book also takes you through the full development of a 2D game. Starting with level generation, you'll learn how PCG can make the game environment for you. You'll move into item generation and learn the different techniques to procedurally create game items. Thereafter, you'll be guided through the more abstract PCG areas such as scaling difficulty to the player and even generating music! The book helps you set up systems within your games where algorithms create computationally generated levels, art assets, quests, stories, characters, and weapons; these can substantially reduce the burden of manually creating every aspect of the game. Finally, you'll get to try out your new PCG skills on 3D terrain generation. Style and approach An easy-to-follow, project-based guide that will let you build a complete game by the end of the book using PCG.

E-LEARNING COMPANION serves as a resource and quick-reference guide for any course that demands technology skills. In addition to helping students adapt previously mastered skills--such as time management, note-taking, and critical thinking--to the online environment, this text shows students how social networking, cloud file storage, wikis, and blogs can be utilized appropriately and effectively in a college course. Technical terminology and how-to tutorials help students become more capable and flexible online learners, and build skills that will support them throughout college and their future careers. The Fourth Edition is fully updated to be current and relevant for today's online learning environments, and also includes new Workplace Applications, and coverage of professional behavior and professional emails.

This invaluable resource can help transform online courses into exciting, meaningful, and active e-learning experiences. 75 e-Learning Activities is filled with scores of e-learning activities and games that offer trainers and instructors a handbook for creating interactive and engaging online courses. Much like the activities and games used in traditional classroom training, these e-learning activities can be used to increase interactivity, engage learners, accomplish learning objectives, develop online relationships, promote active learning, and create learning communities. With many examples available on the CD-ROM for easy online transfer, the activities can help elaborate on course content through the use of online technologies such as chat rooms, email, or discussion boards.

"The earliest decisions that lead to development projects are among the most critical in determining long-term success. This phase of project development transforms exciting ideas into project proposals, setting the stage for a variety of actions that will eventually lead (if all goes well) to desirable results. From deciding to propose a sanitation project in South Asia to selecting approaches that strengthen school management in South America, these decisions are the starting place of development. This book is your guide to having assessing needs and then making essential decisions about what to do next Needs assessments support this early phase of project development with proven approaches for gathering information and making justifiable decisions. Filled with practical strategies, tools, and guides, you will find that this book covers both large-scale formal needs assessments, as well as less-formal assessments that guide daily decisions. Included in the book is a blend of rigorous methods and realistic tools that can help you make informed and reasoned decisions. Use the tools featured in the book to conduct focus groups, develop surveys, prioritize needs, and lead group decision-making; developing a comprehensive, yet realistic, approach to identifying needs and selecting among alternative ways forward."

Strategic Planning for Success offers you a pragmatic guide to the design and development of practical and pragmatic strategic thinking and organizational alignment that will yield high-impact results and measurably add value to you, your organization, your clients, and society. Unlike other books on the topic, this volume goes beyond simply detailing the tools and techniques of design and development by clearly showing how to align what you do with what will be most valuable to all stakeholders. Using this unique approach will yield extraordinary results adding measurable value that flows from individual performance accomplishment to organizational and societal contributions.