This book, my first, was written under fairly difficult circumstances. The project coincided with the birth of my second child and first daugh- ter, high-pressure project deadlines relating to the Aqua streaming media encoder, the building up of a business with only bootstrap finance, a near-death experience and dealing with the negative conse- quences of the September 11, 2001 atrocity, the U.S. high-tech recession and the Nimda virus. I am particularly pleased to have completed this book during all of that.