Professional Linux® Programming

Acknowledgments

I sit here writing these acknowledgements on my 25th birthday, having spent many long evenings over the last year pouring over schedules, planning and even occasionally actually getting some writing done. When I first undertook to write this book, I could never have fully appreciated the amount of work it takes to put such a thing together nor the difficulties that would need to be overcome along the way. I started writing this book living just outside London and finished it less than a year later from my new home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, having decided to leave the country in the interim. Over the last year, a lot has changed for me both personally and professionally, but I am supported by a great network of friends and family who have helped make it possible.

First and foremost I would like to thank the team I have worked with at Wiley—Debra, Adaobi, Kit, Howard and Carol as well as numerous others whose job it is to turn this manuscript into a finished book. Kit Kemper deserves special thanks for enduring my writing schedule and somehow making that just about work out in the end, as does Debra Williams-Cauley for believing that this project was a good idea in the first place. Howard Jones helped to keep me honest by doing an excellent job as my editor. This book would not exist without the inspiration I received from my good friends (and former bosses) Malcolm Buckingham and Jamie McKendry at Resonance Instruments (later Oxford Instruments), who used to moan ...