Working with O’Reilly to write books has always been a pleasure and this book is not an exception. I must say I am very fortunate to have fantastic friends and a fantastic support team around me, for without them, I wouldn’t be the person I am today and you wouldn’t be reading this book.
Andy Oram and Brian Jepson have been incredibly supportive of my efforts and have, for the fourth time, given me a chance to reach out to those who want to be educated further in cutting-edge technologies such as Grand Central Dispatch.
I am grateful for my wonderful friends who have been a continuous source of inspiration and support. Thanks to my friends and colleagues Sushil Shirke, Shency Revindran, Angela Rory, Chris Harman, Natalie Szrajber, Simon Whitty, Shaun Puckrin, Gary McCarville, Mark Harris, and Kirk Pattinson.
I would also like to thank everybody from O’Reilly who has helped me so far with my sometimes-incredibly-annoying requests. Thanks to Sarah Schneider for helping me with SVN setup and other technical DocBook questions. Thanks to Rachel James for helping me manage readers’ requests for my existing books. A big thank you goes to Betsy Waliszewski and Gretchen Giles of O’Reilly for arranging a three-day half-price offer on many O’Reilly titles to help with Japanese disaster relief. With all you wonderful readers’ help, O’Reilly donated $200,000 to Japanese disaster relief in March 2011.
Last but not least, I would like to thank you for reading this book. Your belief in my work is what keeps me writing more books that help readers be more productive and creative.