No book is born in a vacuum. There must always be somebody who needs the book, somebody who will read and use it, and somebody who will write it. I walked with the idea of this book for a long time. However, its final concept came into reality during my lectures, in February 2005, at the Universiti Malaysia Sabah in Borneo. I realized that my students needed a bit more than just my lectures. They needed a text that they could follow during lab sessions...