It's just like skinning a raccoon, really. Ya outsource it.

Seriously, I do have some technical posts on the way. There's a reason I'm holding out on them. In the meantime, you're stuck with the philly-sophical side of the Coding Hillbilly.

So I recently went through a branding phase where I decided the hillbilly needed a more profeshunal look if he wuz to be taken seeryuslee. If you are viewing this post directly on my site (and I imagine exactly none of you are but that you'll be clicking the link to check it out shortly), you'll notice a brand spankin' (tee hee) new skin courtesy of the Design Goblin.

It was a bit of an odd decision to make and one that will seem all the more ironic hopefully sometime this week. On the one hand, I wanted something a little easier on the eyes than the "Sepia Gone Wild" theme of the last one. On the other hand, considering most people come at this with an RSS reader, who cares how it looks? (Side note: I'm not going to erase what I typed but now that I've said it, I shouldn't discount the power of the search engine.)

In implementing this theme, I did have to sell my soul a little and rely heavily on tables for layout. (Sorry, Justice.) But after looking at some of the things you have to do in CSS just to have two blocks of text on the same line, one aligned left and the other aligned right, I chose instead to go the tried-and-true route and make up some rationalization for it (which I'm still working on). And after taking that first step into the abyss, I pretty much abandoned all I know and love about CSS and even stopped using class names for the remainder of the theme.

So, such as it is, this is the new look of the Coding Hillbilly. In doing so, I've rendered more than a few posts on ASP.NET AJAX that much more confusing with their references to rounded corners and watermarks on the site. If I were an industrious person of the earth, I'd go back and add caveats...

Feel free to leave comments on the look if it's something you feel strongly about. Consider though that any negative feedback will result in some heavy editing of your name in the comment XML file.

Kyle the Reborn