I’m imagining the thought process of some of the session voters for the upcoming Mix conference. “Hey, here’s one on Open Rasta by the Coding Hillbilly. You know what would be funny? Let’s all vote for it even though he just submitted it on a lark to get some practice after taking time out from speaking engagements. It’ll be fun watching him explain to Mrs. Billy that he *has* to go to Vegas four weeks before he’s heading to Philadelphia for Udi Dahan’s course.”

Yeah, you’re all a bunch o’ comedians, ain’t ya. Well, I’ll show you. You’ll go to my Open Rasta session ready to watch me squirm and you’ll see no such thing. I don’t want to overhype it or anything but I can tell you without a doubt that this session is going to restore your virginity and then take it from you again. Savagely (but tastefully; last thing I need is a bunch of people accusing me of statutory rape in the middle of a presentation). Then maybe next time you’ll think twice before crossing a coder of the earth, woncha!

Couple of interesting tidbits on the session:

• Somewhere along the line, the original title got changed. I submitted it with: “Open Rasta: The REST framework MVC wants to be.”
• I also submitted a session on S#arp Architecture. (What can I say? I’m a web framework kinda guy.) I found it interesting that the Open Rasta one got chosen and the #arch one didn’t.

So while you’re waiting for Mix, have a gander at Open Rasta to see what all the hubbub is about. Between this and my new contract using Google Web Toolkit, that should set the stage for my post activity for the next few months.

Kyle the Bastardized

I’m going to pretend a whole bunch of you have asked where the Coding Hillbilly nom de plume comes from instead of just one or two.

For several years, my brother and I ran a website, the remnants of which can be seen here. (I’d recommend turning your speakers off before clicking that.) It debuted auspiciously almost ten years ago under the name The Hillbaley Ho Down and Extravaganza. My brother came up with the name as a play on our last name.

The website was an absolute blast to write and did its thing for a few years until it dawned on us that very few of our family, in fact, read. But during that time, I started the technical arm of the Ho Down and used the name of the parent site as the basis for this one. But the name Coding Hillbaley would make sense only to my family who, again, don’t read. So I chose a more mainstream version.

Next question. The avatar I use, seen at the left. This I also stole from my brother. My grandmother has this knick-knack thing she bought from who-knows-where (our money is on a Mexican border town but I shan’t elaborate). My brother took some photos of it, did some touch-ups, and voila!

The original photos of the item are below:

The nice part of the photo is how much it aligns with both the theme of my blog, my general attitude toward software development, and my family in general. Ya, he looks like a hick but damned if he ain’t having a good time. And look like he’s been into the dandelion wine.

Kyle the Ancestral