Oddly Zen is the blog of Mark Coates and Austin Smith, software development visionaries, Ninjas, and geeks.
Meet Mark.
He eats Ruby on Rails for breakfast and codes on a MacBook Pro. He wants to change the world.
Once upon a time, Mark created ASP.net applications for secret Government projects now buried deep underground (where they belong). He doesn’t like to talk about that dark spot in his past and much prefers the fresh, sunshiny world of today’s Ruby-powered web.
More Buzz, Less Caffeine
He is currently working on a book about Rails Content Management Systems. He writes articles for magazines and occasionally blogs, tweets, and tumbls. He reads authors like Fred Alan Wolf, Brian Greene, and Tom Robbins — and is still in shock that he will soon share their shelf-space at Barnes and Noble. He is fascinated by physics, meditates on spirituality, tries to be a little green, and leave things better than he found them.
He lives and works in New York City for ZepFrog Corp. They want to save the publishing industry. You should join them.
Contact Mark through Grand Central at +1.918.917.5785. All other electronic correspondence can be sent to mark.coates@gmail.com.
Meet Austin.
He is the head nerd at Observer Media Group, a print and online media company in New York City, where he leads projects in Ruby on Rails, PHP, and Python.
He enjoys scaling his company’s massive Drupal installations, designing system and application architecture, exploring new languages, and abusing his team. He, like Mark, uses a MacBook Pro. When he’s not coding, he likes to travel (mostly to baseball stadiums) and cook. You can find him elsewhere online and on Twitter.
