{

On a whim I've signed up to be at CodeMash 2008.  After learning about the conference when Hanselman posted he'd keynote, I mapped out that Sandusky, OH (Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot!) is none too far (an audio book's worth of distance).

I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to walk among Elvis and Einstein, hopefully gleaning some direction along the way. The session list is impressive, I'm thinking it will be hard to choose a particular direction.

I've been studying Python of late, so I'm really looking forward to Bruce Eckel's Why I Love Python. Another interestingly titled Python presentation Crash, Smash, Kaboom Course in Python will be run by MIT alum Catherine Devlin.  Finally on the Python front, I'll try to squeeze into the Getting Started with Django session.

On the "indy" .NET programming, I'm interested in the Introducing Castle session from Jay R. Wren. Because Hanselman is going to be there I can't imagine no mention of ASP.NET MVC stuff, so hopefully it will somehow be mentioned at least comparatively.

Jesse Liberty is going to present on Silverlight, so that's something I won't miss either. There are other Microsoft technology presentations I should see but it would be hard to sit in on a Sharepoint session when I could be learning Python design patterns.

The other area of interest I'll have is the Dojo stuff, two sessions in particular: Overview of the Dojo JavaScript Toolkit and Working Offline with Dojo+Google Gears, both by Kevin Dangoor.

Well, it should be interesting from start to finish, I'll be working on my note taking skills so that I can share what I do learn.

}