About

Hiking in the Hoh Rainforest

I’m Melissa Binde, a web programmer and consultant living near Seattle, Washington. For years I worked at Amazon.com as a software developer and development manager, but for the past few years I’ve been a freelancer working for a variety of companies and loving it. If you’re interested in some of my projects and past work, you can check that out over at my professional site just as soon as I finish putting it together…

This site is Kyth and Kin. For years I’ve used the name “Kyth” in online forums and games, so that’s me. The “Kin” part points toward my wide range of interests and hobbies, as well as my friends and family.

One of those is my husband Seth Johnson, a writer and game designer. (You can check out his work over at www.inkslinger.org.) He’s a lot like me–an freelancing information omnivore who dives enthusiastically into a variety of projects. It’s a lot of fun for us to work alongside oneanother, especially when we can help each other out on projects.

For the last couple of years I’ve been running a popular strategy site called StratFu.com about high-end raiding in the MMO World of Warcraft.  It not only got me up to speed on php (previously I’d only used languages like C, C++, and Perl), but it catapulted me in to the modern web world of blogs, twitter, and Facebook — technologies that weren’t available when I was in school and I was too busy to pay attention to while working.

If you want to get in touch with me, you can use any of the following:

Email: kyth@kythkin.com
Twitter: kythkin
Facebook: Melissa Binde
IRC: #stratfu on irc.gamesurge.net

Online games I’m currently playing

World of Warcraft: on Balnazzar as Kyth <Skunkworks>

Lord of the Rings Online: on Brandywine as Kytha <Pyramid Scheme>