If I was guessing, I'd say that I very consciously made my CV/cover letter/blog "intriguing". I'm an OK programmer, but at the moment my strength is probably that I have a diverse list of fairly wacky and mostly unrelated other stuff that I've done. I think this meant that a lot of companies who would otherwise have passed straightaway were at least curious enough about the guy on the other end of this application to talk.
I should point out that after a Skype or 2, most of said speculative companies did realise that whilst founding a clothing company that makes sweatshirts with pictures of fruit on them is cool, it doesn't really help you write Clojure when you don't have any functional programming experience ;)
Of course, it could just be something boring like the fact that companies really need Ruby guys at the moment.
I should point out that after a Skype or 2, most of said speculative companies did realise that whilst founding a clothing company that makes sweatshirts with pictures of fruit on them is cool, it doesn't really help you write Clojure when you don't have any functional programming experience ;)
Of course, it could just be something boring like the fact that companies really need Ruby guys at the moment.