Joining the Rest of Mankind
So I've finally gotten a blog. They've only been around for, what? Ten years? I guess I'm not a bandwagon jumper.
Lately though, there've been a couple of instance where a) I've had an opinion that I wanted to share with the world and b) I didn't feel like writing a full-blown essay to express it. I guess this is where a blog fits the bill.
Anyway, after reviewing various blogging options I've finally settled on Blosxom as my blogging tool. At the moment I think this is the best option for me because:
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it's extremely lightweight. The core package consists of a single Perl script having less than 500 lines.
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it doesn't use a database. Blog entries are just text files, and can be edited with your favourite text editor. Databases, in my opinion, are overused in these sorts of applications.
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there's no PHP to set up, no special Apache modules to install, unless you count mod_cgi, which I don't because it's pretty standard on most Apache installations.
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the HTML is completely customizable by hand. I don't like applications which spit out HTML I can't control.
Also, I didn't want to simply get an account on one of the many blogging sites available. This goes a bit deeper than me wanting to different, or being paranoid about my blog entries living on someone else's computer. I've noticed that personal websites seem to be on the decline, people instead opting for a collection of accounts on various online communities. So, for example, someone will get themselves an account on Blogger for their blog, followed by an account on Flickr for their photos, followed by an account on del.icio.us for their links. Although these applications are, in some cases, quite impressive and original, the idea of spreading your web presence over different URLs just seems...wrong to me.
It seems to be standard practice for a blog page to provide a link to a Flickr account, for example, which of course has a completely different layout and colour scheme. I find it jarring.
I think, for the moment, that I prefer the old style website. If I want to share photos with my friends and family, I want to put them on my website, not a Flickr account. If I want people to read my blog, I want to point them to my website, not a Blogger page. I want to provide my readers, if I have any at all, with an integrated web experience.