Thinking about going back to a self hosted site but am leary because of possible problems with maintaining my connection (I'm not the guy paying the bill.) And I'm wondering if it's worth going the roll-my-own route when right now it's basically free (my brother is still hosting my site, thanks Dan.) I think I probably will--there is some functionality that I miss. We'll see how that goes I haven't made any decisions. Yet.

A while back Michael was experimenting with Psyblosxom. Then a couple days ago I was in a bookstore looking at the computer books with the animals on them. One of the books I looked at was "Essential Blogging". There was a lot in the book about Blogger, Moveabletype and other stuff, but the thing that caught my eye was a bit about some software I really had not heard of: Blosxom. Well, except that Michael had been trying to install a python version of it...

Seemed interesting, so I made a note in my pocket computer and when I got home later I checked it out a bit. Installed it. Experimenting with it. The main thing I like about it is that you post to your weblog without using a browser. In fact, you do them using an editor. Whatever editor you prefer (even MS Word, doh!) The only caveat being that you need to be able to either save the post directly to the filespace on your server, or be able to ftp it there.

The first line of the post becomes the title. Everything after that is the entry. The date and time of the post come from the date and time attributes of the file. The only thing Blosxom needs to know it's a post is the file extention txt.

I like this way of doing it for a number of different reasons. Mostly revolving around simplicity. Right now for instance, rather than using my preferred editing environment I'm entering this post into a form window in my Opera web browser. It just doesn't seem very high tech to me. The available editing functions in this environment depend on the browser you're using, but in all cases they're pretty limited. No stuff like spell checking, search and replace--your standard editor features. Wouldn't it just be better to use a real editor and save directly to my post? You bet.

Another interesting thing about Blosxom is that it seems to integrate well with RSS tools. Lately I have taken to experimenting again with Amphetadesk. There's a version for Linux now. It's a great way to get news on your desktop. I want to try and integrate some kind of RSS news aggregator into the way I post to my weblog. Something akin to the weblog tool radio--RSS feeds serving as a kind of funnel input to an outlining tool (hopefully using my preferred editor), easing the composition of my posts. An outliner would make it easier to gather my thoughts before actually starting to write. The acronym "P.O.W.E.R." comes to mind:

Prepare Organize/Outline Write Edit Revise

It's just easier to write when you have a plan and the tools to aid in that plan's execution. That's where I've been the past couple of week. Thinking about the tools I use and where they need to change in order to make my writing more effective.

Amphetadesk

Vim Outliner

The VimOutliner Project

Blosxom

I'll probably write about this more later. Right now I'm just working through the Vim tutorial. I keep getting excited about different things I have been looking at and some new ideas that I've been having. I seem to be thinking faster than I can write. Maybe using an outliner will help me catch up with myself...