Blogophobia

Okay, this blogging software sucks. I just oh-so-foolishly hit the "back" button (which, I swear to God, I was once specifically taught not to do in a computer science course at Stanford), and of course I lost my entire draft. That is a risk of doing things over the Web, I suppose...

I really want to host my own blog on my ink08 server, perhaps using the Elite Journal software, since, after all, it is written by a guy named Scott. I actually managed to install Ruby, Gem, and the RubyGems for the Ruby on Rails framework, thanks to some excellent instructions by Bruce Perens on the Ruby on Rails Wiki. I was even able to install Elite Journal from its gems and overcome a bit of a hitch that required me to install some of the SQLite packages from Debian that were dependencies of a dependency. But of course when I run Elite Journal it doesn't work and I get some cryptic Ruby on Rails error message. Back to work another day.

On the other hand, writing my own blogging software would be an excellent way to learn Python, which I need to do anyway. Perhaps I could even provoke some kind of a rivalry with Elite Journal, since I think there's a bit of a thing between Ruby and Python. Perhaps I'll create a "Python Eats Snails" or "Python in Jail" framework to compete with Ruby on Rails.