So Abhijit Menon-Sen has done some work on Blosxom, and the result is new software called Loathsxome, which I've decided to start using.

I like Blosxom's basic idea: it uses the filesystem rather than a database, and it's small and thus not awfully complicated. But the original author has abandoned it, and I wasn't too keen on the community-supported version (after finding a couple of bugs in it almost immediately after upgrading). ams overhauled the code, and I find the result very approachable. For example, the plugin interface is nicely-defined, though it will likely need some work: Loathsxome runs plugins in alphabetical order, and plugins work directly on the data that interests them, so I expect the resulting dependencies will be kind of a pain in the butt. On the other hand the plugins are generally simple enough that it's easy to see what order things need to run in. Some conventions for where they store data in Loathsxome's run-time state, and for declaring what they'll do, are probably 85% of what's needed.

As an aside, Rael's current blog is entirely Twitter-driven (apparently he is a user experience engineer at Twitter) and is a great example of how medium shapes message: With only 140 characters available, Twitter tends to vacuity and trivia. Or slower IRC.