So, I'm trying to make a fresh start. For the longest time now, I've been piddling away at trying to write blog software from scratch. It was going to be everything I needed from such software. I would write my entries in Mail, and they'd be sucked into a ZODB storage. The front-end would be easily templated in either Zope (2 or 3, it's gone through several iterations) or Twisted and Nevow (I'm still leaning in this direction), but practicality won over ambition. Time stretched out longer and longer between posts. There's so much going on right now that I've wanted to get out, but I've been so stubborn trying to get the system down first. I realized today that I'd rather write about my life than write software to write about my life.

So, I'm trying PyBlosxom, a Blosxom clone written in Python. While I'll maintain an interest in writing the software I want to use, it seems at least easy enough to get going.

I tried writing my entries with MarsEdit, a blog editor by Brent Simmons, of NetNewsWire fame. I'd been beta testing NetNewsWire 2.0, and MarsEdit is the blogging tool that was previously bundled in the software. Unfortunately, it doesn't play well with PyBlosxom, so I'm using my trusty text editor, Emacs with Hobo.

So much has been happening in the past several months since I've been blogging. Some quick recaps follow, from most recent to least.

I've just turned 31. My wonderful neighbors, friends, and family have loaded me up with presents:

• Gameboy Advance SP
• 007: Everything or Nothing
• Star Wars Trilogy DVD
• Isaac Newton by James Gleick
• Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
• The First Chimpanzee by John Gribbin and Jeremy Cherfas
• The Day My Butt Went Psycho! by Andy Griffiths
• Two new pint glasses from Montana
• A chimpanzee cookie
• Yellow Tail Shiraz
• Generous checks from the parents

I've joined a softball league. Right now I'm playing an outfield position, and I've gotten 6 R.B.I.s. We absolutely crushed the other team our second game, 13-2. Strangely enough, I don't feel nearly as out of shape as I feared I would.

Our upstairs renovation is coming along nicely. By year-end we will have gone from a two-bedroom, one-bath Cape Cod to a four-bedroom, two-bath dream palace. Our upstairs master bathroom will have a six-foot-long claw-foot bathtub, two pedestal sinks, one commode, and an eight-foot-by-four-foot shower with twin showerheads. So far, we've got the paint on the walls in the office, master bedroom, and walk-in closet, and the tile down on the floor of the bathroom proper. I laid all the tiles by hand, and poured the cement for the shower pan. Next up is finishing the shower area with Hardibacker and tile, and laying red oak tongue-and-groove hardwood flooring all throughout the upstairs. Then we'll pass plumbing and final inspection and can move in.

Amber and I took our summer vacation sailing for a week in the British Virgin Islands aboard a Sunsail Charter. She used to work for Sail Caribbean, who now charters with Sunsail, and we had a discount for their twenty-fifth anniversary. It was incredible. Ten days aboard a fifty-foot sailboat was just heaven. We spent quite a lot of time at the Baths on Virgin Gorda, secluded in Savannah Bay, snorkeling in the Caves on Norman Island, and partaking of too much rum.

I'm hoping that the ease of writing entries (even if in an interim fashion) will enable me to keep my friends up-to-date while I pursue my ideal goal of a home-grown blogging system.