Hello WordPress!

In the several months since I first started blogging, I have enjoyed using Mephisto. It’s a nice blogging tool and was a great way for me to play around with a bonafide Ruby on Rails application. However, thanks to my new job at a Rails shop, I will soon be getting all the Rails action that I need on a daily basis without any need for an alternative outlet.

In addition, I have found the almost complete lack of activity on the Mephisto website disconcerting. I understand that the developers of Mephisto are busy and that Mephisto is just a side project for them, so it’s not that I expect anything from them. It’s not as if I or other Mephisto users are paying them for the wonderful work that they do. At the same time, I don’t feel comfortable producing a growing body of blog posts here at the wrathful dove on a system that may simply stagnate should its developers lose interest in further development.

For this last reason, I have been toying with the idea for several months of switching my blogging software. I have considered Typo and WordPress on numerous occasions. WordPress seems the obvious standard by which other blogging software is judged and is a fine product, but every time that I considered moving to WordPress, I ran into a roadblock that I had constructed for myself: I wanted a playground for Rails development and so was committed to maintaining my blog in Ruby. Thus, instead of WordPress, I focused my attention on Typo.
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Hello Slicehost!

Ever since I started looking into using Mephisto for my blog and reading about the various ways of deploying a production Rails site, I had heard about the company Slicehost and how it was an excellent hosting company that was among other things friendly to Rails development. Later, when it came time to develop a website for some aquaintances I ran across Slicehost’s name again and continued to read good things about them, but their price range and my acquaintances’ needs didn’t fit with what Slicehost offered.

But the prospect of having a virtual dedicated server with full root access and complete control over the system right down to the responsibility for the security and maintenance of the box along with complete control of the ports was quite alluring. I kept returning to the Slicehost page hungry for a Slice of my own. Continue reading →

A Facelift

So far this blog hasn’t seen too much activity and hasn’t even touched anything remotely related to politics or religion. For the most part, that’s because I have been completely swamped at work and just haven’t had the time for anything that wasn’t related to getting the project at work off the ground and running. Thankfully, we have a delivery coming up on Monday, and there is an ever so slight drop in pressure as we ship a release.

So this weekend has been the first time in weeks that I have had the leisure to really examine my blog again and think about its look. After playing around a bit, I found some inspiration in the wee hours of the morning and managed to update the look of the blog once more. I’m not certain whether this is the final product, but it definitely represents a first step towards defining my own look for this site. Thanks go out to Malin for some useful pointers about colors and contrast!

So, what do you think?