New Blog - Blosxom

Trying out some new blogging software, Blosxom (pronounced "blossom"). It's actually rather neat, in a minimalist kind of way. A simple Perl wrapper that turns text files into -- optionally templated -- HTML. Much more light-weight than big old database-backed stuff (like drupal, which I'm also using).

I've set up my blog directory as a CVS module, with a check-in trigger to automatically update the live web-sever directory whenever I check in a new (or updated) file. For the curious, the follow entry in CVSROOT/loginfo in my CVS repo does the trick:

^blog (date; cat; (sleep 2; cd /home/mrowe/www/blog; cvs -q update -Pd) &) \
    >> $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/updatelog 2>&1

This means: match any check in for a module starting with "blog", then wait a couple of seconds (for the check in to complete), change to the web server directory, and run a cvs update.

Wait, there's more! You also get... syndication to the main mojain.com site. I've added a block (currently custom--you have to add it in your account set up) that displays and links to the latest blog entries.

How cool is this? Blogging made almost transparent! Just dump current brain state into text file, and commit to cvs! How much easier could it be? Still remains to be seen how often I do it, of course...