After blogging for five years on Blogger, I’ve finally decided to take the plunge and run my own blog. I’ve actually really enjoyed hosting with Blogger; I think it’s a pretty under-rated platform. It’s easy to get started, possible to do all sorts of crazy customisations, and they’ve recently started adding some cool stuff like mobile templates and different dynamic views. So why on earth am I leaving again?

Well, a couple of reasons. First, I like to write posts in Markdown using Vim. For the last year or so I’ve been converting posts to HTML, piping the output to clipboard, and pasting it into Blogger’s web UI. Switching to a platform that supports Markdown makes that a little simpler. I’ve also never really like the Blogger/Picasa Web image integration thing, so running my own blog means I can dump images wherever I want to and embed away. I also wanted to experiment a bit more with different layouts, but rather than relying on Blogger’s templating system, I wanted to work with straight HTML and CSS (well, via SASS). This would also buy me separation between layout, content, and platform.

If all this sounds a bit tenuous to you then you are probably right. I think all this is justification for me just wanting a change after half a decade on the same platform.

And so you are now reading a static site generated by Octopress, hosted on Heroku. I’ve imported everything over from Blogger and for the most part have kept the same links to avoid breaking stuff. If you find anything amiss or have any problems reading on your browser / feed / device please let me know and I’ll do my best to fix it up (yes, I know the font is large :)).

Thanks to Paul for good naturedly goading me into finally flicking over to Octopress and for helping me out with some questions; Troy, OJ and Tarn for their advice; and Thomas for putting up with all sorts of inane questions I bombarded him with over email and IM.

And finally, thanks to Blogger for an enjoyable 5 years! So long, and thanks for all the posts and fish and stuff. :)