My Name is Dave

Like the nerd that I am, I backed this recent Kickstarter for a new blogging platform called Ghost. The idea is that it will be a blogging-only tool with a swishy Javascript interface, support for markdown, all that nerd-catnip stuff. Essentially, to me, it looks like Wordpress without all the CMS gubbins that has crept in over the years. Low maintenance, hopefully, ideal for a site focused on writing.

This comes at a good time, because I’m intending to begin writing more regularly on here, with the expectation that when Ghost gets released it will have a good Tumblr import and I’ll be able to sook everything over there fairly comprehensively. A fair chunk of my couple of hundred posts on here since I started tumbling are dead video links, so it’s not like there’s a lot to lose.

More important is my increasing wariness of using anybody’s free services. Google just decided to take Reader out behind the woodshed and shoot it, with three months to find alternate tools. Not great. I’ve got 8,000 odd emails in Gmail from nearly a decade of continuous use. Also not that great.

Increasingly, for me, saving a few quid a month by using free services is being outweighed by the control and flexibility having my own server would give. If I’m going to put a bunch of words, pictures, videos and other things out on the web, I’d like to at least be paying for the platform they sit on. And I reckon I can handily get a site, email and a chunk of hosting for less than I routinely spend on a round at the pub.

So, look out for more words from me on here, as a prelude to me not being on Tumblr anymore. When I move everything over I’ll leave a pointer post.