I’m not advocating anyone switch, because each of us has different needs and expectations. If Blogger and BlogSpot fill your needs, there’s no reason to switch.

If you like the look and feel of Blogger, you can still use it to publish at your own site, rather than BlogSpot. This is useful if you want your own URL, or don’t want to be associated with BlogSpot. Anya does this at Out, Standing in Her Field.

If you’ve had it with Google/Blogger but still want a free blog, you could move to WordPress.com as Steve Bates has done with The Yellow Doggerelist. He uses the site to host his G-rated verse and cat pictures for friends and family who wouldn’t appreciate his writing at his main site.

If you want the ability to kvetch you could move to the Six Apart blogging empire for pricing starting at $4.95/month for the equivalent of a BlogSpot blog but the right to complain because you are paying something.

Six Apart now hosts TypePad and LiveJournal blogs with several levels of sites. Michael at Musing’s musings has a TypePad site, and Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged is on LiveJournal.

Six Apart also owns Movable Type blogging software that you use on your own server space, like Guy does at Rook’s Rant.

It’s a brave person indeed, who hand codes their blog, like Steve does at The Yellow Doggerel Democrat.

[The ghastly geek details below the fold]
[Read more →]

John wondered why I didn’t print the lyrics to Waist Deep In The Big Muddy if I was going to use a Pete Seeger song. I thought of Flowers first is the simple answer.

But since it is a pointed reference to the current “unpleasantness”, here’s a link to the lyrics at the University of San Diego, a Catholic institution and home of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.

Go by and check out their news section on the main page. Mrs. Kroc would be proud.