There are many languages out there with interesting type systems.

• Nice - The Nice programming language. Runs on a JVM, much more interesting type system.
• Haskell - Scary functional programming malarky. Not terrifying me as much as it did 5 years ago at university, though. Will keep reading. UPDATE: Have now ordered Haskell: The Craft of Functional Programming. I won't have time to read it, but when has that ever stopped me buying books?

I will probably babble further about these in the future if I get the time to read more.

Blogging engines:

• Thraxil weblog engine - Perl/PostgreSQL/GPL.
• Wordpress - PHP/MySQL/GPL.
• Blosxom - Perl/flat files/open
• PyBlosxom - Python/flat files/open. Runs this blog.
• Movable Type - Perl/semi-commercial
• Grey Matter - Perl/nearly-open
• Roller - Java/JDBC/open
• Livejournal - Perl/Apache/mod_perl/MySQL/open
• Bryar - Perl/flat files/open
• Addendat - Perl/GPL

Asymptomatic Blog Software Breakdown provides a good list of blogging options in more detail, although it's biased towards PHP blogging software. I've tried to focus on interesting options that aren't listed there, although with some overlap.

Everyone likes kittens

So, all the cool kids seemed to be doing it. After a lot of searching, I decided that PyBlosxom was the best fit for my particular blogging related preferences, specifically:

• Easy to generate static content and run without requiring CGI access.
• Easy to install as non-root.
• Open-source license.
• Reasonable documentation.

Blogs which can easily be configured to generate static content are rare - my main other choices were Blosxom, Bryar, and Movable Type. I rejected Blosxom on the grounds that the calendar plugin doesn't seem to work correctly when you're generating your blog entirely as static content, Movable Type for licensing reasons, and Bryar because I couldn't work out how to generate a static site after half an hour of experimentation.