I’ve enjoyed using Vox.com over the last couple of months but I’m finally taking the plunge and moving the blog here to greenokapi.net/blog.

Though I’ve occasionally wanted more flexibility, the trade-off with a hosted service is that you waste no time tinkering, the only thing you can do is write. But the fact that Vox doesn’t, at time of writing, handle comments gracefully reduces the value of the blog — I’ve had some great comments and suggestions from readers, and I’d say that the feedback is one of the most useful effects of having a blog at all. Vox’s insistence on signing up in order to comment is just a barrier to feedback, but I got tired of comments like “Hey, where did my last comment go?” because the default formatter apparently doesn’t like code.

Of course, WordPress has its hatefulness too. For a code-oriented blog you need the Text Control plugin, which is the only way to prevent it from moronizing newlines and making quotes “smart”. (By default, WordPress even turns ascii smileys into horrid yellow gifs, though this at least can be switched off easily).