A Little Ink Blot

Paper and pen are all I need, really. There are reams of ink covered, spiral bound and 3-ringed sheets stashed in boxes in the back of closets to prove it. College ruled binders from 3rd through 9th grade. Blank books and theme notebooks from Hi-school on. Little 3x5 spiral pads from shipyard labor days.

My Dad introduced me to Apple's talking Moose on a little MacPlus that ran the office at his work some 20+ years ago, and I was smitten. Keyboard beats Pilot BP-s Fine point almost any day. And a single-person's wages can actually purchase nice hardware and software, and reams and reams of blank paper in all weights and colors and moods.

Now, with 5 mouths in the house and less income than even those single days, I still drool over office supplies catalogs and writing utilities that are compatible with my old computers. But, alas, I can only afford open-source, freeware and shareware type stuff. Which is why I blog, its cheaper than pinter ink on paper.

So, I've been looking for a Content Management System that would let me write, edit, design and publish easily and in just the look and feel that I want. It took 4 years, but I think I finally found the perfect "CMS" for me. Campware.org's Campsite. It is "free" -- as in, "open source." It has all the things I want in a publishing CMS. So, I spent 2 months trying to install it, run it, configure it, to no avail. I learned what "Linux Bash Shell Commands" are, spent hours trying to upload, reload, download, operwrite from a 56K connection. After about 6 weeks of foiled attempts, I ran across a little line in a forum. "Campsite does not work with cPanel."
Guess what, my web-hosting service uses cPanel.

I went right out and bought a new 5 subject theme notebook and a box of medium point black, blue and red imitation Pilot pens.