Scrivener
I caved this evening and bought Scrivener for the Macbook. I've heard about it for years on the internetAndy Ihnatko has mentioned it on various podcastsand I've read numerous reviews where journalists and novelists have expounded at length about the transformative powers it bestows on the writer.
Here's the thing. The chief benefit of Scrivener from a writer's perspective is that it keeps distractions away from you”Compose” mode runs full screen, with a blinking cursor, and a nicely proportioned serif typeface. This pretty much describes how I have always writtenplain text in a distraction free environment (Focus Writer has been my “go to” writing app for years). Of course Scrivener does an awful lot more than that too; organising notes, chopping text into chapters, scenes, and various other constructs to help format text for screenplays and so on.
Scrivener seems like total and utter overkill for my uses (penning the occasional blog post), but at least it encourages me to write, instead of tinkering with the computer, or watching television.
In the past I have contemplated setting up a version control repository for the blog posts, and writing some kind of Python script to publish them. While it would be clever, and very occasionally useful, it would also be a clear case of “doing it because you can”, rather than “doing it because you need to”.
There's a lot to be said for plain text files on a memory stick.