By way of a John Carmack blog post, I am reminded again of some pithy words by Joel Spolsky which people working on the pyAngband project would well take heed of...
As for the lack of blogging, I am in the full force of a terrifying Team Fortress 2 addiction. All my spare time and money is currently being spent acquiring name tags for items to prove how unrelentingly clever I am. Think of it as a 40 character twitter for the first person shooter.
A more regular service should hopefully resume at some point.