You're getting ready to travel and suddenly realize with all the free time you could actually get some writing done. Naturally, you consider a blog of your travels to be a fitting subject. You wouldn't be the first however so here are a few tips --

Consider http://wordpress.com instead of building your own blog. Noone wants to "work" building yetanotherwebsite on vacation and WordPress plugs in to everything from Twitter to Flickr and more. Recently they announced API integration for direct posting to Twitter as well.

WordPress.com is a great choice for people looking for something more robust than "posts" and once you're ready for an upgrade you can migrate your data to WordPress.org and host it yourself (I use it for LikeWowOnline)

Other good choices are Tumblr.com and Posterous

Tumblr offers a nice combination of social network, ease of use and categorized posting. Posterous is simple beyond belief and can be posted to from just about any source imagineable.

Most importantly - Get yourself set up before your trip so you can start posting right away

• Sign up for Momentile, get yourself a post-to email address
• Get your post-to email address for Flickr too (http://www.flickr.com/account/?tab=email)
• Posterous lets you moblog via email as well (you can see mine at http://shimone.posterous.com/)
• Get a FeedBurner account, add your RSS feed then set up an email subscription to your blog or Flickr stream.

Your friends and family will miss you loads but if you keep posting you can stay in touch throughout your travels.

(full disclosure - this was actually repurposed advice I sent to my brother before he left for Israel and Europe. You can read all about his trip on the blog One Bag and High Hopes)