I highly recommend going with hosting your own WordPress. The setup is painless and allows you to quickly get your blog up and running. There are tons of themes to choose from that you can use as a foundation to get the appearance you desire. The plugin system also works great and allows you to easily add various features to your blog.

I have used WordPress for a non-technical blog for over 3 years now without any issues. I've also been thinking about starting a technical blog and have been looking into using Drupal for it.