Texpattern public beta

In my continuing but insane effort to download and install just about every blog or thin-CMS tool I can find, I’ve got Dean Allen‘s Textpattern up and running on my server. For the moment, I’m using it for a dummy blog currently called x-ism.
It’s not all working yet, and I’m still getting the hang of the templates, spigots, and forms; especially how everything nests together and cascades, but it’s already very cool. It’s elegant (of course) and potentially very powerful.
In some ways it seems very close to my imaginary PEP project. One thing I’ve been trying to figure out lately is how to turn my old Enterzone ‘zine into a database-backed site, bring over the best of the old content, and start publishing there again more actively. In the back of mind, I’ve been thinking lately that I’ll probably use MT or possibly pMachine to do that, but now I’m wondering whether Textpattern might not be a very powerful way of assembling such a ‘zine site.
All of this goes against my other impulse, which is to simplify, consolidate, and reduce the proliferation of alternate publishing tools I’m using. The tension between these two impulses is healthy, though, and as long as I document my findings and decisions, I can provide some value to other people from my own trials and errors.