If one of the static blog generators (Jekyll etc.) fits your bill, or you write your own, you gain the freedom to use any vaguely competent web host with about

If one of the static blog generators (Jekyll etc.) fits your bill, or you write your own, you gain the freedom to use any vaguely competent web host with about one minute of setup. (NearlyFreeSpeech works for me, is really cheap for a simple static personal blog, and supports rsync via ssh.)