I think Publii[0] is the modern equivalent as it also runs on desktop and provides a blog-ish CMS with its own editor. I used it to make a small devlog[1] some time ago (on which i only wrote a single article, proving once and for all that the reason i do not blog more isn't because of the blog tech but because i'm too lazy to and i'd rather be writing endless posts in messageboards :-P). I do prefer the CityDesk style though[2], even if Publii is technically more powerful.
[1] http://runtimeterror.com/devlog/
[2] http://runtimeterror.com/pages/badsector/nyan/gimme/cdsite/