(author of blog) If I were to attempt to return to academia, I would consider departments other than pure mathematics. E.g., the last place I interviewed at (about 10 years ago) was Emory University's department of Mathematics and Computer Science, and I remember being excited by computer science being part of the same department. I just checked, and see that it's now split into two departments: http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/site/home/

I would likely have a lot of trouble re-entering academia due to lack of recent academic publications; I've been on many hiring committees over the years in pure math, and we never considered hiring anybody who wasn't already in academia.