Amy

Moving to blogspot. With my changing format, I feel like changing servers is due. It’s been fun. I’m keeping the name.

I signed up for a bloglovin account, but I don’t know if I’ll use it regularly. I might use it for the “socializing” aspect, but google reader is easier for me for blog browsing.

I think it’s probably obvious I’m not the greatest blogger, however I am trying to up the ante from now on. I’ve also decided I’m not going to continue outfit posts.

I am back in the United States and very grateful. There are a few things I miss, of course, but there hasn’t been any trouble or culture shock coming home.  I did enjoy my first drive around town [lots of shopping involved, let me tell you].  Driving was completely normal to me, but I might have felt a little more exuberance and gratefulness to be able to just go somewhere without it being an event.

One thing I’m getting used to is how late the sun sets now!  In Vietnam, it would be completely dark by 6:30 every night, but here, now, it isn’t completely dark until 10:30 or so. Crazy! I keep thinking it’s a lot earlier than it actually is.  I leave you with a picture outside my window around 7:30 a couple nights ago.

PS: I’ve been using google reader for my blog readings, but I’ve been considering the switch to bloglovin. Any comments?

Today (April 30th) was South Vietnam’s Independence Day, celebrated throughout the country and especially here. Music was blasting across the street the entire day and the road was blocked off for what I found out was a bike race of some type. It still doesn’t make a lot of sense and no one will explain it to me. But it’s also a three-day weekend and many of the people I know in Saigon left to travel.

As I was strolling around the park this morning, I did notice something about style, especially women’s style. Either they are extremely fashionable and I approve, or it’s incredibly ghastly I don’t know why they left the house. There are people who lie in-between, but less than in the states, at least where I’m from. There was one particular dress I loved that I caught on camera. I was too shy to go up and ask to take others’ photos, but I had a fun time people watching, trying to mental notes of trends I wanted to try later.

I was nothing to write home about. A red t-shirt, some blue Kensie shorts, and brown sandals.

The rest of my time in Saigon, there’s my research project to deal with, but I also want to take more pictures of the city that I’ve spent a good amount of time in, but haven’t documented much. I plan on spending some time outside my hotel room tomorrow (shock! – but being alone in the city is daunting!), and hopefully do more shopping this week because I have the bug and a long list to try to get through before going back to the states. Of course I am here another three months, but the program ends in less than a month and my internal clock is on that schedule.

Three months in and no update on my whereabouts! Whoops. Not even a link to my “study abroad blog“, which I haven’t updated much. The beginning portion of the program was jam-packed with classes and traveling, but now we’re into the research/field study part of the program. I spent my first week of it in Ha Noi for some research, but I just got back into Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon yesterday morning. My flight was at 8, which means I woke up at 5:30. I barely made it to the gate by boarding time, but I did make it with about ten minutes to spare.

Being in Vietnam has been a trip, especially as Vietnamese-American who can barely speak the language. I get a lot of different reactions; some have assumed it, some have been confused, many are disappointed in my lack-of language skills. I have met many students and some have given me the “but you look Asian!” after I say I’m American. There’s a lot to get used to here, not least the less than stellar wireless connections and partial filters (I can’t get to Facebook, although I think I can tweak the ISP to get to it, just haven’t tried, and proxies work). It’s also extremely rare (as in I haven’t encountered it yet) that I am not allergic to the air conditioning in this country, usually because they aren’t cleaned and house mildew and other not-great things. I try to keep it off when I can, but Vietnam is also a tropical country and its really warm, especially in the south where I’ve stayed most of the time (Central and North were more humid in my time here and felt worse than the relatively dry heat of Ho Chi Minh City).

I do wish I had bought more things and tried more places when I was in Ha Noi, but it’s a moot point now. Hopefully I will visit again soon, possibly when my family get here in June, or when my friend comes over in late May/June.

Right now the plan is to head to Cambodia at the end of May for a week with some girls on the program, and meeting up with my friend sometime, either in Ha Noi or Ho Chi Minh City (but we will spend June 4-8 in HCMC) before my family comes in June 13. I have family in the South and I’ll probably stay with them between my friend’s departure and my family’s arrival. {I just had to get that down somewhere.}

The fashion bug is hitting me more now that I have freetime. I finally got some time to look through my blogreader and just want to go shopping. It’s such a hassle in this country due to the bargaining nature of their markets and shops.

I miss [incomplete list]:
family and friends
fixed prices
pita chips and hummus
my own washing machine
clothes dryers (they are non-existent here – everything is hung and my clothes are stretching)
my own kitchen and eating at home
watching my shows on a regular schedule

Yesterday was spent on an airplane, watching movies in my room, buying some groceries/snacks, getting dinner with the lovely student coordinator, Phat, writing emails regarding my research, and reading. Wild! This weekend is a huge celebration of the South’s Independence, and I think I might be stuck in the guesthouse for the mornings for festivities. I’ll probably be asleep anyway, I hear they start at 6.

Flickr isn’t uploading, or else I’d post more pictures. Soon.

Re: Subject Line – Every time I pass a tourist wearing a t-shirt donning this phrase (usually American) I cringe.

• I love watching the crowd and people walking in. Supreme Court followed by great applause for our first lady. She is grand (and that purple is a great color). Then cabinet! (I wonder who’s staying back tonight.) Some of the most fun moments are recognizing faces and names. Yes, I am a nerd.
• President! APPLAUSE! And schmoozing. Our president is so ~cool. (And that cute little wave to Michelle? Those two.)
• I think I’m expecting high rhetoric with this opening. Probably a good choice, if he chooses it. I didn’t want to spoil myself so I didn’t read the excerpts.
• Starting very much like a campaign speech. Blaming Washington, uplifting, hopeful. Harder to swallow from the President instead of a candidate?
• Wallstreet is such an easy scapegoat. (Ohh, joke! “It was as popular as a root canal.”)
• Yes to the right vs. easy choice. Governing is full of difficult decisions, people! We have become too compliant to short-term fixes with long-tern consequences.
• TAX CUTS! Pandering is what I call it. Tax cuts don’t solve every problem, or even most. SIGH. We call for deficit reduction, but we are unwilling to PAY IT OFF? No wonder being a politician is a thankless job.
• Government guarenteeing jobs, isn’t this Socialism!? Not that I don’t agree, I just wonder about people’s thought processes when they criticize.
• The transcripting man does not look happy, but he has a snazzy yellow tie.
• “How long should we wait? Washington has told us to wait for decades.” Long term! Good talk, and people should recognize the difficulties in getting things done, especially when poll numbers go down when anyone tries anything ambitious. We should not be a society of stagnation.
• Nuclear? Off-shore drilling? Should that REALLY be a priority? Clean coal? Does that even exist? CLIMATE CHANGE BILL! Change I can believe in.
• Exports, huh? Doubling in five years? This doesn’t sound good for the already weak dollar. Also should be on the list: cutting down on the number of subsidies we give out to industries for a truly free trade.
• Education reform! Not a sexy media topic, but very important, and his administration has taken some good first steps in the first year.
• As a college student, I agree with this reform.
• Health insurance reform. Hm, tough tough. “I didn’t take on health insurance reform because it’s good politics.”
• “I want to acknowledge our First Lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make our kids healthier.I want to acknowledge our First Lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make our kids healthier. Thank you, honey.” It all starts at childhood. Also, they are adorable, it’s true. Maybe a little too much for some, but I love it.
• It should have been touted as a cost-saver much harder during the legislation process. We still have time? Probably starting over.
• Fighting for the voiceless.
• Dems have been asking for bi-partisanship, Republicans drag their feet and claim to be trying to help. FIGHT ON (for health care reform)!
• Deficit reduction. More complicated than it sounds. And using executive order. Big man on campus!
• ZING! Former administration, zing.
• Campaign fianace ruling in the Supreme Court. Awkward.
• Earmarks! The internet is the future, Congress.
• “None of these reforms will even happen if we don’t also reform how we work with one another.” Two way street.  “But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day.” The way congress works, so infuriating.
• “And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.”
• Stand beside dignity and freedom, however we have no right to force our system on others. It comes in different shades sometimes. It’s a hard line to walk to not overstep our lines.
• Down with “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”! Equal Pay Law! What up, equality, it’s the United States!
• This spirit of change, it has touched me. He can’t do this alone, America. Let’s do this!
• “But remember this – I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone. Democracy in a nation of three hundred million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That’s just how it is.Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.”

Topics:

• Economy
• Financial reform
• Energy
• Education
• Health Insurance Reform
• Deficit
• Congressional obstructionism and partisanship
• Afghanistan
• Supporting military/veterans
• Disarmament
• Foreign aid / Human Rights / Haiti
• American ideals

Whole Transcript

PS: I’m pretty sure HuffPost wanted to kill people with their ridiculous SOTU drinking game.

Pretty touching speech, for me. Lots of Washington blaming. Very independent-minded. Still some high rhetoric. And now some Republican response from Gov. McDonnell from Virginia.

• What a ~diverse backdrop, Governor. And what a lovely building.
• Speaking after Obama must be a nerve-wrecking job. The presentation is important.
• “Doing too much” is just a euphemism of “we don’t want you to do that”.
• “Proper limited role of government at every level.” Depends on who you ask.
• “We want cooperation not partisanship.” You have a hard time of showing it.
• “Best health care system in the world.” Statistics (infant mortality, average lifespan, cost, etc) say otherwise, BY FAR.
• A website, twitter, and facebook, is that suppose to be impressive?
• So, are you pro-torture just because they’re ~not citizens? I’ve been watching too much Battlestar Galactica, but it’s too similar to the CYLONS AREN’T PEOPLE argument.
• Opening opportunity; does this mean Repubs are changing their platform? I thought they believe America is perfect and already gives same opportunity?
• Didn’t blow it like Jindal, still lacking some substance.

Well, that was fun.

Henceforth our country is safe,
Our mountains and rivers begin life afresh.
Peace follows war as day follows night.
We have purged our shame for a thousand centuries,
We have regained our tranquility for ten
Thousand generations.

Nguyen Trai, fifteenth century Vietnamese poet

I’m starting to ready myself for studying in Vietnam. Reading the books, sent in my VISA application (however there was a mistake in the confirmation letter, so I hope it works!), and bracing myself for any sudden bumps along the way (I always forget something, and I feel like something is going to be overlooked and I won’t be able to go). I’m not sure if I’m going to use this blog, another one I have, or create another one. The only problem with creating another one is that’s just another I’m taking over.

Life’s full of nervous anticipation at the moment. Nerves, excitement, fear, all of it. I do need to work on my Vietnamese. It’s not very good, and it gets worse when I get nervous, which I will be when I get there.

I was always bad at keeping up with blogging. My head is just all over the place and I can never figure out a template/theme that I wanted to keep. Plus I’ve been bouncing around the coast since the end/beginning of the year. Without that type of structure, things tend to go haywire. That and I will start plenty of posts without finishing them. Sometimes I won’t finish the text, I’ll start the post and then forget for what reason I’m writing about the topic. Sometimes I will want to have pretty graphics and never get around to making them.

It’s been a weekend full of silliness, Portland, and delightful, simple mainstream pop brought to you by YouTube.

My friend Abby this summer. She’s leaving for an Israel/France excursion in a few days for the semester. ♥

Also, you should be watching Chuck (Mondays on NBC) if you’re not. This week was the premiere of the third season.

Up next, in defense of some oft-hated blokes who happen to make music. Possibly.

To explain my extended absence (three weeks?!?), can I just say “end of semester”? After my bout with the flu, the school work started piling up, leaving me very little fun-internet time (I’ve barely checked Tumblr in a week! and haven’t read blogs in weeks). Plus my interest was predominantly in the politics/news area (so much excitement!).

With the turning of the November page to December, my wardrobe has seen a nice little shift to a more wintery level. Instead of heels and structured sweaters and blazers, I’ve been wearing flat boots and slouchy, oversized sweaters more and more. Plaid (not just checkereds) have also had a fun time in the past couple weeks. This week’s purchases will be the ugly sweater because those parties don’t happen on their own.

I’m also not into considering myself as someone with much style at the moment. It’s entirely possible I’m too fickle to be a blogger.

My good news/bad news of the week. Wednesday afternoon I started feeling sick with flu-like symptoms (my persistent cough, achey body, chills, fever which I didn’t realize for a day) and went to check it out the next day.

Swine Flu Test: Positive

So I was quarantined and told not to go to class the next day (I was in bed all of Thursday and didn’t go to class). Since home is less than an hour from my school, I decided to rest at home and spare my housemates any more germs than they needed. My fever was gone on Friday, but I still have a hacking cough and a semi-stuffy nose. My stomach also hurts from all the coughing.

Yesterday, I managed to catch up on almost all my shows! I haven’t decided if I am going to watch the rest of FlashForward, I’ll just marathon Heroes over the summer, and realized I will never get around to this fall season of So You Think You Can Dance.

Television is my drug of choice. I have way too many shows on my list, which is probably why I’ve been falling behind all season. The list of shows I want to watch is longer. Before I had style (because really, do I have style?) I had stories, and tv is my favorite source. I love books (and movies), but tv… my personal favorite.

I feel like waiting so long to finally watch the last two Mad Men episodes was a poor choice because I connected the dots from all the little mentions about the finale and it made everything that unfolded much less dramatic.

One of my biggest peeves this season is the lack of secondary characters. For some reason that I could choose to analyze if I wanted to, I am usually more drawn to the secondary characters than the main ones. Especially true of this show. All the characters are some of the most three dimensional and realistic (in that they all have strengths and faults) in television today. Even the most perfect lead imperfect lives and make mistakes for decisions. As much as Don and Betty’s storyline intrigues me, I want to hear more about Harry, and what’s going to happen to Sal, and I even miss the advertising pitches!

I guess the last two episodes just disappointed me because of the hype.

Other shows I caught up on:

Glee (one episode) [yes! an episode that showcased Artie and Tina! but Puck bores/aggravates me]

30 Rock (2 episodes) [always funny, but doesn't deserve every Emmy every year]

How I Met Your Mother (1 episode) [just off this season, especially this last episode]

Community (4 episodes) [the more I watch, the more I love; especially Abed]

Parks and Recreation (2 episodes)

Project Runway (three episodes) [poor season].

(I also watch The Office and Merlin, sometimes Top Chef, going to watch V soon…) Plus I watched Star Trek V: Final Frontier, what I was told was the worst of the original cast movies and it was pretty terrible.

{I was planning on adding pictures, but my internet is too slow to deal with any extra funny business. Sigh.}

Now that you’ve been snapping away, you’ll want to build your photographic following. WordPress.com has an excellent photo blogging community, which you can tap into by following these tips and tricks.

Tags, topics, and phloggers, oh my!

Tags work to connect your blog to the larger WordPress.com community, so you can see others who are writing, or photographing, the same subjects as you. By tagging your post as “Photography” or “Black and White,” your posts will be included in the respective Topic page so that other viewers can find your site. If you haven’t added tags to your posts before, you can learn how to do so here.

However, tags can be used for more than just bringing traffic to your site, but as a networking tool as well. As your photo blog grows, taking some time to look at other photo blogging sites can both help you to find inspiration, tips and tricks, and new ideas, as well as put you in contact with your fellow photo blogging compatriots.

You can start following new topics in your WordPress.com reader by going to the WordPress.com Reader and inserting “Photography” or any related tag into the “Add a Topic” text box.

Building Connections

One of the best ways to boost readership and build a following is to do the same in return. This means that when you see a photo blogger that you like, comment on their post! Comments and pingbacks help to create connections between bloggers and their readers.

Blogging is about community and sharing, and this sets the tone. Just recently, I wrote a blog post inspired by a post on 1000AwesomeThings.com. I linked back, and hopefully turned a bunch of new readers onto the site. Because there was a decent amount of traffic sent to his blog, or maybe because he received a pingback, Neil Pasricha then came and commented on my blog! This is the author of two #1 International Bestselling books! I was so thrilled. I emailed Neil to thank him, and that began a back and forth, where I was able to ask him his blogging tips.

From Bestselling Author Shares 3 Tips for Building Your Blog Audience

In browsing other photo blogs, you may see that many photographers add information about their camera and set up to each post. Generally, photo bloggers will include the camera they used to shoot the image, the aperture and f-stop information, and the lens. This is a great way to explain both the tools you’re using as a photographer and another method of contributing to the photo blogging community by sharing your experiences.

Protecting Your Work

Through consistent posting, commenting on other blogs, and tagging your posts, you can continue to build your photo blogging readership. As you get your work out there, it’s also important to make sure that it’s protected. For photo bloggers on WordPress.com, we recommend that you watermark your photos. This means adding a copy right, such as “© Erica’s Photography,” directly to your image with a photo editing program. Watermarking your photos helps to prevent others from taking your images and pretending they’re their own.

If you’re interested in licensing your work as well, the Creative Commons license is an excellent way to both protect your work, while still contributing to the photographic community as a whole. Creative Commons licenses establish you as the owner of your product, but still allow for others to use your work. For example, among the various Creative Commons licenses, you can state that anyone is allowed to use your work as long as it’s attributed to you and they’re not using it for commercial purposes. Better yet, they can follow all of the above rules, and may also build on your work, similar to sampling when it comes to music beats.

Now that your photo blog is well on it’s way, don’t forget to stay tuned for more tips and tricks with our final post on Photo Blogging 101.

Trying out new themes is fun, isn’t it? I think so! The thing about changing my blog’s theme that has traditionally bugged me, though, is the 10-15 minutes right after you click “Activate” when you have to rush through uploading a new custom header, maybe resetting the background, fiddling with a new sidebar configuration, and other transition adjustments so that people won’t see your site in a half-switched state. Maybe I’m overly sensitive to that — I don’t like to leave things half-painted either — but luckily for me we’ve just finished a new feature to improve this very thing. It is my great pleasure to introduce you to our new theme customization tool* and say good-bye to half-painted websites.

The customizer provides a live preview as you play with Appearance settings, and can be used to customize a live preview of a new theme before you activate it, or to make changes to your existing theme. It allows you to edit the site title and tagline, custom headers and backgrounds, navigation placement, front page selection, and other options that vary by theme. It works with both free themes and premium themes. Shall we take a test drive?

Imagine you want to change themes. As you are browsing on the Themes screen, notice the new “Live Preview” link and click it.

You’re taken to the customizer. As you make changes, the preview in the right-hand part of the screen updates live so you can get things just right.

When things look the way you want them, click the Save & Activate button in the lower left (or Save & Purchase if it is a premium theme) and boom, your new theme and custom settings are live!

You can also use the live preview feature to customize your existing theme. On the themes screen in your dashboard, you’ll now see a “Customize” button that launches the previewer.

And don’t worry, you still have access to the regular screens for adjusting these and other features. Just use the navigation for the Appearance section like you always have.

So, please try it out, and let us know what you think in the comments! I hope you like  it as much as we do. If you hit any snags, let us know in the forums so that we can help.

But wait, there’s more!

Yes, more! Here are a couple of smaller additions also aimed at making it easier to customize your site and make it look just the way you want it.

• When choosing a custom header image, you can now choose from your Media Library. I looove this, because I have uploaded the same header image at least a dozen times to re-use it when I changed themes.
• For themes that support it, custom headers now have a recommended size rather than a fixed required size, so you can be flexible with the height and width of your header images. I love this too, because sometimes I really like a theme but the header image I want to use is taller or shorter than the theme design allows. Now, the power is in your hands to decide! The goal is for as many themes as possible on WordPress.com to support this feature, but you can see if we’ve added it to yours yet by checking the list of supported themes.

And one last thing…
If you know HTML, you can now add links and a little bit of formatting to your image captions. This is great for people who want to link a photo credit to the photographer’s blog or to a Creative Commons license, or want to make some text bold or italicized. At some point in the future we may add a WYSIWYG option, but for now you’ll just need to learn some basic HTML tags if you want to use this one. Just type the HTML right into the caption field in the image uploader, and your links will appear like magic. So this:

becomes this:

I’ve been wanting this feature for four years now, so I’m really excited.

Have fun with these new features!

*Fun Fact: While this feature was in development, it was originally conceived as a wizard, or guided walkthrough. We codenamed it Gandalf.

There’s something about this time of year that always makes me wistful for the good old days—the simpler times, if you will—when all that mattered were family, friends, and a whole lotta blogging about everything under the sun. I miss those days, don’t you?

Fear not, my fellow blogging friends. We’ve got you all covered today with a theme that will make you want to stop time and write about everything in your lives until you can’t write anymore.

A Simpler Time, designed by Denise Chandler, is a theme that’s beautiful, bold, and memorable—pretty much exactly like the types of stories you’ll be writing alongside it on your WordPress.com blog:

It’s a traditional blog theme in the sense that it offers everything you’ve come to expect from a WordPress theme—widgets, custom menus, and custom headers, and more—and it also looks incredible. If you’d also like to mix it up with different colors and fonts, try the Custom Design upgrade. You can do all of that and more.

A Simpler Time is a premium upgrade for your blog; read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Update (May 17): Since this feature went live we’ve had a bunch of feedback and it looks like following comments by default is not a good fit for a lot of bloggers (and their readers) after all. We looked at a few different options, but for now we’ve just changed things back to how they were before. To follow a conversation, make sure you check the box when you post a comment.

It’s now much easier for you and your commenters to keep track of the conversations you’re involved in across WordPress.com. Some recent tests have shown that by subscribing commenters to new comments by default, they are more likely to stay engaged and come back and comment more on your blog. With that knowledge, we’ve changed the default comment following behavior to help you get more conversations going on your blog.

We made the initial changes last week and after great feedback from you we just launched an update. Here’s how it works:

• By default, posting a comment will now subscribe you to receive follow-up comments via email for that specific post, keeping you updated on the conversation. This is indicated by the checked box in the comment form.
• If you have a WordPress.com account, you now have a global setting to change this so that by default you will not be subscribed. If you don’t have an account, then you can create one over here.
  
• If you don’t want email notifications for a thread, just uncheck the box when you post your comment. If you’ve disabled the feature, you can also subscribe to a specific thread by checking the box in the comment form.
  
• There is also a link at the bottom of every notification email that will allow you to change your subscription options.
  

If you’d like to find out all of the details about how this works, we’ve also updated our support documentation about following comments.

We’ve added a user showcase where you can view stunning customizations made by people just like you. From complete redesigns with CSS to adding pizzazz with Custom Fonts to clever use of options like background and header, this showcase will spark your imagination and inspire creativity.

Discover details about what each showcase blog is doing with WordPress.com themes and customizations by clicking a thumbnail to see a colophon-style list of credits on the left.

We’ve also updated footer links so blog owners can show off the types of customizations they’ve made and visitors can learn more by clicking the “Customized” link in WordPress.com footers. A “Customized” link will appear next to the theme name for blogs that are using Custom Design tools like fonts or CSS.

Things we like to see when looking for showcase-worthy customizations are blogs with good traffic, beautiful design, well-written articles or stunning images, recent content updates, and involvement helping out in our CSS Customization forum.

Be inspired, customize your blog and make it that perfect place for your creations.

Spring is in the air. With the weather warming up, now is a great time to get started on a photo blog. Creating a photo blog is a wonderful introduction to blogging on WordPress.com or an opportunity to refresh your current site. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a new blog right over here.

Getting started

Photo blogs, sometimes called phlogs, use pictures instead of words. While many photo bloggers choose a type of photo that they want to focus on, such as portraits, others use their photo blog to document their life’s events. Photo blogs come in a variety of styles, including those that focus on vacation photos or even snapshots of friends. With images, we can capture moments in our life in a way that sometimes words cannot.

When starting a photo blog, you’ll want to choose a theme with a wider content area to help to showcase your photos at full size. Similarly, choosing a theme that is minimalistic helps to reduce any noise that may detract from the focus on your photography. Popular photo blogging themes on WordPress.com include Nishita, Duotone, and Modularity Lite. Looking for some inspiration? Be sure to check out the photo blogs below or more of our recommended photo blogging sites for examples of photo-friendly layouts.

Want to add photo flair to your site without starting a whole new blog? Adding a photo blogging category to an existing blog is a great way to revamp your site. In fact, you may consider doing “Friday Phlogs” or a similar weekly special to help incorporate these tips consistently into your current site.

Tools of the Trade

What do you need to get started? Nothing but a camera and an internet connection. Photo blogging with a smart phone is growing increasingly simple, particularly with the Quick Photo button in the WordPress for iOS and Android apps where you can point, shoot, and publish. If you’re already a pro at the WordPress apps, you may be interested in taking a look at Camera+ and Flickr, which allow you to automatically share your photos to your WordPress.com blog.

If you choose to use a more traditional camera, there are few tips to keep in mind when uploading your photos to ensure they represent the full quality of your original picture.

• Don’t resize your photos after uploading them to WordPress.com. Instead, leave your images at full size so we can see your work in all of it’s glory. WordPress.com will automatically generate the appropriate dimensions for you.
• Make edits to your photos before uploading them.
• Save your photos as JPEGs. JPEGs are the best format for photos online. You can also use PNG if you’re looking to add a transparent image to your site.

Welcome to our series on photo blogging! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks over the next few weeks.

Happy Thursday! We’ve added some exciting new themes to our ever-growing collection, and we’re happy to tell you all about them.

First out of the oven is…Just Desserts. Yep, that’s a theme! Designed by Andy Rutledge, Just Desserts is a deliciously stylish premium theme that’s perfect for blogs centered on food.

With its responsive, single-column layout and unique presentation of images and posts on the front page, Just Desserts gives you a delectable canvas on which your mouthwatering photos and text can really shine — even when viewed on smaller mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

There’s much more to be said about Just Desserts, and we’ve provided all of the tasty details on the Theme Showcase.

If all of the dessert goodness left you breathless, we can supply you with some…Oxygen. Yep, that’s also a theme. Although, it may also leave you breathless because it’s simply stunning.

Designed by DevPress, Oxygen is a minimal yet beautifully crafted free magazine theme. With the help of your amazing images, the crisp and well-balanced design will transform your blog into an online magazine that looks sharp and professional.

Oxygen contains many features and customization options, including a showcase page template with a featured slider, featured images, seven widget areas, and a carefully tailored responsive layout. To read about these features and more, you know where to head — the Theme Showcase.

Happy blogging! We look forward to seeing what you bake, photograph, and write, armed with these great new themes.

Are you curious to see how your friends are using WordPress? Give the new and improved Friend Finder a try to connect with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google contacts who have WordPress sites!

After authorizing WordPress.com to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to find your friends (don’t worry — none of this account information is saved!) you’ll see a list of people you know who have WordPress sites.

Click Follow and each time your friend publishes a new post it will show up in your Reader under Blogs I Follow.

If you have multiple blogs, make sure to set the Primary Blog in your Settings so the correct blog is shown to friends when they find you.

If you’re interested in finding more cool blogs to follow, browse our collection of Recommended Blogs and try adding some topics to follow in your reader using the box in the bottom left.

In our quest to help you find the perfect look for your blog, we’ve added two brand new themes to our collection!

First up is Everyday, a beautifully designed premium theme by James Goode.

Everyday has been precisely calibrated to be pleasurably readable on almost any screen. Attention and care has especially been given to provide a robust and versatile layout to suit your writing needs. From short quips to lengthier bits of prose, Everyday will rise to the challenge and shine with every post you publish. Read more about it in the Theme Showcase or take it for a test spin in the demo site.

Next is a wonderful free theme named Origin by Galin Simeonov.

Origin is a light, elegant theme with a minimalist look and feel, perfect for a blog or journal. Your photos are the focus thanks to featured images and stylized Sticky posts, and the responsive design makes it a great fit for mobile devices and small screen sizes. A full list of features is available in the Theme Showcase and a demo site has been set up so that you can see it in action.