Pre-departure Meals

I’ve not told many people about this, but one of the reasons that I’m going to Japan is because of the food. I am a food lover in general and I’m very fortunate to live in a city that enjoys a palette that is as diverse as the people living here. Eating Japanese food is especially a privilege here and I look forward to comparing our Western imitations of Japanese food to the real thing.

Maybe this needs clarification and maybe it doesn’t, but my tastes are also a bit broader than the typical “California roll combo,” which is found in its abundance all over Vancouver. Of course I enjoy a good California roll just as much as the next Vancouverite. However, some of my favorite Japanese cuisines include their selection of noodle dishes – ramens, udons, and soba noodles, which are very common here, but also very underappreciated. I was very happy to learn that one of Japan’s leading ramen cities can actually be found in Fukushima prefecture. I’ve read that the city, Kitakata, has one of the highest ratios of ramen bars per capita in the world.

Another recent discovery for me is the Japanese hot pot, or Sukiyaki hot pot, which uses a soy sauce and cabbage base to cook meats and vegetables in. I’ve been a big fan of Chinese and Korean hot pots for a while and the Japanese equivalent ranks just as high for me.



Although I’m looking forward to immersing myself in Japanese cuisine, I am definitely starting to feel a bit of pre-departure anxiety towards the foods that I will be leaving behind. I have for the last few weeks been dealing with the reality of leaving my friends and family behind – my social network, my social safety net, my social security. Similar to these social comforts, I have also enjoyed for most of my life a sense of culinary comfort as well. I can appreciate the fact that I can walk into a restaurant or supermarket and be able to recognize the majority of items here.

Of course, food and people really go together. When I say that I will miss the foods that I’ve enjoyed all of my life in Vancouver, I think that much of this is connected to the people that I’ve had the pleasure of sharing these foods with. Included in this post are some shots that I took of the dinner that Janice and I made for ourselves last night. Although the steaks were a bit tough, I think that it was one of our more successful endeavors to date.

Word Cloud Revisited

I made a post recently about the label cloud that I set up for this blog. You can see the post here if you like. I was pretty proud of myself for being able to customize my blog this way, but the image that i used was just an image I found using a quick google search for "word cloud."

I've just found a site (Wordle.net) that will generate customized word clouds based on a piece of sample text that you can type or paste into a window. You can also paste the URL of a site into a window and it will generate a word cloud based on the words used at this site. I've included two word clouds with this post. The first cloud is based on the words used in this entire blog; the second is comprised of words used in this particular post.

Not only is the image representative of this site, but it is also fascinating for me to see a snapshot of words that I've used in my writing over the last few weeks. For instance, I tell my students not to use the phrase "I think" at the beginning of every sentence. It is fairly redundant considering that what you are writing should be considered a reflection of what you think of a topic. Yet, the word "think" is close to my most used word on this blog -- and growing more so with the writing of this post. Another word that might be detracting from the assured nature of my writing is the word "might" -- or more specifically, another word that is detracting from...

I was surprised to see the word "event" so big, given that i've only written one post about an event. I think (there's that word again!) that this might be due to the fact that i write, "in any event" as a transition quite often in my writing.

A few pleasant surprises: "love," "solid," "people," "music"

Words that i should use less of: "around," "couple," "just," "pretty," "something," "probably"

Vancouver Folk Festival

Janice and I went with a friend of ours down to Jericho Beach last night where the Vancouver Folk Festival was on. We went to this festival a couple of years ago and had a great time. This year, we didn’t actually buy tickets to go into the event. We just hung out down at the beaches where we could still hear the music. We didn’t get to stay long or see much this year as the sun was already going down when we arrived, but it was still a memorable evening.

We parked our car about fifteen minutes away from where the festival was going on. As we walked along the beach to the festival, we could hear music from the main stage. As we got closer, their was a group of African drummers playing while people danced around them among tiki torches. There was a couple of guitarists playing among the crowd, but they were drowned out by the thundering rhythms. I love how the spirit of the festival bleeds throughout the surrounding area. All around us, people were tossing Frisbees, playing instruments, drinking wine out of the bottle, showing of skin art, dancing, and enjoying life.





The sound of the music grew louder as we got closer. We arrived at an outdoor market that resembled more of a shantytown where there must have been almost a hundred stalls, each selling handcrafted jewelry, fabrics, paintings, and the like. I’ve never been one for these kinds of trinkets, but still, I love seeing all of the different people and their wares.

I remember when we first arrived at the festival a few years ago. The first image that stuck in my mind was the amount of bikes that had been parked in a grass field. The event had a bike-check system where there must have been a few thousand bikes lined up. Some might say that the event is overrun with hippies, but I think that the population is broader than that. The type of people that make up the event are generally more open to different lifestyles. The event is stands for more than peace and love. It is about being free to be who you want to be and to be exposed to other ways of life – whether it be through music, dance, art, dress, tattoos, food, or people in general.

Inside the event – and the grounds surrounding it, the people are what make the event exciting. When we reached the main-stage a few years ago, the ground in front of the stage was littered with magnificently coloured blankets where people left their chairs, coolers, bags, and other personal belongings. They would leave these items behind for the day while they walked around and enjoyed the festival. Nobody seemed to be worried about anything going missing.

There were no police at the event, or any real security other than the fence surrounding the grounds. We stumbled across the odd person smoking pot and this was the first year that they served alcohol at the event, but although the scene was very lively, it could not be described as rowdy in any regard. I think that it’s pretty amazing that such an event is put together and runs so smoothly. I also love the culture that this city is home to.

What to Bring to Japan: Omiyage

As part of our preparation for our work overseas, several JET resources have suggested that we take part in the tradition of omiyage, or gift-giving. After doing a bit of reading, my understanding of omiyage is that when someone goes on vacation, or some extended travel, this person will bring back souvenirs for friends and family. This shows that the person was thinking about their family and friends while they were away. According to our information book, or JET Handbook, that has been provided to us,

Giving gifts to people who help you out is not only a nice gesture, but it is an essential aspect of Japanese culture. Anything you bring will be greatly apprecieated, so you do not have to bring large, expensive gifts. Do keep in mind civil servants cannot accept expensive gifts. The gift is merely a token of friendship.
1.) Some gift ideas include: box of chocolates/cookies, photo book of your country, badges, scenic calendars, sweets, key chains, stickers (especially for students). Anything will be appreciated, especially something that has your country or area on it, or is representative of it. Wrap individual gifts or buy small bags to put them in.
2.) People to consider giving gifts to:
i. your supervisor
ii. your principal and vice principal
iii. members of the English department and office colleagues
iv. students (great for prizes for games
v. your neighbours

One of the JET alumni who spoke at one of our seminars suggested that we get in touch with our local MLA’s/MP’s to see if they would provide any Canadian memorabilia. This turned out to be a valuable piece of information as my local MLA provided just over a dozen pins – half of which were of BC and the rest were for the 2010 Olympics. At my local MP’s office, I had barely mentioned that I would be teaching abroad and she was already putting together an envelope with 50 Canadian pins and a full-sized, outdoor Candaian flag. I think that my girlfriend bought her dad a flag for his birthday a couple of years back and it cost her about $80.

Some other gifts that I plan on bringing include: a couple of rolls of pennies, two Robert Bateman books, and I think that I’ll try and find some candies that are reflective of Canadian culture. I think I might also take advantage of the Olympics coming to town and try to track down a few of the specially designed quarters that are in circulation – so far I have three. As for something that I won’t bring, I don’t think I’ll be giving any maple syrup to anybody. As another JET alumni mentioned, it just doesn’t go with many Japanese foods.


Here is a response to my What to Bring to Japan post concerning Omiyage that I received via Facebook. There are a couple of other responses as well to the post which you can view here.


Gemma said…

hey, bryce! good list. i'll focus on your gifts....

again, omiyage isn't necessary upon your arrival, but i did it because it's nice to help grease the wheels. :)

i brought gifts for: my principal, vice-principal, assistant to the vp, the staffroom, (x 3 schools), my two JTEs; the BoE staff, my supervisor, my supervisor's assistant, the mayor, plus 2-3 important dudes in my BoE. obvs... note this is ESID - ask your pred what they did!

if you are bringing foodstuffs
- think individually-wrapped if possible! i brought over chocolate loonies (which were a hit, but a bad idea... because i was always worried they'd melt)
- a box of nice cookies or maple candies might work?

general ideas for gifts:
- picture books (in japanese, if possible) of canada/vancouver; canadian flags, canadian flag pins, keychains, small bottles of ice wine (i think you can only bring three over); kitschy stuff from your city.

gifts for students (note: i work at a JHS/elementary schools. oh, and i haven't handed out many "prizes" over the year! oops).
- stickers
- postage stamps (they're light and cheap!)
- some people like handing out cute keychains to their kids
- canadian flags, pins from my MPs office.
- canadian pencils

- pennies sound like a nice idea... but maybe get them shipped over later? it might take over some precious space in your luggage, just saying!

** note, you'll be arriving during summer vacay... so you won't meet the entire teachers' staff until late august. but you'll probably meet the higher-ups (principal, vp, etc). before that.

** don't forget to bring over some photos (of your life/your country) for your self-introduction lesson. you can either print them off here, or bring over your prints and blow them up at a photocopier at your nearest kombini (convenience store). i found that showing pictures to your teachers over the summer was a nice ice breaker, since i couldn't (and still can't!) speak japanese.

How can i create more space between my text and my photos?

How can I create more space between my text and my photos? This was the question that I was asking myself last night. Sometimes I would post a photo and the text would be pushed up so close to my images that it almost seemed to overlap. I couldn’t seem to find much info on this online, so I thought I’d look at the HTML of my page and see if I could figure out how to create more space. Much to my surprise, I actually figured it out – by myself. It might be a bit of a quick fix way of doing things because I had to sacrifice my image borders to do it, but I’m happy with the outcome. I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty proud of myself, having never worked with HTML at all before this blog.

Before:

After:

So how did I accomplish this? It was pretty simple.

1.) Go into the “edit HTML” page under "layout," which can be found in the customization page. Then do a search ("command+F" or "CTRL+F") for the following text:

.post img {
padding: 4px;
border: 1px solid $borderColor;

2.) Change “1px solid $borderColor;” to something like “10px solid $borderColor;” – the number of pixels will vary depending on how much of a cushion you want. Make sure to save your changes.

3.) Now your images will probably have quite a large border around it, so the next step is to go to “fonts and colors” under your “layout” menu. Find “Border color” and change the color to match the color of your “main background.” Again, make sure to save your changes.

4.) Go to “view my blog” and enjoy the spaciousness of your new posts.

Again, this is probably the quick and dirty way to accomplish this. If there are better ways of doing this, I’d love to hear about them. Let me know if you have any questions.

Fukushima Prefecture, Japan Video Introduction

As of August 2nd, I will have arrived in Japan and begun living and working here for the course of one year. I have never been to Japan before. I do not speak Japanese. I still don’t have a place to stay. All I can bring with me from my home that I’ve lived in for the last 25 years, must fit into two pieces of luggage and a carry-on. I don’t know anyone that I will be living with or working with. I could go on, but this list of unknowns will only grow deeper into a pit of daunting anxiousness and nervousness.

Instead, in the short time that I have before I leave (which is growing shorter by the minute) I am trying to build my understanding of Japan and where I am going. I’ve been doing my best to learn the language. I’ve “Google-Earthed” my main high school. I’ve made contact with some of the JET’s living in Fukushima Prefecture. I’ve emailed questions to my program coordinator. I’ve visited the Fukushima website. I feel that it is important that I do as much as I can to prepare myself for my experience in Japan. I am pretty sure that I will be overwhelmed and maybe even pushed beyond my comfort threshold. But I think that these cultural shocks will stem from the element of surprise. I figure that the more that I try to learn about Japan, the less there will be to surprise/shock me. I know that I will be shocked, but I also think that I should be able to have some control over how shocked I will be.

Included in this post is a link to a video sent to me by someone who is currently living in Iwaki. It is a promotional video of some kind that looks a bit dated, but interesting in that it gives me a sense of what I might be seeing in the region in which I will be living for at least a year. The subject of the video is actually about Fukushima Prefecture, but it does have a small portion that features Iwaki Beaches.

What to Bring to Japan

As of today, I leave for Japan in 3 weeks. That’s 21 days, or 504 hours, etc. that I have left here in Vancouver. That’s not a lot of time. I swear that yesterday I still had 6 weeks left. 3 weeks left, my Japanese is terrible, and there is still lots left for me to do.

The other day I thought that I would start packing for Japan, but I was getting a bit overwhelmed, so I decided to make myself a list, which would serve as my comprehensive guide to what I need to bring to Japan. For my flight, I am allowed 2 pieces of luggage that cannot weigh any more than 50lbs each and one carry-on. When I arrive in Tokyo for our seminars there, one bag gets shipped to the city I will be working in, while the other piece of luggage and my carry-on stay with me for 3-4 days in Tokyo.

This is the extent of my life that I plan on bringing with me to Japan – Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated. I realize that the camera stuff might be a bit excessive, but how could i not take my camera stuff to Japan? Is it weird that I’m posting the contents of my luggage/life on the internet?

Clothes

• pants x2
• shorts x2
• swim shorts x1
• gym shorts x1
• t-shirt x2
• polo shirt x1
• collar shirt x2
• underwear x5
• white socks x3
• black socks x3
• tie x1
• belt x1
• hat x1
• suit x1
• running shoes x1
• dress shoes x1

Toiletries

• toothbrush
• deodorant x3
• hair putty
• toilet paper x1 (just in case)
• sunblock
• clippers
• scissors
• razor
• blades
• shaving cream
• aspirin
• toothpaste x3

Others

• Multi vitamins
• fork/knife/spoon
• batteries
• leatherman
• ipod/cable/headphones
• watch
• alarm clock
• extra glasses
• clipboard/paper
• bbq lighter
• guitar tuner
• water bottle
• compact sleeping bag
• pillow case
• detergent?
• passport
• JET handbook
• Jet documents – contract
• flashlight
• books

Laptop

• card reader
• charger
• powerbar?
• external hard drive/cable
• monitor adaptor
• flash drive

Camera

• lenses
• flashes
• charger
• cards
• filters
• bag
• sync cords
• tripod
• umbrella stand

Gifts – little stuck on this one

• books
• stickers?
• pennies

Customized blogs: The Label Cloud

Some of you may have noticed that I've added a new feature to this blog. No longer do my labels appear in a static list of blue underlined words/phrases. Instead, they appear in a 'cloud' of phrases where the most written about standout much larger than those that are not so significant. The effect essentially allows readers to quickly see the main topics that are written about in this blog, while at the same time, be able to see less prominent, yet still important, blog topics.

As i've mentioned before in my blog posts, this is one of the advantages to using Blogger instead of Wordpress.com (see my previous post). In Blogger, i am able to customize the HTML for my blog, whereas in with Wordpress.com, i can't. Now i don't want to pretend that i know much about HTML code, because i don't, but what i can do, is follow simple instructions involving cutting and pasting text. And really, this is all that is required of me to make changes in appearance to my blog.

As for how to put a Label Cloud into your blog, there are a few sites that i've found with a simple google search, but most seem to stem back to this one here. Again, this was quite an easy process as the steps and the code are outlined very clearly and it only took me about 5 minutes to set up.

Another modification i made to my blog was to widen the margins a bit. Also quite easy when using directions that can be found here.

Kill Bill meets Yojimbo meets the Man With No Name Trilogy = Sukyaki Western: Django

We watched a film called Sukiyaki Western: Django the other night and quite enjoyed it. “Sukiyaki” is a style of Japanese hotpot, which I think is an intended riff off of the “spaghetti western” genre. It definitely plays with the spaghetti western style, which shared its influences with old Japanese westerns. The film however, was released in 2007, so it is quite modernized and probably shares more of a likeness to Quentin Tarrantino’s Kill Bill movies. Quentin Tarrantino also has a role in this film.

Check out a trailer for this film here.

The film takes place in an old Japanese town where rival factions are competing to find a legendary treasure and have all but crippled the town. Aside from its ties to other films, its story is rooted in Japanese history and makes reference to Shakespeare’s rendition of the war of the roses. Check more detailed info on the film here.

What is interesting about the film is that it exoticizes Western culture in the same way that Asian cultures are represented in Western films. In a film like Kill Bill, the narrative takes place mostly in North America and the roles are all played by Western actors; it is a Western film. Much of the appeal in this film however, is how it plays off of Japanese influences: kung-fu/samurai films, the presence of several big Asian characters, fighting styles, décor, colours, weapons, language, etc. What sets many of the characters apart from everyday Western viewers is the fact that many of them were trained to fight in Japan. More specifically, the source of the main character (the Bride)’s powers that separate her from the other characters is the fact that she is able to acquire a piece of knowledge/skill in Japan that no other character managed to attain.

In Sukiyaki Western Django however, the narrative takes place in Japan, with mostly Japanese actors, foods, costumes, etc. In the same way that Japanese culture is idealized in Kill Bill however, this film holds western culture in a more favourable light. All of the major battles are fought/won with western style gunfights involving revolvers. Also, the major wild-card character has more of a western attire, and even looks like he might have some Caucasian blood in him. Another of the major characters also draws her proficiency in gunfighting from a Caucasian man who she spends an extended amount of time training with. These scenes draw quite similar parallels to when the Bride trains with her Japanese master.

It is interesting how the idea of something (or someone) different becomes focused upon and idealized. This idealization has to do with the idea that what others are doing may be better, or at least something we can learn from. Is it because we are afraid of the other that we see them as more powerful? Does the fact that we do not understand others contribute to these impressions? Or does building an understanding reinforce these attitudes? Also, do these representations of a culture promote better understanding between cultures? or do they reinforce racial stereotypes and prejudices?

Bryce is Learning Japnanese -- Part II

Yesterday’s post was about Rosetta Stone, which has been my primary tool for learning Japanese. As I mentioned, it is a great program for developing comprehension, pronunciation, and vocabulary skills, but is a bit lacking in terms of getting a good grasp of Japanese alphabets. Today I will discuss a few tools and strategies that I have used to learn the Hiragana alphabet. I plan to continue using these strategies in my studies of Katakana.

In case you are unfamiliar with the three alphabets that the Japanese language makes use of, here is a link to a wikipedia page that is useful. In a nutshell, the first alphabet, Kanji, is the oldest form of writing in Japanese and is based on Chinese logographic characters. In this system, each symbol denotes a particular word and therefore, there are thousands of characters to learn. At this point, I know none of them. The more modern alphabets are phonetic and are both made up of 46 characters (and much easier to learn than kanji). Hiragana is the first alphabet that most students of the Japanese language learn. Katakana is made up of the same phonetic sounds as Hiragana, but uses different symbols to represent them. It is my understanding that Katakana is used primarily to denote foreign words and concepts.

As you can see from any chart of Hiragana symbols, the language makes use of 5 vowel sounds (all of which should be familiar to English speakers) and combines them with various consonant sounds. Each row from the chart is comprised of one consonant sound, while each column stems from a particular vowel sound. My goal when learning each of these symbols was to memorize one new row each day. Theoretically, I should have been able to have learned the entire alphabet in 10 days. It didn’t exactly happen that way, but I found that in 2 or 3 days, 15 symbols was quite manageable.

As for how to learn these alphabets, my philosophy is, “writing is remembering.” I need to write symbols down if I am to remember them. Just like anything else, this takes practice. A typical study session would look something like this:

1. I review the symbols that I already know by writing the alphabet as far as I can a few times.
2. I choose 5 symbols that correspond to a particular vowel sound and I write an entire line of the first symbol from this set. Then I do the same with the other 4 symbols.
3. I will then come up with patterns to write these symbols in – usually repeating each symbol 3-5 times. I gradually reduce the repetitions until I can write each symbol from this particular set.
4. To finish off, I write out the alphabet as far as I can (including the new symbols). I do this 3 or 4 times.

It is important to sound out each character as you are writing them – preferably out loud, but in your head is a good substitute). This will help build associations between the image, the sound, and the pronunciations.

That’s about all there is to it. This session will usually take me about 10-20 minutes. If it seems simple, it’s because it is. Do this everyday, and you will be able to have the entire alphabet memorized in about 10 days. If you’re like me, it will probably take you a bit longer as you will miss days. If I missed a day, it’s still easy to take out a piece of paper during your lunch break at work and write out the alphabet as review – this might only take 5 minutes.

Although this exercise may seem a bit elementary, the writing of these characters was essential to my learning. This was because I had only ever studied languages in English and a little bit in French. I had only ever worked with the 26 symbols that make up our alphabet. The mere action of forming these new characters was quite difficult for me at first. As I got accustomed to forming these new shapes, I found that I was much better equipped to recognize them in my reading.

Here are some sites that I also found useful for learning and reviewing Japanese alphabets:

http://www.yosida.com/en/hiragana.html -→ I like this site because clicking on a particular character provides a demonstration of how to form the symbol.

These sites will help review what you already know, but I didn’t find them very helpful in terms of learning new material.
http://www.realkana.com/hiragana/
http://www.easyjapanese.org/
http://www.manythings.org/japanese/
http://www.bitboost.com/tiletag/about-the-kana.html

Bryce is Learning Japanese

In preparation for my departure to Japan, I’ve been making an effort to learn Japanese over the last few months. I am a bit disappointed with how little Japanese I can speak, but that has more to do with the lack of time put into studying than anything else.

The main focus of my studying generally involves Rosetta Stone, which if you haven’t heard of, can be found here. I like this program because it is the closest that I’ll get to a full immersion into the language without actually being in Japan. The lessons are all in Japanese, but makes use of pictures and prompts in a way that is quite intuitive in learning a language.

There are a variety of lessons that are geared towards comprehension, vocabulary building, pronunciation, reading, and a bit of writing. The main benefits from what I can tell are in being able to comprehend spoken Japanese and my pronunciation of the language. the reading and writing is less of a focus in the program – or at least has been slower for me to develop.

How does Rosetta Stone work? A pretty standard lesson type involves several images and a spoken prompt. After the prompt is spoken, you click on the image that best represents what you’ve heard. It is an interesting system of learning because it forces me to rely on what I already know and then builds upon that knowledge through new associations.

For example, I will hear a phrase like “otokono hito wa mizu a nonde shimas” (I apologize, but my spelling is probably terrible). There will be about 4 images to choose from: a boy eating, a man drinking, a girl eating, and a woman drinking. I may not know what “mizu a nonde shimas” means, but I do know that “otokono hito” translates to “man.” It may seem too easy to just select the image with the man in it (who happens to be drinking a glass of water), but at the same time, I’m building an association between the phrase “mizu a nonde shimas” and a person drinking water. Eventually, after a variety of lesson types, I am able to recognize this association without the other distinctions in the image. You can actually try a quick demo of this here – although I think the demo is based on learning Arabic.

This style of learning can take some getting used to, but after some practice, you will be amazed at how hearing the language and speaking it while being engaged in these (usually) easy tasks will allow you to intuitively comprehend aspects of the language.

I should also mention that the reading and writing part of Rosetta Stone focuses primarily on the Hiragana alphabet, with some introduction to Katakana. You can however modify it to communicate in Kanji, but I’m not sure if the reading and writing training will accommodate to this.

Just a quick note about price – the program can be quite expensive. I think that to buy all three levels of difficulty would cost over $600 (CAN). You can buy the levels separately – I think they cost about $300 each, but it’s cheaper to buy them in bundles. Instead of buying the actual program however, I bought a subscription for about $250 that lets me use the program online for 6 months – at any level of difficulty. I figured that this is the best deal for me because it’s the cheapest and by the time my subscription is up, I will be in Japan (and therefore have quite a wealth of resources for learning the language). Although this may seem pricy, I figure that any course that you sign up for will be at least $300 for one term. Here is a link to their actual prices (in US Dollars).

***Also, don’t order right from their website. Email them first and ask if they have any promotions going on. You should be able to get a 10% discount regardless of your situation. You can also check these sites out for coupon codes and more discount information:
http://www.rosettastone.com/offer/cj09
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/rosettastone.com.***


In general, I find that Rosetta Stone is less geared towards reading and writing. My next posting will discuss a bit about how I cope with this aspect of the Japanese Language.

Deciding where to start a Blog

Seeing as how I am not in Japan yet, I may be writing a few posts that don’t relate entirely to the Japanese experience. Given that I have set up this blog as part of my Japanese experience, however, I thought that I would share some information on how I’ve set up my blog and the resources that I’ve used.

Scroll to the bottom for links that helped me set up my blog.

I’ve actually set up two blogs: one with Blogger (the one you are currently reading) and another with Wordpress.com (not to be confused with Wordpress.org – a distinction that I’ll discus in a moment). You can view my Wordpress.com blog here: http://brycewords.wordpress.com/

Before I discuss Blogger, I’ll fill you in on why I didn’t stick with Wordpress.com, which was actually a difficult decision to make. Wordpress.com differs from Wordpress.org in that the first is a hosting site that lets us set up a blog for free under one of their “wordpress.com” domain names. Wordpress.org provides a free program to build our own blog, but requires that we host our own domain, which generally costs money. So before we make a decision on whether to use Wordpress, we need to make a distinction between Wordpress.com’s free service and Wordpress.org’s system that requires us to set up and pay for our own domain.

Why doesn’t everybody just set up a free blog through Wordpress.com (if we’re not bothered by the fact that our domain will contain the label “Wordpress” in it)? The free service that Wordpress.com come provides is actually quite limited. For example, although I preferred Wordpress’s selection of templates (or visual themes) more than Bloggers, I could not modify any of these templates in any way – unless I decided to pay a premium that would allow this. Even though these templates seemed great right out of the box, they were also quite constricting.

Aside from not being able to customize my blog, there were other options with a price – those being: space upgrades, making my blog ad-free, ability to upload video straight to the blog. I think that it is a fairly simple process to transfer a blog from Wordpress.com to Wordpress.org – if I decided later on to host my own domain, but for the type of blog that I was starting, I did not see this as being too likely. I’ve also heard that Wordpress.com is quite stringent on monitoring copyright infringements as part of their terms of service.

Finally, although I enjoyed some of the layouts in working with Wordpress, it didn’t seem as quick or intuitive as working with Blogger.

Aside from being much quicker and more intuitive to work with, I appreciated the fact that I could tweak the blog templates that Blogger provided. Although the initial templates seemed a bit boring and uninteresting, it allows us to play around with colour schemes quite easily – which can have quite an impact. Also, for those that are willing/knowledgeable, we can also modify the html code of the blog as well. I managed to play around with the margins of my page doing this.

Also, in terms of working with the html code of the blog, many blogging programs (such as Google analytics, Webmaster tools, etc.) require that we implement some code variation in order to use their service. Again, this isn’t possible with Wordpress.com.

Another point is that Blogger’s free blogging service allows us to monetize our blog, whereas Wordpress.com does not (we would have to host our own domain to do this).

Here is a list of sites that have helped me out immensely in the last few days of me setting up this blog.

Blogging platforms:
http://wordpress.com/
http://wordpress.org/
http://www.blogger.com/home

Wordpress vs. Blogger
http://pulsed.blogspot.com/2007/07/blogger-wordpress-chart.html

Wordpress.com vs. Wordpress.org
http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/wordpress-com-vs-wordpress-org/
http://weblogs.about.com/od/choosingabloghost/p/WordpressOvrvw.htm

Blog Tips:
http://www.blogtips.org/5-things-to-do-after-creating-a-new-blog/#more-259
http://www.squidoo.com/customize_blogger
http://www.boydcreative.net/blogging/10-ways-to-optimize-wordpress-for-more-traffic/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/01/03/how-to-move-from-wordpresscom-to-wordpressorg/

Stumbleupon: (check this out if you don't know what it is)
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/09/26/building-your-blog-with-stumbleupon/