Ok, I have my thick skin on in readiness

Stunning. Nice work Shadow ??

heh database error?

Not sure lawtai. I am not seeing one if so…?

ah there we go, now i can see it. not a bad look.

@shadow – I agree very much with your post about the lack of real feedback.
So here we go: though the layout is a little bit too dark(ish) for me, I appreciate the consistence and the elegance of it. And once again: even if it is far from my personal taste I can see the merit of having a design that is in harmony with the content of the blog. I guess too often we “judge” other people’s blog (site) based on our own not-so-reliable taste ?? instead of looking at
a) the lack or existence of glitches
b) the desing-content relation
P.S. The photos are amazing!

lovely…
only thing i would suggest is that you scroll the background. as well as the text. this stationary background feature is pretty sweet, but it produced unexpected results in less fortunate browsers. if you care about that, then i’d make the background move with the text.
otherwise, lovely texture, nice photos, and subtle type. really cool!

An elegant restful site, one of the more interesting designs I’ve seen lately and I think the photographs are stunning and that’s from an ex photographer!
I’m not so keen on the relativly slow loading of the site or the fact that at reduced screen the right menu will have the tendency to float over the content.
Hugo.

I like the design. And I do not usually like ‘reverse color’ sites. It is a bit different from other ‘gray’ sites / styles. The use of very little text (or minimal text) does make this easier to read and digest.
I realize that you’re placing images for a reason, and if you reduced each of the large images to below 20kb they’d likely lose appeal … how about thumbnails? clickable to larger pics? i’m just thinking of those dialup users. You did keep the images around, or below, 40kb. That’s good – and you kept the posts to 5 per page, too. On a T1, and also a aDSL, account they come up pretty fast.
The type point size for the right column is smaller than these weary old eyes can read, but that’s what Firefox’s “Control +” is for… :o)
Nice job! I like it.

moshu@
Thanks for your thoughts. I am glad that Ii am not the only one who feels this way.
dss@
I am undecided about the fixed background issue. If it is fixed in FF but not in IE [which I believe is the case] then it appears to be ok in both ‘worlds’.
HugoA@
Is the site loading slowly then? I thought it was loading relatively quickly. I could cut the posts back to 3 to make it a smaller load but would rather not unless it is quite necessary. I am not sure how to go about fixing the float issue.
Thanks to you all for your feedback. It’s greatly appreciated.

Thanks to you too plainsman…and I even logged in this time ??

As others have said – good work, it’s a pretty original site.
For me, the text is a little difficult to read. I think it’s a combination of the font, colour & background image. Also the links (in the post text) are difficult to make out.
The navigation on the right hand side (Home, About, Areas, etc) would be much improved with some kind of rollover effect.
Cheers,
Ben

Thanks Ben. Your input is much appreciated.
Well, after a slow start, it was great to receive some very constructive feedback. I have changed the font sizes in the menu and I am now looking into making some kind of rollover effect. I had plannned on doing it in the first place but simply never pulled my finger out.
I am still not 100% happy with the left side image and will be looking at some changes in that direction too.
I would also like to fine tune the font to get something which is aesthetically appropriate but also functional – not always as it easy as it sounds when it comes to fonts.
Unfortunately, this may not happen until the weekend.
Thanks again for the feedback. Any other comments would also be highly valued…