Drawar

Blank pages probably mean server error. Possibly an overload.

Criticism:

In your header some of the lines of text on the right are hard to read--you may want to adjust the header image slightly too help the text line up in easy-to-read areas.

I would validate your site. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it is best to fix as many errors as possible.

Other than that not bad.

The navigation needs spacing, some of the headers would look better unitalicized (featured post, etc). The color scheme is very good, and the organization is very clean. There's a lot of empty space as you head down the page, but it looks rather good.

And definitely validate! Most of the errors relate to your not closing the img tag and not giving the images alt attributes.

I think the site looks faboo. Very nice job indeed.

Your logo reminds me of an Adobe product, the colors and the font I guess. (Not saying that's good/bad, just saying.)

Thanks guys, all good points. I've unitalicized all the headings, you're right, it looks a lot better. Re. the validation, that's something I'll get done today. One problem is that most of the errors come directly from the youtube.com code. I don't particularly want to change that everytime I post a video :) I'll sort the other errors though.

I'll have a look at the header, perhaps I can make the right hand side darker so the white shows up better.

Re. Adobe and the color scheme, I used Kuler: http://kuler.adobe.com/ I assume you're all aware of it, it's fab for color schemes. I may change the logo at some point, perhaps go with a more 'web2.0' font but I'll have to see.

Thanks for all the advice. Much appreciated.

Your featured article isn't very legible, so I'd do something to bring the text out from the background.

Nice theme though. I do like it.

solid design. clean and crisp, well structured. The kind of site I'd go to directly rather than read through a feed reader. Well done!

(psst: why atheism over agnosticism?)

Thanks, that's a nice comment!

As for why atheism over agnosticism, well, that's a big big subject. You've given me an idea for a new topic. I shall work on that tonight and let you know! In brief, agnosticism is lazy. If I told you I had an invisible flying elephant in my garden that speaks only to me, you probably wouldn't be agnostic about it. You'd say "I want to see some evidence".

Okay, so maybe you'd be relaxed about it, maybe you wouldn't care.

What if I said that Erik (he's the elephant), told me that anyone with a French sounding name like Renaud was evil and we should do all we can to discriminate against them? What if I began making moral judgments that affected you and your family on the basis of my belief in Erik?

Agnosticism is for people that don't care. Atheism is for people that do. Okay, that wasn't so brief :) But I think I answered it.

I don't know. I generally identify as being agnostic. But then, I was a Philosophy major, so I feel the need to have proofs for everything.

Of course your idea of having an elephant in the garden seems silly, but how silly would I look going about a logical proof that you did not have an elephant in your garden? Verily, it seems that I would be unable to do it (science by the wayside of faith, it seems, would be the problem of the protagonist of your scenario), and were I to attempt it, I would come off as exhausted and more open to attack on smaller points.

This is often why atheists are brought onto conservative talk shows, I should think.

If your contention is that atheism cares more, well, I don't think that's at all the case. The debate about religion is a public one, and as such one needs to be careful about how they come off in an argument, or in an attempt at a proof. If you were simply trying to convince yourself of the (in)existence of a god, you often would not need formal logical proofs, only those which make sense to you at a subjective level. In this way, atheism seems to hold significant ground over agnosticism.

A good read on the topic is Bertrand Russell's short paper, "Am I an Atheist or an Agnostic?": http://www.luminary.us/russell/atheist_agnostic.html

(pssst: if you were really thinking about writing an entry about it sometime and would like some discussion, I'd be happy to participate. Shoot me an email: phil at riotindustries dotcom)

ah, shit. that was at least twice as long as I'd told myself would be so long that I'd come off as a pretentious douche.

so, I hope I didn't come off as a pretentious douche.

I just wanted to drop in that I like the site, hopefully I'll have some constructive criticism for it later today.