As much as I like the somber Laboratorium blue, I'm starting to face up to the reality that the readability here is not what I'd like it to be. I'm kind of inspired by the nw Full Waffle Jacket look: it's a very nice way of doing dark text on a light background. Philosophically, I'm sort of against using sans-serif fonts like Chase does, but I have to admit he does very well with the look. I'm also contemplating doing something to trim the column width here. It may just be that I read my own site with too-small fonts on too large a screen, but I'm pretty seriously violating the rules about maximum line length.
What I'd really like to do is have two columns of text (plus the ubiquitous sidebar). But getting that to flow properly in HTML strikes me as a ridiculously difficult task: I'm not even sure I'd go about doing it automatically. In the absence of such formatting commands, and given my general unwillingness to go graphical (read: I'm a programmer, not an artist), I figure I'd need either some kind of excuse for a Slashdot-style double sidebar or some other really clever design conceit. For now, I'm just going to play around with the CSS on my computer locally and see if I can jigger widths and colors and fonts to give me something that's a bit easier on the eyes without losing that Lab look and feel.