A design review would be most appreciated

You have been around for quite sometime and are very good at what you write, so I will stick to the design aspects of your blog. 

Your template to be honest looks as old as the blog itself... It urgently needs a face lift.

1. Have a header image which augurs well with the content of your blog 

2. Have more prominent buttons for RSS subscriptions, twitter facebook etc. My blog gets almost 75% of the traffic from social networking sites. 

3. Also have an about me page, it helps :) 

4. Try to use an image in each post, I get suggestions in my blog sometimes (especially when the posts are long) that people prefer when there are pictures thrown in here and there. Personally, I can read a lot of text without images :) 

5. the color scheme looks simple and minimalistic but a little use of shadows, transparencies and gradients will make the site look more "2010" ;)

-- http://gtoosphere.blogspot.com

Thanks Jayanth :)

I used to have a more complex theme, but was loading too slowly. I switched to this one some months ago because it has no pics :) and loads several times faster.

But if you think it needs work, let me see what I can do! Thanks once more...

I think that the design of your blog is very professional. Of course, the design of my blog is very amateurish (and which I hope to rectify in the near future), so this observation of mine may not mean much.

Having written the first sentence though, I think that the right-hand-side of your home page is somewhat cluttered; I do not see the need for "Recent Posts," "Popular Posts" and "Recent Comments". Of course, my philosophy is that simplicity is best. 

More than that though, I admire content, and I do think that your content is very good.

Thanks for the feedback Micky :) . Visisted your blog as well!

I like the minimalistic design of your blog. It feels graceful, actually. The blog is pretty good, but I feel that a header image of some sort (even a small black and white logo with site name) might help in b*****ng and enable people to recollect when they are visiting the second time. I feel that your blog name and categories need to be bigger/highlighted some other way. Within individual posts, you have a large ad unit above your header/categories. Try to avoid it or if it is working for you, try to center it. One more thing - Consider having popular posts above recent posts in the sidebar.

Hi, Nice blog site. Very clean lines and simple so you are focusing on the content which is the strength of your site.

I've been following your blog for a long time now and today I came to know that you are also on Indiblogger. I jst love your blog.....Besides the content your blog is very neatly designed, which makes mekes the reading experience even more pleasurable.