I do have plans for a background pic, some mildly colorful pages, etc.

I would really like to transform this theme (WordPress’s Customizr) to a dark one, but that’s on low-priority right now. IMHO, text displayed on a luminous screen should be light text on dark background, to relieve eye strain. When you look at a screen, you’re basically staring at a detailed light bulb!

I know, u must have already got loads of “good-start-Link” messages. So, I will (also) write something which might be useful – criticism.

Well, though i put many attempts at first, I could not see what else is missing because u have covered everything whatever a personal blog requires.
But, with my friends in HCI continuouly talking about “user-design”, there is one aspect where you can improve upon. When I saw your website for the first time, it was mostly words with tiny symbols scattered across the page. So I think it would be more appealing if you can design your homepage with less words and more pictures (bigger ones) and yeah, not to forget the colors. Of course, I mentioned this point just for the sake of criticism (and thus, contributing something) Hope it helps