I've been through 100s of Second Life-related sites, and to this day, I still like to remark on what catches my eye-in-hand. This, from vanettda Lassard's blog, being one of them:

[Editor's note: I also recompressed his original image upon finding it was 43.62 KB. My JPG is 16.66 — 38% the size! — and is almost indistinguishable.]

To fully appreciate it — and seeing it does make me want to visit inworld — you have to see it in the full context on his blog. Not only is it a flying peach (I love whimsical fruit, and bonus points for custom-created textures), the overall layout and aesthetic are very clean and readable. Some of the margins are a bit tighter than I'm used to, but his header is superb and has a future-looking photo of his avatar on the left.

I love using well-placed sidebar badges. I do mine with WordPress Widgets, and I wouldn't say they "break up" the flow of the text — that sounds disruptive. Rather, they add visual flair and memorability (it keeps coming back to that). What's also nice is you can style rasterized text, and be assured it won't look radically different from browser-to-browser.

vanettda's blog is a new one, but this really made me smile, and I hope he continues to develop it and continue adding to his portfolio.