Also, and this is probably highly subjective, but do not make your blog light foreground on dark background. It burns my eyes everytime I switch focus from that to any other application or website I'm using.
Yes, it's highly subjective, for me it works, it gives some contrast. People tend to be really "polarized" around this design pattern, with a 50/50 split... I guess I'm on the "use it" 50 percent :-)