I personally like your first concept (gray scale), however there's contrast issues, your text is hard to read. Also typography wise, you seem to be all over the place, I usually like to stick with 1 or 2 fonts, and keep it consistent. I do love the layout (3 columns).

I personally feel you might be putting to much effort into what you consider to be the primary door way into your content. If you three distinct areas of content really share very little of your audience base -- then why have such an aggregated approach? Most of your audience will know how to get into the door way they came there for -- probably not going directly to the homepage. While I understand the logic for larger content distribution sites such as Newsvine or Digg -- does that approach work for you? Why not just have a very simple and clean entry way for your users -- without the clutter of the content? I know content is king, but picture giving the users three options "MUSIC", "DESIGN" and "STUFF".

For your avid user, they will want to get right into what they are there for. For your new user, they probably are more focused on what you mean by "music", "design" and "stuff". Instead of showing the aggregated information of your latest, I'd suggest placing some focus on what those section titles mean. What kind of "design"? Are you taking about painting, architecture, web, print, all?

Just my two cents -- it is a personal site and should reflect your personality more than anything else.