I have just updated my site with a bit more polish in places and would like to know if you think it is hot or not?

link

I like it. One suggestion though. Perhaps add some line height in your body text. It looks all bunched together.

Impressions and nitpicks:

I like the detail and unifying style brought about by texturing all the titles. It ties it all together nice and cleanly. In fact, I'd describe the whole thing as pleasantly "tied together" and "clean".

The red rule along the top of the dark gray header doesn't really serve a purpose. Try making it a rounded-top "tab" like many of the other elements, or omit it.

The blur-out on rollover is jarring, to me. One problem is that instead of changing the active element, everything else changes, drawing my eye to everything except what I moused over. You might try applying a "strengthening" effect of some kind to the current element, and make the blurring ease in (using some JavaScript) to make it pull away less.

I'd go with sentence case on the nav captions ("send me home", etc.). All-lowercase doesn't really enhance it much, and it de-emphasizes you when you say "griffin" in common-noun case. Also, you break it anyway by having the capital "I" in the last item. Also, "send me home" mixes a first-person perspective (with the viewer being "me") into an otherwise third-person ("my previous projects") set.