because it uses only modern web standards
This page is constructed strictly using reasonably recent web standards, namely HTML 4.01 (well, actually XHTML 1.0, which is based on and backwards compatible with HTML 4) and CSS 1. Therefore, if you're using a web browser which doesn't fully implement these standards, it will probably look pretty ugly.
but isn't that unfriendly?
In fact, modern standards are intended to be friendlier and more usable--to users who want to have good experiences on web sites, to users with disabilities, and to people trying to create and maintain web sites--not to old versions of web browsers that go years without being updated (boo, Netscape).
Of course, there's a school of thought, of which I am usually a member, that says it's more important that as many people as possible are able to use a web site than it is that the site adheres to arcane standards. I believe this is true for web sites that are intended or required to reach a general audience. However, I personally have also been responsible for implementing too many web sites aimed at this "general audience," and the frustration of trying to implement visually interesting yet broadly compatible web pages is substantial.
In short, I'm sick of working on cross-browser compatibility. This is just a vanity site, so I don't feel that it's very important every single visitor sees it exactly the way I intended. In fact, it seems like a good way for me to spread the gospel about upgrading to modern browsers. The current standards are fun and expressive and let web designers create cool-looking web sites without messy graphical tweaks or yucky HTML kludges.
web browser recommendations
For day-to-day use by the average user, I can only recommend Microsoft Internet Explorer (for Windows and for Mac). Sure, it's made by big bad Microsoft, but frankly they've done a superior job of implementing the standards in a fast, powerful web browser. And Mac IE 5 has even better features and is even cooler than Windows IE 5.
If you can't abide by Microsoft but need full-featuredness (and then some) of Internet Explorer, try Mozilla. It's in beta, and it's a bit slow, but the latest release/milestone builds are solid and available for virtually every platform under the sun, including Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Un*x flavors. It's really quite nice, and its standards support is comprehensive.
For those interested in lighter-weight alternatives, check out Opera. It's super-fast and has decent (but not spectacular) standards support. I've heard a lot of web pages don't actually look that good in it, though.
If you're a Mac user, keep your eye on iCab--it's fast, small, promises full standards support (HTML 4, CSS1 and CSS2), and has many good web-browsing-focused features such as cookie management and ad-blocking, but its rendering engine is still incomplete and it lacks, among other things, a built-in ftp handler for downloading files.
I used to use Netscape, but they didn't upgrade Navigator forever, and then they released Netscape 6, which is awful and half-baked (yes, I know it's the same project as Mozilla--but Mozilla doesn't pretend it's finished a releasable 1.0 version yet). So now I don't like Netscape stuff.
That's my rant. Upgrade your browser. Or don't, that's up to you, but these pages (and others) will look nicer if you do.