Haven't seen version 1, but the site looks 10000000% better, really clean, kudos to the designer. I love serendipity, it's a wonderful piece of work, thanks again for doing it.
This said, for some reason I could not get in with my old account. After trying everything (like deleting cookies, having a new pw sent to me twice, etc.) I still was getting the 5 tries message, so I gave up. I got a newidentity.