About This Site

This is my place to write, collect ideas, and experiment with the look and feel of a personal website.

Where It Began

The site began with Astro Sphere, a theme by Mark Horn. Its quiet, celestial design drew me in. The original demo shows the starting point; I have kept that attribution here as the site has changed.

What Changed

The original theme grew into a small solar system of color palettes. Earth is the default, and the Atmosphere menu lets visitors choose another planet or Sagittarius A*. It also controls motion. An occasional flying saucer can change the palette, with an Undo button; after a visit, Pluto becomes available as a theme. Resetting preferences hides Pluto again until another visit.

The home page now has a curved horizon, aurora, field-notes artwork, stars, shooting stars, and a small cast of drifting objects. The Debris Lab shows each object and explains how to spot one on the home page. The Social page uses an orbit instead of a conventional list.

Writing now supports several post formats, including articles, short notes, links, photos, and reviews. The local visual editor lets me write posts and ordinary pages without a hosted CMS. The contact form and optional blog conversations are separate from the static pages.

Built With

Astro builds the pages, and Cloudflare hosts them. CSS and small pieces of JavaScript handle the visual effects. The visual editor is built with Keystatic. Blog conversations use EchoThread. The source code is on GitHub.

Design direction and content by Blake Mitchell. Site modifications made with Codex.

Current build: ver. 2026.10.06.f9b938b