How I Built a Universe

The Problem With Websites

I kept trying to make a website. A proper one. Portfolio, blog, links. Clean. Minimal. Orbitron font.

Every time I finished one I felt nothing. It looked like every other website. It said the same things every other website says. It behaved in the same predictable way every other website behaves.

So I stopped trying to make a website.

The Idea That Changed Everything

What if instead of pages, you had planets?

What if instead of a navigation menu, you had a star map?

What if instead of clicking links, you were piloting a spacecraft?

The concept sounds simple stated like that. The execution was less simple.

The Architecture

The universe runs on three separate codebases, each deployed independently:

• The Root — the star map itself. Pure HTML, SVG, CSS, vanilla JavaScript. No framework. The map is literally an SVG element with system nodes positioned by hand. The Pac-Man access gate lives here.
• The Systems — each star system is its own repository, its own deployment. Independent. Self-contained. The Hitchhiker’s Guide runs on Astro. The Acclimatisation Zone is a single HTML file with a video.
• The Infrastructure — everything hosted on Cloudflare Pages. Git push to main, site updates in sixty seconds.

The whole thing costs approximately zero dollars a month.

The Access Gate

The first thing most visitors see is not a homepage. It is a Pac-Man game.

You must complete Level 1 to enter the universe.

This is not gatekeeping. It is a statement of intent. This place is not like other places. Different rules apply here. Adjust accordingly.

When you clear the level, you earn Energon Cubes. Energon Cubes are the fuel of the universe. They unlock systems. The more you explore and play, the more of the universe you can access.

The Watchtower

One of the first planets I built was a live surveillance node. Four portals open simultaneously:

• Real-time aircraft from the OpenSky Network
• Global wind patterns from Windy
• The International Space Station crawling across a dark map in real time, leaving an amber trail
• Live cameras from around the surface of the planet, switchable by hand

You can sit there at midnight and watch the planet breathe. Thousands of aircraft. The ISS completing an orbit every 90 minutes. A live feed from a jellyfish tank in Monterey Bay.

I did not plan this. It emerged from a simple question: what would be interesting to find on a planet?

The Mystery

There is an object on the star map that does not respond to clicks. It does not have a label. It pulses faintly in the dark near the Experimental node.

It is not explained anywhere. Not in the documentation. Not here.

Some things should remain unexplained.

The Philosophy

I was once told that a good personal website should be like a business card. Scannable. Professional. Clear about what you do and what you want.

Home World Capital is the opposite of a business card.

It is a place you get lost in. It is a place that changes when you come back. It is a place where the navigation is a Pac-Man game and one of the planets is a live feed of the International Space Station.

If you are looking for a list of my skills and a contact form, you are in the wrong system.

If you are looking for something you have never seen before on the internet, you may be in exactly the right place.

What Comes Next

More planets. More games. More live feeds. A text adventure that takes place on a planet you have to find by completing a quest. A hidden star system that only reveals itself after you have spent a certain amount of time in the universe.

The Energon Cube system will eventually connect to real accounts. Then to wallet-based identities. Then, perhaps, to token-gated sectors of space that only certain explorers can reach.

The universe is not finished. The universe is never finished.

That is the whole point.

END TRANSMISSION // HOME WORLD CAPITAL // 2026