People And Websites #8 - OrbitalMartian
Life has been busy over the past few months, so I haven't had time to interview. But, it's about time we continue People and Websites! Our next guest is a Fedi friend of mine OrbitalMartian! His story is very interesting to me, and I hope you'll also enjoy reading it :)
Hey! Can you introduce yourself to the readers?
Hey, I'm CJ, known online as OrbitalMartian. I do a fair bit of rambling and writing about my messing around with Linux and open source. When I first appeared online, I used a username made up of the some personal details that probably shouldn't have been shared online (which for that reason, I won't divulge), I then changed my name probably about once a week until I landed on LinuxGamer, which was my name all that way up to my online rebrand in 2023.
I come from the UK (in the real world, not the made-up character of my online self), and work in school admin. I have grown up around computers and always enjoyed the web. As a kinaesthetic learner, I have always found tinkering with things to be the best way to figure things out.
A couple of things that I enjoy are reading, writing, and playing with Linux. I enjoy flight simulators as well, flying in the Free and Open Source flight simulator, FlightGear. I have a mini story series alongside my blog, called A Race Against Time, which I started back in April 2024, and I wrote 3 episodes for my WritingMonth project last year. I am also working on a novel called Aurora IV, which I have been enjoying.
What's the story behind your website? What made you want to start it? Run me through the whole history!
I started making a website back in 2021, but it never really went anywhere (this was back before my name was OrbitalMartian). In July/August 2023, I rebranded my online persona to OrbitalMartian and decided to get a website set up properly to write blog posts. My first website was made with 11ty and just used the base theme. I wrote a couple of bad blosts while I found my footing with the new persona, and now I'm writing more frequently and enjoying it more.
What's your website's tech stack?
My current website is built with 11ty and Readable CSS.
I have, over time, tried a whole load of static site generators, from Hugo, 11ty, Zola, Bashblog, Barf, and a couple of others. I changed almost as frequently as I used to change Fediverse instances. The main reason I chose and keep going back to Eleventy is that I have my workflow setup and it works with the way I want to do things. I have got plans to try a few other SSGs in the near future, but for now, I am set in my ways with 11ty.
Since starting to write my responses here, I have started playing with Jekyll as my SSG and have been loving it.
What's your favorite part of having a website?
My favourite part about having a website is that I have a place to share my writing, most of which I don't really like, but I am proud to have my blog posts on the World Wide Web. As a child, I would never have imagined that people would eventually read my writing, but here we are today, where I have a small following on my blog.
Recommend me a few people who have a really cool website and whom I should interview next! What should I ask them?
Most of the people that I would recommend have already been interviewed, but here are a couple of people whose websites I love.
- Sotolf - has recently started blogging and writes some amazing stuff, a nice little website.
- Matthew Webber/The Linux Cast - Has 2 websites, not sure how he manages that, writes frequently between both of them.
Why OrbitalMartian? Where did the name come from?
I started playing Apex Legends on my phone, and it wanted me to create a username. I used their random username generator a few times, and it gave me a variety of names. In the end, I decided to choose my own and pulled parts from two names, hence OrbitalMartian. I stuck with it because I do like space, and the thoughts of aliens living amongst us and in the universe and galaxy are interesting.
There isn't much to the name, that's it really.
I just want to say thank you for having me, it's been great.
Day 49 of #100DaysToOffload
