[drakonka]

1. My side project is a browser based snail simulation: http://liza.io/category/snails/

2. I think my fondness for snails was originally sparked by a game I made up at my grandparents' summerhouse in Ukraine when I was little - I collected a bunch of snails and taught them to race against each other. I got the idea for the project itself over 10 years ago during a move from the US to Australia with my family. It was summer and I was bored, so I had this idea for a snail racing game. At the time it was meant to be a game, but as the idea stayed in my head over the years it evolved into focusing on realism as much as possible and dropping "fun" from its main focus. I did not have the technical ability to build this at first in its full scope and it has gone through quite a few iterations over the years.

3. Learn something new, have my snails surprise me.