The Kennel is a space for my pet projects to live. I tend to say I'm not a creative person and I'm surely not the type of guy that comes up with dozen of new ideas every day. Truth to be told, I had the chance to come up with a few and to spent some time working on them. Sometimes an insane amount of time.

I know what you might be thinking: "look at this guy, bragging about how much time he spends on his trivial side projects, he has too much spare time" . Don't get me wrong, I'm totally aware I'm privileged to be able to afford that time, I wouldn't say I'm not. Still, I'm juggling with a full time job, 2 amazing kids, a wife and 2 needy cats (and I should also have a couple of friends left). As my wife knows well, I tend to get dragged into my own ideas, it's beyond me; the way I'm wired up does effect quite a bit how I invest my little spare time.

It's a gift and a curse
Adrian Monk

Why a blog about pet projects? It is a blog, isn't it?
Well it kind of is, I prefer to consider it a showcase, a portfolio of sort, but I guess it's a blog.

The main reason is that pet projects need a space. It's really about giving them a home. Looking at the code on github, or at the website itself isn't enough to understand why it triggered something and what it left behind.

I want to explore what I did/will do, trying to isolate some of these points:

  • The idea
  • The research
  • The challenges (and how I decided to overcome them)
  • The technicalities (not the knitty gritty details, but you know...)
  • Why it died, or never took off, and what's left of it
  • How it should evolve

There might be something more I want to explore, once I actually start writing, but right now I'd be happy if I get to cover 3 of those for each project.

Immature poets imitate;
mature poets steal
T. S. Eliot 1 

The main person I need to thank, once again, is Luca, I often end up stealing his ideas and this is no different: he kickstarted his blog a while ago and even tho it's not pet projects focused, there's where the idea came from. I guess what I really want to say to him is "I changed ghost theme, dude, I hope you'll appreciate the effort."

Cover Image via Archdaily: Oshu by Bad Marlon


1. You reckon you remember something similar attributed to Picasso, don't you? Apparently it's a myth