Air Fiesta Books Bragging Building in Public Cycling Food for thought Funny Games Interviews Love Lucid Dreaming Mental Health Movies Open Goals Poetry Productivity Quotes Ranting Smart Keys Sustainability Techy Travel Youper

  • Smart Devices, Smart Tools, Me Smart?

    , , ,

    If my phone’s supposed to be so smart, why do I feel dumb and empty when I’m holding it? Especially in public.

    I guess it all started with the miracle BlackBerry promised me back in the day…

    “Imagine checking your email on your phone.“

    That was the big trick pitch: a corporate fantasy carved into a tiny plastic keyboard. Productivity in my pocket and urgency on demand. Companies used to give them to leaders who would show off to their peers how important they were. High-achieving executives becoming gods: omnipresent, omniscient, and online.

    They made a gadget that makes work tag along everywhere we go, kinda like a loyal dog that just won’t quit barking.

    Loyal… and honestly, quite dumb.

    That was the puppy tail-wag of the distraction beast I’d later ride.

    From the movie about BlackBerry.

    Then…
    the real smart phone

    A calendar, a camera, a notepad, a map. Basically a whole bunch of “smart tools” all packed into a glass rectangle. It felt pretty cool, almost like magic. Like having more stuff made me smarter. Like strapping 30 books to my chest and calling myself a scholar. But I get it, if I wanted all those tools with me before, I’d need a huge backpack. Now, it fits right in my pocket.

    Were these tools actually smart though? Or am I just dazzled by shiny stuff?

    Because adding a calendar to a phone doesn’t make me wiser. Adding a camera doesn’t deepen my attention. Email in my pocket just means my responsibilities now commute with me. It was never about intelligence. It was about access and speed. About making everything available all the time, including all the things I wish would leave me alone.

    Then…
    social networks

    A feed of friends. Updates. Photos. The digital town square. Cute, almost harmless… until it wasn’t.

    The town square warped. The edges sharpened. Likes and dopamine hooks were discovered. Social networks metastasized into social media, a business model that survives by removing friction, slowing nothing down, feeding me faster than I can think.

    And from that mutation came the final form: the short-video feed. Infinite, vertical, high-stimulation loops made by the unconscious math god with messed-up metrics to hijack whatever was left of my prefrontal cortex and replace it with pure reflex.

    We accidentally find a drug inside ourselves that’s kicked off by a loop of images, sounds, and interactions, not by external chemicals. Like a nerd who hacked our brain just by showing us a funny cat video, and the expectation that in a swipe you’ll see something so cool… maybe not… probably… let’s try…🤷‍♂️

    I’m too old to be affected

    People love freaking out about kids and “brain rot”.
    The truth is uglier. It fries everyone.

    There are a bunch of laws about stopping kids from using certain apps or smartphones at all. This isn’t new, tech moguls are known for not letting their kids use what they create.

    Well, but dopamine in the brain doesn’t care how old we are. We talk about dopamine like it’s some magical pleasure juice, but it’s more like the brain’s “hey, good job, do that again” notification. And social apps know this.

    Scroll, surprise, scroll, surprise… that little unpredictability is the hook. Not the content, the “maybe”. My brain starts chasing the “maybe” like a dog that heard a treat bag.

    The APA review basically said the same thing in fancier words: overstimulation trains your brain to want fast, easy rewards and ignore anything that takes effort. Reading. Deep focus. Making things that don’t give instant feedback. You start craving the hit more than the meaning.

    No wonder everything feels kinda shallow. I trained myself that way. Or even worse, I let the apps do the training for me. If BlackBerry was like a loyal dog, now I’m the dog, and somehow TikTok trained my brain like a pup waiting for treats.

    When I vent about this with friends, some give me weird looks like they don’t really get why it’s a big deal. They say it’s just a free way to have fun, connect with friends, and socialize. But half the time, I can’t even finish my rant before they’re glued back to their phones. That infuriates me, but I don’t feel mad at them. This kind of behavior was purposely designed to disconnect us, I can’t compete with cat videos and fish falling from sky. So here I am, talking to my future self, hoping he’ll actually listen.

    Which is probably why a little voice decided to show up right now and poke me in the ribs:

    “Ahhh Diego, weren’t you a tech-utopian-bro?”

    – Yesterday Me

    I like the utopian bit. The bro? Not so much. But I do like shiny objects, so maybe I’m just a crow in a hoodie. I loved the idea of a future rescued by clever inventions.

    For years, I read all the stuff that backed up the dream. I followed futurists, TED talks, and those “everything’s getting better” charts. Then, inconveniently, I smelled something rotting and started checking other charts…

    (Don’t worry, I’ll stay shallow here and won’t share the link, they don’t smell good, so we can keep living in our little utopian bubble.).

    Like…

    • The global happiness reports sinking.
    • The mental health metrics twisting in uncomfortable ways.
    • Life expectancy stalling.
    • Loneliness breaking records.

    (See, all good)

    The shiny future started to look like a refurbished present. Same model, worse battery. These issues might not be caused by tech use, but when we see the problems more intense in countries with more access to technology, it makes me think that we should be more critical about the dark side of tech use.

    But wait, there’s good news!

    Some smart folks out there are escaping this trap, like Melanie Perkins, Canva’s CEO, famously keeps her phone clean. No email. No Slack. Closes the laptop and actually disappears for real.

    Must be nice to have a team that keeps the world going while you chill. Be present feels like such a fancy treat when someone else covers the cost. I guess being smart means deleting apps from your phone and paying someone else to handle it for you.

    So, unless you turned into a billionaire CEO, Dieguito, this isn’t really good news for you.

    – Not Billionaire Diego

    What about the rest of us?

    I can’t outsource my worries.
    I don’t have an assistant filtering my chaos.
    I can’t “disconnect for clarity” when my entire life, job, and sense of self are stuffed inside the same device that is quietly hollowing me out.

    And here’s the part I don’t love admitting:
    I’ve tried everything.

    Apps that block apps.
    Reminders disguised as wisdom.
    Daily goals plastered on my home screen.
    The whole monk-mode starter kit.

    I wishful thinking about an ideal self
    that may never exist.

    How about creating something?

    One of my recent goals is to build stuff that solves my own problems. I’ve done this a bunch of times before, and the worst that happens is I just fix my own issue. The best case is helping more people get what they need.

    Leandra and I have been talking about how to cut down on distractions and mindless social media scrolling so we can actually get stuff done. We’ve been thinking about making another one of those social media blocking apps. I think they help a bit, but we never really felt motivated to make just another tool like that (or we don’t have deep-thinking abilities anymore).

    Those apps try all sorts of tricks, all gimmicks to be honest, just to sell some subscriptions. Our gimmick was just about trying to stir up some anger towards tech moguls, :p

    Mockups of our social media blocking app that we’re never gonna build.

    Digital Marie Kondo Method

    Also, I tried the “Does it give me joy?” approach from Marie Kondo’s method to organize your house, but I applied it to my phone to declutter things, and it helped a bit.

    That was the day I removed Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and many other apps from my phone, even though I needed them for work-related tasks. Now, I just reinstall them when needed and uninstall them immediately after. Or only access from my computer.

    Surprisingly, just asking myself if a certain app was really making me happy was a pretty good way to decide if I should keep it or not.

    Good idea, didn’t last long.
    My current home screen.
    It’s kind of working.
    Tried removing all apps from my home screen and just kept a list of goals, but it didn’t last long. Then I tried having only meaningful apps on one screen, and that’s still going strong.

    Did it work?

    Sometimes… for a day.
    Sometimes… for a week.

    After removing apps
    and leaving my phone in other rooms
    and keeping on airplane mode most of the time.

    Still,
    every single time,
    it takes exactly one thing to break the spell.

    A friend sends a video.
    Or a meme.
    Or a “you have to see this” link.

    And just like that, I’m back inside the machine, scrolling like nothing happened.
    Like a lab rat who memorized the maze but still runs it anyway.

    And once the spell breaks, it’s the same old story.
    No enlightenment. No clean slate.
    Just me, my phone, and the familiar rhythm of autopilot behavior.

    So I doom-scroll,
    then blame myself for not being disciplined enough.
    I binge short videos, then act surprised when books feel heavy.
    I keep the “smart phone”, as if the name alone can save me from what it’s doing to my attention.

    Really? This is sooo laaaame

    Blackberry did pretty well for a while, then messed up, made a comeback, and guess who wants to use it now? Teens, not big executives.

    Yep, there are some signs that the new generation is kinda tired of smartphones (or maybe just wanna be cool), so they’re using old-school tech or minimalist new products.

    What really inspires me is that I truly believe that the generation clash to be different is always good for humanity. Refusing to go to war, to slave, or just blindly follow rules, breaking the “normal, natural, and necessary” stuff of each generation gives me hope.

    Other people have made cool stuff like the light or minimal phone (I love it), the AI Pin (so obviously lame), and even OpenAI is building something (though I’m kinda skeptical about what they’ll create).

    Because everything is connected now: my social life, work, entertainment, and education. It’s just easy to fall into small dopamine-triggering traps spread everywhere. It’s hard to escape. That’s the reason I’m quite skeptical any of those products will massively beat the smart phones we know today, unless they create a new vaccine to the dopamine loop.

    Saying “lame” is so big yikes!

    – Gen Alpha Diego

    Yeah, I know! “Lame” is a bit outdated, like smartphones, ;p

    The promise

    We were sold smartphones as mind-expanders, little rectangles full of tools, connections and possibilities. Right now, my smartphone doesn’t really do much of that.

    Somewhere along the way, those tools started shouting louder than our thoughts. I gave up attention for convenience. Depth for speed. Silence for noise. Control for the illusion of control.

    Some days I feel it happening… The thinning focus… The impatience.

    The absurd urge to check my phone even when I know there’s nothing waiting for me. It’s embarrassing to say out loud. But pretending I’m immune doesn’t make me any less fried.

    To scape that, my dream smart device would totally get what’s happening around me. If I’m walking or traveling, it’d help me find my way or capture cool moments. When I’m working, it’d help me stay focused and get things done. And when I’m chilling with friends, it’d make those times more special.

    And yet

    Here’s the strange twist,
    after all this doom and digital gloom,
    some tiny part of me
    is still optimistic.

    I don’t know if it’s resilience
    or delusion.
    Maybe my brain is happily rotten
    and still somehow hopeful.

    Maybe this rant
    is just to prove to myself
    that I can still think
    and rant.

    it’s that one neuron
    that refuses to give up,
    the plasticity
    being recycled daily.

    And yet,
    every day
    I see tools
    getting smarter.

    We, not…
    yet?

  • A Creek I Didn’t Mean to Fall Into

    ,

    It was one of those gray SF days. Pandemic era. Everything was closed. I had been in the Bay Area for a bit, but I hadn’t really left the city much. Still very much a San Francisco rookie.

    One day I decided to take the first BART train to “anywhere” and see what happened. It was me, my helmet, and a 1972 blue Schwinn. That bike was the first and is still one of the most important things I’ve ever bought here. Civic Center Station was empty and weirdly echoey. Five minutes later I was sitting on a Yellow Line train headed to a place called Antioch. Never heard of it before. Felt like a good start.

    Then the journey began.
    Arrived in Oakland.
    Still gray and probably cold.
    Let’s keep going.

    Then something changed

    The train went through a short tunnel and suddenly everything was different.

    Bright blue sky.
    Warm air.
    Green everywhere.

    It felt like I had crossed a border I didn’t know was there. Like stepping into a different world without customs. Turns out that was Orinda. I had just discovered the magic wall that is the Oakland Berkeley hills. The same hills that trap SF fog like an overachieving gatekeeper.

    I stepped off the train in awe. The sun hit different. The neighborhoods hit different. Rolling hills, bike paths, tree-lined creeks, a place that felt like it wasn’t trying to be cool and somehow already was. Like a scene from Stand by Me. I explored Orinda, Lafayette, Danville and eventually Walnut Creek. By the time I rode back home, I was obsessed. I told my roommates we should move. A few weeks later, we did.

    Mount Diablo
    Wild Turkeys
    Bike Path Bridge

    That was the start of all this.

    I’m writing this now from Walnut Creek, after spending the day walking downtown, riding the free shuttle that still feels like a small miracle. Free public transportation felt like something out of science fiction, especially coming from Brazil where the answer to that idea was always a loud no from anyone in a suit.

    Contra Costa County figured out a way. County Connection, local taxes, partnerships and maybe some leftover 70s optimism. It’s not perfect but it works, and it still blows my mind. This whole thing allowed us to not have a car and rely on bike paths and public transportation.

    I’ve met incredible people here. Folks from Sustainable Walnut Creek, SCOCO, city staff, retired scientists, former mayors, teenage activists. I somehow ended up organizing Earth Month events and even a climate march. Things I never pictured myself doing. Turns out if you spend enough time outside and say yes to enough random emails, unexpected things happen. And you meet people you actually want to see again.

    Making friends as an adult isn’t easy. Making friends while cycling and volunteering is almost like cheating. You keep bumping into the same faces. You see someone having a picnic and it turns into a conversation. Then another. That’s how it starts.

    I became so obsessed with Walnut Creek that I decided to bike/run every single street. No idea why. I’m at 75 percent, around 231 miles out of 307 and I’ve covered around 20 percent of Contra Costa County. Even gated communities couldn’t stop me. Sometimes I would wait for someone to open the gate and sprint in like a raccoon. If you saw complaints about a confused cyclist on Nextdoor, that was probably me.

    Just one of the free routes.
    We can even bring our bikes on our bus trips.
    Bike for sports, commuting, and groceries.

    Then there’s Mount Diablo

    My first time climbing it took me seven hours. Same old Schwinn. I had a crisis halfway up. I promised myself I would never do that again. But when a mountain stares you in the face every morning, you eventually give in. I’ve climbed it many times since then (New bike though). Once I even saw snow falling at the summit. It was unreal. I once challenged myself to climb it seven times in one day. Never made it past one and a half.

    Walnut Creek is framed by hills and a mountain that keeps refusing to stay in the background. It’s a place that doesn’t care if you quit halfway. It waits. It just keeps being itself.

    Earth Day at Civic Park
    Sustainable Walnut Creek Team
    Climate March
    Snow at Mount Diablo

    Bookworm life

    The libraries here are wild. Some are over 100 years old, started by women’s clubs who also organized community festivals and clean-ups. Many of the city council members over the decades have been women. That kind of energy sticks to a place. I live close to the Pleasant Hill Library now, which might be the best place on earth on Saturday mornings, especially after a coffee from Rooted Coffee in Poet’s Corner.

    Once Leandra caught me sleeping in the library, I officially became one of those elderly people who nap there.

    I’ve spent years trying to understand what exactly this city does to me. Why it keeps pulling me in. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s the bike paths. Maybe it’s the fact that people bring up things like graywater systems in casual conversation.

    Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s just the feeling that a place can start as an accident and somehow end up as home.

    Whatever it is, I’m still here. And it still feels right.

    Lately though, there’s been a quiet itch. Not to leave for good, but to look around. To see if there’s another corner of this country that feels this charged, this accidental and somehow perfect.

    I don’t know what I’ll find. I don’t know if I’ll find anything. But I do know that no matter where I go, a part of me will always be here. Somewhere between the library and the mountain and the street I haven’t ridden yet.

    And there are the people. The ones I’ve shared bike rides and late-night strategy meetings and awkward first hellos with. Leaving means risking the kind of drift that happens when life changes shape. I’m not ready to lose that. I hope geography doesn’t get the final say on who stays close.

    Trashy Fashion

  • Tiny Games, Big Feelings

    ,

    Everything actually started when I played Loneliness. What a strange, quiet punch of a game. I wasn’t expecting much (it’s just little squares on a white screen) but somehow it managed to pull more emotions out of me in two minutes than most AAA games do in fifty hours. I walked away confused and weirdly emotional, like someone had whispered something important into my ear and then vanished.

    So of course I did the only reasonable thing: I became obsessed. I hunted down the creator, Jordan Magnuson, and ended up reading his book Game Poems, which didn’t help at all because now I’m even more obsessed.

    The whole idea that games can be short, intentional emotional gestures suddenly made sense. Then I stumbled upon URL Snake, this tiny absurd miracle living inside the URL bar, built entirely with Braille characters. I did what I always do when I find something tiny and clever, I became obsessed with its creator, Demian Ferreiro.

    So on a sunny weekend, I decided to experiment with those ideas. The first result was Tiny Horse, a tiny creature leaping across my URL bar like it’s trying to outrun my unfinished tasks.

    Tiny Horse, Tiny Jump!

    Then came Tiny Mario, who took the same microscopic canvas and somehow turned it into a full side‑scrolling adventure powered entirely by Braille characters and misplaced confidence.

    Tiny Mario

    I actually built this second one in secret from Leandra because I was supposed to be working on a different project and not making games anymore. I kept two instances of Windsurf open, and whenever she walked by, I switched to the main project (she is the boss).

    I was surprised that I could work on two projects at the same time, with one assistant coding some complex tasks while working with the other. Obviously, I was paying much more attention to the game though. ;p

    They’re not big games. They’re not meant to be. They’re little moments. Digital haikus. Emotional blips. I build them fast, break them faster, and still feel strangely proud of them.

    And you know what? While building and playing them, I kept noticing how these tiny games trigger emotions so quickly. Simple graphics, a couple of sound cues, and suddenly I’m laughing out loud on a Saturday night at 11 p.m. because I made Tiny Mario slip into an underground level through tiny pipes.

    Besides being simple, they include classic casual game elements that spark some adrenaline: scores, countdown, enemies, rewards, obstacles, and elements of surprise. Something I haven’t been able to add to Air Fiesta yet.

    If you want to see what all this tiny-game energy looks like:

    And if you want to feel the thing that started all this:

    Game poems are small, but they hit hard, like tiny sparks pretending they aren’t capable of starting whole wildfires. And honestly, maybe that’s exactly what makes them beautiful… and powerful.

    Nov 18th Update

    I wasn’t expecting people to get this excited about a tiny game. I posted it on Product Hunt and Reddit just for fun and suddenly folks were actually into it. It’s not the kind of thing people usually share there, but I guess we’re all craving fewer AI products and more silly things like this.

    Give it a vote if you feel like it. We already beat a Google product (which feels surreal and funny at the same time).

    Tiny Mario - Play the ridiculously tiny Mario ever right in your URL bar. | Product Hunt

  • Air Fiesta: When the Balloons Multiplied

    , ,

    There was a time when everyone shared a single balloon. That was Airtales, one collective flight drifting wherever the crowd decided. Democracy by wind. Chaos by design. It was beautiful, but also… a little limiting. People wanted to explore their own skies. This is why it started and how it ended.

    That’s how Air Fiesta happened, a pivot, or maybe a parallel universe. Now every player has their own balloon. You can float above your neighborhood, drift over famous cities, or join in festivals with friends. No borders, no passport required.

    Underneath it all, it still runs on the same energy: curiosity, community, and a touch of absurd optimism that maybe the world makes more sense from 300 feet up.

    Nature and weather conditions are your challenges.

    What’s New

    Air Fiesta is built on Google Maps SDK, so what you see is the real planet. You can tune into local radio stations while you fly (because every city sounds different).

    You can take photos of your journey, discover hidden treasures, and battle weather that’s way less forgiving than it looks. Gusty winds, thermals, fog, even flocks of birds (the kind of chaos that makes you laugh right before it throws you off course).

    And what about the balloon festivals? They’re still happening. They will probably change into something simpler. Right now, it’s a scavenger hunt with virtual friends. But it seems a bit complicated, so it will likely become more like freely collecting hidden gems.

    One big improvement was the mobile experience. The game is still based on web technology (ThreeJS), which is tricky to run on mobile, but you can try it out on the App Store or Play Store. Coming soon on Steam.

    Why I Still Care About Radio

    Radio’s the heartbeat of Air Fiesta. I’ve always loved it, the crackle, the local ads, the DJs who sound like they’ve seen things. There’s something deeply human about tuning into a city’s voice while you’re hovering over it.

    I’m reaching out to stations now, (community, college, indie, public) to ask permission to float them inside the game. Because I want players to hear the places they fly over, not just see them.

    If you run a station, you can see a preview of what that looks like:
    See a balloon radio in New York and another in the Bay Area. This is more like a non-interactive mode where you can “watch” other players.

    Special thanks to Radio Browser technology for providing the geo-position of radios worldwide for free.

    Where Air Fiesta Is Cancelled

    Not everywhere is safe to fly.

    Inspired by the Global Conflict Tracker and Freedom Flotilla, I mapped ongoing conflicts around the world: wars, occupations, humanitarian crises. The result was staggering. In those regions, Air Fiesta goes silent.

    It’s not meant as protest or pity, more like a pause. When the world is burning, sometimes silence says more than scenery.

    Maybe one day those places will light up again with music, laughter, and balloons rising together. Until then, the silence stays.

    Feed and Gallery

    Since Airtales has a feature that is quite unique (the camera), like a real balloon adventure, you can take pictures of your views. It’s no different here; people feel excited about doing that, so I keep it.

    The improvement from the previous version is that you can now see pictures, messages, and other balloon interactions in a feed format.

    What’s missing?

    I think there are important pieces missing or not quite right. The story, for example, seems weak or almost nonexistent. Another important aspect is world-building. Currently, interactions with the world are almost zero. I think players should be able to build or change something in the real world. Right now, it’s almost like a ‘leave no trace’ approach, but it could be cool if they could move things around, clean the ocean, deliver letters, or even destroy borders :p

    You can see follow the progress on Itch.io, for the first time I’m documenting the changelog there, it’s quite interesting.

    The Sky Is the Limit

    Air Fiesta isn’t about competition. There’s no score. No finish line. Just weather, music, and motion. It’s a little weird and a little hopeful, a floating experiment in what happens when you mix geography, sound, and strangers who want to explore together. This won’t trigger dopamine traps, and you won’t become addicted to it.

    Maybe that’s the game I’ve always wanted to play: one where the world is the level, and connection is the win condition.

    ✈️ Play at airfiesta.fm or read the manifesto if you’re into that kind of thing.

    Credits

    Air Fiesta FM is a labor of love crafted by a small team (Diego and Leandra) and a generous community. This page recognizes the people, technologies, and resources that made it possible.

    These are just a few of the people and companies that made this project possible.

    Special thanks

    • Our early players and testers who shared feedback and found edge cases.
    • The open source community for tools, libraries, and inspiration.
    • Friends and family for the support during late-night builds.

  • Classic Programmer Paintings

    ,
    “Senior software engineers fight technical debt while the last wave of scope creep is added in the background”

    From https://classicprogrammerpaintings.tumblr.com/