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  • A Creek I Didn’t Mean to Fall Into

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    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

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    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

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    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

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

    From https://classicprogrammerpaintings.tumblr.com/

  • A Drop Ripples Outward

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    When I first moved to San Francisco, I felt like just another tech bro leech, slurping up overpriced coffee, making rents go up, sucking the life out of the city, and giving absolutely nothing back. I had the whole starter pack: pitch deck, startup hoodie, a head full of “move fast” mantras that sounded deep at the time but now feel like bad Twitter threads. I told myself I was “creating value,” but honestly, I was mostly just creating slides.

    Somewhere along the way, I bought into the idea that if what you’re doing isn’t “scalable,” then it’s not worth doing.

    You know the voice:

    “Damn Dieguito, you should be doing something globally impactful. Think local, act global.”

    – My startup brain parasite

    It’s a catchy mantra, but sometimes it blinds me from the stuff right in front of me, the things that don’t scale, don’t monetize neatly, and don’t promise unicorn exits. That little whisper in my head can make me dismiss real things (like the people planting trees in our park) while I chase hypothetical millions.

    Then, on a rainy Tuesday morning, I went to an event organized by Nadine Hammer (half meetup, half community forum) where folks gathered to talk about sustainability and a new city project. I’ll admit it, my expectations were low. Who the hell shows up on a random weekday morning to talk about creeks and climate? But surprise: a lot of people did. Passionate, curious, caffeinated people.

    Event at the Walnut Creek Library. Coffee. Good company.
    A first look at one of Walnut Creek’s biggest civic projects.

    Talking about coffee, you know that Starbucks gives free coffee for non-profit events? We got our portion of it. Nothing like free caffeine to fuel a conversation about creek restoration and circular economies.

    So, I met (and re-met) folks doing the kind of work that doesn’t hit TechCrunch headlines. Hyper-local stuff (if that’s a category), like running a library program, upcycling fashion, or restoring a single overlooked stretch of creek. Tiny, unglamorous projects that keep the world stitched together in ways we only notice when they’re gone. These aren’t people waiting for Series A funding, they’re the ones showing up with gloves, clipboards, and a lot of stubbornness.

    Take Civic Park in Walnut Creek. Have you been lately? Four volunteer-run organizations have been working there for years. Thanks to them, you can now actually see Walnut Creek’s creek (the few original pieces of it that survived). Years of persistence, patience, and picking up trash that no venture capitalist would fund. They didn’t need a growth strategy; they needed boots and trash bags.

    Planting native species around the creek.
    Removing non-native things around the creek.
    Teenage volunteers at Deer Lake, you heard right, teenagers.
    Coffee burlap and my sweat (both from Brazil), helping little oak trees survive the drought.

    One funny thing about this is that while I was helping a group of people plant and water oak trees in an open space restoration area around the city, the drought is so severe here that it’s really hard for those trees to survive. So my mind kept wandering.

    How can we scale this? Can’t we be more efficient?

    – Pa.. pa.. parrot brain

    I went back to the drawing board to come up with a solution that could make a huge impact in remote areas: automated irrigation drone stations powered by sunlight that charge and release drones 24/7 to collect water from a nearby pond and drop it on recently planted trees (inspired by Nathan’s project). The survival rate would increase greatly, and it could drastically reduce wildfires in the future, ping me if you have a billion-dollar check ;p

    But something I was missing while dreaming about that is that part of the whole experience is to strengthen my bond with the city and make me pay more attention to my surroundings. Once you notice, you can’t un-notice. You start seeing these efforts everywhere. Someone teaching kids how to compost in a library basement. A group fixing up old bikes for free rides. Upcycling clothes workshop. Seniors everywhere picking up trail trash. None of it scales. All of it matters.

    A small creek is where life starts. Water flows to rivers, to the bay, to the ocean. And, if you let it, it also flows to connections: to people, to ideas, to myself, to hope. It’s humbling to remember that something as overlooked as a trickle of water in a city park can link to everything downstream.

    Walnut Creek’s creek

    That brings me hope that… local work ripples outward… and that ripple is global…

    That these small, stubborn efforts I may dismiss as “too local” are the ones that might actually matter. The ones that sneak under the radar while I’m busy pitching “the next big thing.”

    Not everything needs a hockey-stick growth curve. Sometimes the curve is just water bending around rocks in a creek, reminding us that slowing down, changing course, and flowing steady can be its own kind of success. And honestly? That’s enough.