We strive for perfection because we take polished details as small acts of love, they make people smile, and they make us happy.

We’re curious people who never stop learning. The developer and the designer complete each other when we combine our professional strengths.

We’re a small team, we choose quality over speed. Little by little we become a lot, step by step we get ahead.

We also draw comics about our daily struggles and surprises as an indie dev team for the Apple Platform (@IndieLifeComics). It’s our way of contributing to the indie dev community while building high-quality iOS apps.

Bluebird 2.0 is available for download on the App Store.

Find us on Twitter

Developer: @limited_dfs | Designer: @topologiraffe

About Us was originally published in Bluebird on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Scientists used to believe that only a child’s brain is plastic. Not any more. Neuroplasticity happens for everyone throughout a lifetime, although the process can be challenging after we’ve grown up. That’s some very good news for us adults.

So we believe that anyone can benefit from understanding the brain, from learning how to change our brain in the way we’d like it to happen. And there are good resources.

1. Livewired by David Eagleman begins with a famous quote:

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. — Martin Heidegger

Throughout the book, one learns that a brain can be shaped, that everyone can become the sculptor of his/her own brain. It presents us all the reasons to change ourselves and become someone anew. It’s possible. “The thrill of life is not about who we are but about who we are in the process of becoming.”

2. The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long talks about the neurotransmitter dopamine. Too often it is called “a reward molecule”, which can be misleading. Dopamine is the pursuit of better things, it “maximize resources that will be available to us in the future.” It plays a critical role in every aspect of our life, from love to creativity to politics. Only by understanding the way dopamine works can we stop being the slaves of our own wanting and start attaining true happiness.

3. The Brain’s Way of Healing by Norman Doidge focuses more on the brain’s ability to repair itself through neuroplasticity. The mechanisms behind acute and chronic pain are not the same — chronic pain is a “learned pain” when our body’s alarm system is constantly “on”. And there’re ways to overcome it.

4. How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett pictures emotions in a way that can contradict everyone’s intuition. We all have feelings, but it doesn’t mean we’re always right about how we feel, and why we feel in a certain way.

5. Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin concentrates on animal brains, from which we can better understand ourselves. Human brains have inattentional blindness while animal brains see all the details. Human brains are verbal while animal brains are visual. Human brains have mixed feelings while animal brains are always certain. Along the path of evolution, things happen, and we’re merely in the process of it.

In the end, if reading a book is not your thing, we strongly recommend Andrew Huberman’s Huberman Lab podcast. Dr. Huberman is one of the best educators out there who can make complex neuroscience topics easy to understand and fun to learn. Don’t miss it.

The human brain works in a use-it-or-lose-it way. There’s no excuse not to learn. The human brain is plastic by default. There’s no reason not to change. We only live once, but we have unlimited possibilities. Kahlil Gibran once wrote:

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

We all have ever-unfolding becomings.

Bluebird 2.0 is available for download on the App Store.

About us

Bluebird is made by Cub & Pup, a two-person indie team. We craft apps that bring joy to your life, with lots of love ❤️.

Find us on Twitter

Comics: @IndieLifeComics | Developer: @limited_dfs | Designer: @topologiraffe

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

Books for the Brain was originally published in Bluebird on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Color is relative. The same color won’t look the same on different backgrounds. The context changes everything.

When choosing the color for Bluebird, we started with the context — the feeling we’d like to convey. We wanted it to be calm, stressless, and uplifting at the same time.

We ended up using mainly vivid blue on a pure black background to create a tranquil atmosphere. The blue stands out, and it leaves enough space for people to breathe. It reminds us of scenes from the game Zelda when the protagonist discovers some hidden shrine beneath layers of snow and stones. It reminds us of the deep sky, where imagination flies without limitation.

Also, the color blue is in general colorblind-friendly, it looks blue most of the time. And the color black saves energy on OLED screens because those pixels are not being activated. These things are nice to have.

How we perceive color is influenced both physiologically and psychologically. Although there’s a certain consensus, the same color can mean different things to different people. We’re choosing something safe here because it works for us, and it makes us hopeful.

We hope you like it.

I enjoy these books on color:

• Interaction of Color by Josef Albers, a masterpiece about the relativity of color
• Color and Light by James Gurney, the application of color and light in painting
• The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St Clair, the history and anecdotes of color

Bluebird 2.0 is available for download on the App Store.

About us

Bluebird is made by Cub & Pup, a two-person indie team. We craft apps that bring joy to your life, with lots of love ❤️.

Find us on Twitter

Comics: @IndieLifeComics | Developer: @limited_dfs | Designer: @topologiraffe

Choosing Color for Bluebird was originally published in Bluebird on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s the color of the sky, the color of hope.

We’re fond of birds.

They remind us to be open, and the sky is the limit.

And bluebird happens to be the harbinger of happiness in many cultures.

That’s how we come up with the name of the app.

When we’re stressed, we take a deep breath, have a look at the sky, and think about life’s endless possibilities.

We want Bluebird to be something like that.

Here are two books we enjoy reading about birds:

• What It’s Like to Be a Bird by David Sibley
• Owls, Our Most Charming Bird by Matt Sewell

Bluebird 2.0 is available for download on the App Store.

About us

Bluebird is made by Cub & Pup, a two-person indie team. We craft apps that bring joy to your life, with lots of love ❤️.

Find us on Twitter

Comics: @IndieLifeComics | Developer: @limited_dfs | Designer: @topologiraffe

The Naming of Bluebird was originally published in Bluebird on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’ve learned a lot along the way, and it must be nice to share them around. Maybe they can even help someone start their own journey.

That’s what this blog is about.

The topics vary from design to programming to random readings, but they’re all related to the making of a little app that may bring you some joy in this busy world.

Like a bluebird crossing your path.

Bluebird 2.0 is available for download on the App Store.

About us

Bluebird is made by Cub & Pup, a two-person indie team. We craft apps that bring joy to your life, with lots of love ❤️.

Find us on Twitter

Comics: @IndieLifeComics | Developer: @limited_dfs | Designer: @topologiraffe

Long Walk Part of Gift was originally published in Bluebird on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Why do we want to be productive?

The answer appears obvious — time is limited, the more we can get done, the better.

But if we enjoy what we’re doing, we’d naturally want to prolong that experience. When we’re at play, hours fly.

The truth is we don’t enjoy most of our tasks. We want to finish more of the unpleasant to save time for what makes life happy and meaningful. We’ve been putting off our lives constantly. But time is finite, and we’re mortal.

Luckily we still get to choose. We can struggle to control everything, or we can accept the reality and focus on the small efforts we make each day. “The powerful play goes on, and we may all contribute a verse.”

That’s why we build Bluebird.

In Bluebird, you don’t feel the pressure to fill in every slot and to check off as many to-dos as possible. We want to build a place where it’s easier to get started with things we enjoy, where we are encouraged to get ahead step by step, where we get inspired by our daily progress and see our life unfolding. It’s too hard a goal to achieve for a small app, but we may contribute a verse.

Productivity is a mean, not an end. Life is a journey we take, step by step. Charlie Munger once said:

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up… Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts.

We hope Bluebird can help you walk along your path, and make daily progress.

The journey is our reward.

Is there a user manual?

We work very hard to make Bluebird easy to use, we hope you won’t need any guidance to get started. However, if you prefer to get a general idea of the app or explore its full potential, we have a guide for you.

Being happy is productive.

Happiness is figuring out what you enjoy doing, and focusing on doing that thing, day by day, for the rest of your life. That’s really hard, but that’s also the most practical way we can think of to achieve happiness. We hope Bluebird can help you on that.

May the bluebird of happiness cross your path.

Bluebird is available for download on the App Store. It works on your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch & Mac.

About us

Bluebird is made by Cub & Pup, a two-person indie team. We craft apps that bring joy to your life, with lots of love ❤️.

Find us on Twitter

Comics: @IndieLifeComics | Developer: @limited_dfs | Designer: @topologiraffe

Why We Build Bluebird was originally published in Bluebird on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.