Why I Built Fleawinder: Living Circus

I wanted something that made the computer feel alive — not in a distracting way, but as a quiet companion that responds to your presence. Most screensavers activate when you leave; Fleawinder: Living Circus activates when you arrive.

The idea was simple: take all the idle input your operating system ignores — the rhythm of your typing, the speed of your mouse, the cadence of your clicks — and feed it to a troupe of animated circus fleas. The more you work, the more the show comes alive.

Building it as a transparent overlay above the taskbar turned out to be the right constraint. It’s always visible but never in the way. You don’t interact with it directly; you just work, and it reacts. The technical challenge was making it truly click-through so it never steals focus.

Fleawinder: Living Circus is a love letter to the Victorian flea circus — a real, centuries-old art form where watchmakers harnessed actual fleas to pull miniature carriages and walk tightropes. The history page tells that story in full.