Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Are there real-life versions of the Angry Birds? What inspired Rovio to make their angry birds the way they are? Did they model the birds after nature in either look or function? These are questions worth answering; if you’ve played the game, you might wonder where all the angry birds came from. The real angry birds!

Red Angry Bird

Our first contestant, the bird you get first in Angry Birds, is Mr. Red. We speculate that he might actually be a Blue-throated Brown Sunbird, or perhaps Gould’s Sunbird. From the round, rotund shape of his body, we definitely know it’s from Aethopyga:

Is the red angry bird actually a sunbird?

The Angry Blue Splitters

The blue flycatcher known as Plumbeous Water-redstart, or red-tailed robin, is a kind of water bird which loves to feed on insects. They are territorial and have a red tail, a flash of contrasting colours:

What a beautiful bluebird!

The Yellow Bird

I think this is most like a baby Martin Branch Swallow, with its yellow coloration, angry face, and wide beak. In fact, the swallows and the triangle of the “little yellow bird” have something in common, a certain “hard acceleration” property. Swallows have one of the best flying air technique of all the birds, by far the fastest.

Fly fast, yellow Swallows!

Fat Black Bird

Perfectly coal black, the Common Blackbird is definitely the model for Angry Birds. The real life bird is notable for mimicry of other sounds, and is a sly trixster.

Serious business, the Blackbird

White Egg-Bomber

The white angry bird which drops explosive eggs is probably a Snow Bunting, a sort of mottled white and brown bird which lives in naturally cold climes. Sometimes they’re called “snowflake.”

Or maybe it’s a Chicken, IDK

Pictures and the idea from 如果愤怒的小鸟要拍电影; we thought it worth bringing some of the concept to English too.

I got an extremely clever personalized spam email today, something that I’ve never seen before. They took my first name and used it to address me, and then took my last name and suggested I “move the Back family there.” Wow! Check this out:

From Homes4Half [info@lafdeb.com]
date Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 6:24 PM
subject A Half-priced Home in ITHACA for the Backs

Dear Elliott,

Imagine moving the Back family into a fabulous new home in the ITHACA area that you bought for HALF it’s market value! You can find homes priced as LOW as $10,000. Search the ITHACA area for the best bargains today!

They even spelled my name right, which is fairly amazing.

I found this via The Triumph of Bullshit; it’s a real gem:

Just plug your SnūzNLūz in and either connect it to your network via the RJ45 jack on the back, or via WiFi (WPA supported) if available. Then simply configure via the embedded web browser configuration utility. From here it’s a snap. Simply select your online banking institution from the list of supported banks (currently over 1600 are supported). Supply your login information and then select your favorite HATED charity or non-profit from the included lists (over 6200 currently supported). Then plug in your donation amount per snooze incident ($10 or more), set the time, and alarm, and voila, instant time profit!