Seems that everyone is talking about this game called Angry Birds… when they are not playing it on their phone, at least. The last time (and one of the few times) I think I played a computer game was in a pub in Trieste in 1991 when I was a graduate student visiting the ICTP for my first international physics school (gosh I so miss that place). The game was tetrus. I loved it. Knowing my obsessive nature, I decided long ago to stay away from things like that, since I worried that I’d get into computer games in a big way and then never get anything done again. Ever. So I still don’t play computer games, even now. I suppose I passed the point where I’d have got into them, and so now they don’t really interest me so much, other than as an interesting social phenomenon…
So everyone has been talking about the craze for Angry Birds, and the fact that they’ve been distracting themselves with it between things at every opportunity. That’s fine, really, and all well and good. I didn’t really know what it is in detail (some friends tried to fill me in a bit the other day, so I am less ignorant than I was last week) on Thursday during the shoot when I happened to see an amusing way of being able to say that I’d been playing angry birds without actually playing angry birds.
It seems that Knott’s Berry Farm (where we were – see previous post) has defied to cash in on the game and there’s a game of the same name there here you throw some balls at some holes and try to win stuffed versions of the birds from the game…
…and that’s it. No, really. (I am told that this has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual app on the phones, which find extra amusing…) So while waiting for my filmmaker companions to capture various 3D renderings of the nearby roller coaster, I paid a few dollars to take some shots at the holes. It is harder than it looked. I had no Angry Birds to carry around with me the rest of the day… But I get to say that I too have goofed off for a while playing Angry Birds (evidence on the right*), while still happily staying away from computer games…
In other news, here’s the latest on the Angry Birds peace negotiations**.
-cvj
*Thanks Laidee (hope I have the spelling right…)
**Thanks Tameem…
Thanks Amy! That’s exciting to see – They actually are confident that using “Physics class in high school” can be used in a positive way and not turn people away! Hurrah!
-cvj
The new Angry Bird game is called “Angry Birds Space”. Check out this quote from the review: “This title will have players recalling everything they learned in Physics class in high school to navigate the weightless and simulated gravity levels.” Cool!
I randomly stumbled upon this post; it’s funny to see that even physical carnival games are borrowing from successful apps / video games. I’d be curious to see other pictures of their booth!
kpk… took sabbatical in spring 2010, so not going to happen again until 2017. Yay. I _hope_ I visit ICTP before then!
-cvj
P.S. Thanks for the spelling correction. Ack!
Karl! So that means we maybe met each other much earlier than we’d originally thought… Excellent! Actually, that sort of makes sense, in my memory…
(Well, we’d have been in the same lecture theatre… was a large group if I recall, and I was not in the guest houses, but in town, so did not hang out with the fancy ping-pong paraphernalia… 🙂 )
Ah, the good old days…
-cvj
Hi Clifford,
wow, Trieste 1991 was also the first (Spring) School for me! I did not play tetris, I played ping-pong on the ping-pong table at the Galileo guesthouse.
Tetris was of course the coolest thing at that time. It was and still is however a game for Mathematicians. Later, during my PhD studies at CERN I learned that real Physicists play Doom 😉
-Karl
Tetris, not Tetrus. Shows that you have really gotten over it. And who’ll return my hours spent on Tetris? Ergo-I shall not get into bird fighting.
Regarding ICTP-why not spend a sabbatical there? Might get a chance to meet you.