Maintaining AngryBirdsNest.com is definitely a team effort and without the support of the amazing Angry Birds community (read: you) none of this would be possible, so from all of us, “Thank you”. Also, a BIG thanks to Rovio for giving us permission to do what we do.
Bird Leader
I created AngryBirdsNest.com in the summer of 2010 as a way to give back to the Angry Birds community while helping myself conquer this amazingly addictive game. My then 3-year-old son and I played A LOT of Angry Birds and back then there really wasn’t an easy way to get help or share strategies. Having a background in web development and video games, I thought I’d approach Rovio and ask them if I could create a fan site. To my surprise, they agreed and even provided some of the very assets (artwork, etc.) you see today. I guess the rest is history. While I don’t respond to as many comments as I used to, I am still actively involved on the site on a daily basis.
FujiToast
You all know the name, but what you may not know is that FujiToast doesn’t like toast. Not one bit. All joking aside, FujiToast has been our go-to walkthrough creator for almost a year now. He’s probably helped more people pass Angry Birds levels than anyone else. Inadvertently, he’s probably saved countless lives and marriages by reducing stress and the time people sit in front of their iPhone (sorry Android users). Not only does FujiToast create awesome walkthroughs, but he also writes articles, creates taffy on the weekends, and routinely saves baby seals from poachers.
AMslimfordy
The man, the myth, the legend. In addition to being one of our main contributors, Slim is also the chief moderator. He single handily responds to hundreds of comments each week, helping thousands of Angry Birds players along the way. It doesn’t stop there though. He has superpowers! Shhhhh… One such power gives him super news-sleuthing ability. Another allows him to store vast amounts of Angry Birds data in his cerebral cortex. Yet another allows him to understand something called “number theory”. Yeah, who knew. I just don’t want to get on his bad side.
sal9
Sal comes to us from the world of game modding. Yes, he’s l33t, so be careful. Exactly how his background in modding translates into an amazing ability to fling our cute feather friends we may never know, but we’re not ones to complain. In addition to being a top flinger Sal is also a gifted graphic designer. If you haven’t already, definitely check out the awesome Angry Birds backgrounds he has been nice enough to share with the ABN community (yes, showering us with gifts can help you become a moderator). These are just two of Sal9′s nine talents. The other seven are: shaving, chewing gum, breaking bottles over his head, smiling, putting lots of straws together to make one really big straw, tic-tac-toe, and last, but not least, jogging backwards.
You all know how much I love this site…thanks! And thanks for the history above…its pretty cool to know how it all began…fuji doesnt even like cinnamon toast? Anyway great to know a few fun facts about Founding Feathers:)
Great joke Kathy!
Okay, I’m really being sarcastic
Temporary avatar change. I feel it is necessary. That was exhausting. Over 10 GB worth of video used to finally get the feather in Danger Zone 5.
Videos will be online tomorrow.
And who knows how many eagles… :) Finished that one just now… phew!
It’s April 10. Then I was commenting. Why it always say:
Your comment is awaiting moderation
Your commenting history suggests that it requires administrative moderation.
hi!!
what do you use to record the walkthrough videos?
please respond ASAP!
thanks a ton!
:D
On iOS, video capture requires a jailbroken device.
what about pc?
There are hundreds of recorders for PC.
One tip, from personal experience, I wouldn’t recommend CamStudio (at least the free version). I use it, but need an extra piece of software to convert the files. I’m thinking about changing! :)
Oh boy do I second that one. CamStudio is Hulk-ish, and not in the awesome-green-unstopable-force kinda way, but in the bulky, slow, kills everything it touches sort of way.
I’m using HyperCam right now. It’s a bit minimalistic, but it’s OK.
unrelated.
how come some users’ @ username is different than their username (without the @)
Not quite right. @ is precisely the person’s username. The “other name” that normally appears is the person’s nickname.
Members are not required to have their username and nickname match, though it is preferred for simplicity.
What is Bird Leader’s true name? Just curious.
Anonymity is king :)
Lol :)
found all the 3 admin’s names finally..:P
Mine’s not too hard. The other two are — though one of them is a Red Herring.
Does that mean the GC names aren’t necessarily their actual names…?
Forgot about that…
lol, no worries – I’ll respect their anonymity on here so won’t post them :)
Per request from @PlayDBird, here’s my story.
I’ve always been fascinated by numbers, since I was about 7 probably (when I learned what a “prime number” was). So there was a natural transition to gambling. Don’t get the wrong idea of me, I’m not a degenerate gambler or anything, but I was naturally intrigued by the concept: Casino games and “house edge”, sports and horses, proposition bets, the whole nine.
Well proposition bets are particularly interesting, and Thomas Austin Preston, Jr. was the best proposition gambler who ever lived. Thus (the majority of) my username. A nice example: Amarillo Slim once bet a friend $1,000,000 that he could hit a golf ball over 1 mile with a single swing… and won.
Additionally and unrelated, for those who followed me on Twitter, I have changed my handle to be more consistent with ABN. Hopefully there is no confusion, particularly with Rovio employees. :)
Nice to know :)
Now I am just curious about FujiToast’s name or does he really hate toasts ;D
Awesome Slim. Thanks for sharing.
And yes, i would love to know what FujiToast stand for
It’s nice to hear the stories behind nicknames-thanks for sharing with us. I’m fascinated by numbers, too, but not to the same extent :). I have always loved math and that’s my favorite subject to teach my children in our homeschool. As far as the gambling- I’m too frugal to risk money.
@AMslimfordy, I asked about your name and you forwarded me to this note. It might be there in front of my eyes but I am missing something:
AM = first name of Amarillo Slim
slim = last name of Amarillo Slim
fordy = where did this part originate from? Just can’t make the connection with the note above
We all need our secrets ;)
Slim, I must tell you we share this number fascination. I’ve always been a cold hard numbers kind of guy, and I love manipulating them. We may have to discuss this more in detail ;)
Hmm.. Very interesting.I also like maths,in maths i mostly like the probability part consisting of permutation and combinations.I like to always find the total no. of games in a tournament using that.
a big thank you to ABN
Hi AMslimfordy,
I can appreciate and respect that.
Respect what?
Respect for AMslimfordy’s need for secrets.
Reference the string of notes above about “Here’s My Story”
so is their anyway to get on the ABN crew or is it just the three?
Just the three of us right now. There is currently no flight training program. ;)
ok, thanks
To those who asked: @Lamia @iammighty
Actually, I like toast just fine, though I wouldn’t say I eat it a lot. Not much of a breakfast guy. The origin of FujiToast is a story of love. When I was a wee lad, I had a sudo-girlfriend and she asked that I come up with a cute pet name for her. Being the logical person that I am, I came up with a list of random words and put them in columns and started cross referencing these words across columns to see if anything would work. I decided on “FujiLumbarToast”. I delivered it to the sudo-GF and she didn’t really care for it. Well, we didn’t last very long but I liked the name. So I dropped out the “Lumbar” and started using FujiToast as my gaming moniker.
Also another way that it was solidified was in college. While playing Super Smash Bros or Mario Kart (I don’t remember anymore), my roommate did something I didn’t like much, so he was called a name — B!+¢4Toast. He loved it. So he became B-Toast and I became FujiToast. He still uses this name and even put it on his license plate. Our other roommate was just simply “LittleB!+¢4″ Shout-out to Chats and Grundy!
And that is the origin of the name FujiToast.
wow!! nice
Interesting…
Cool! Thanks for sharing @fujitoast!!!
Nice! Thanks for letting me know :D
Awesome
@FujiToast it just so happens that those are two out of a very short list of my all time favorite SNES games! I’m 30 years old, and still think they’re quite epic. I wish I could give you thumbs up for that one.
that’s awesomeness
How did the team meet together?
Are you cousins?
Friends?
Or neighbors?
Just curious.
Complete strangers until this.
And from completely different parts of the country too. BL-West Coast, Fuji-Midwest, Slim-East Coast. Crazy, right!?
@fujitoast-Right!
The baby seals, and the AB players of the world thank you, FujiToast. The AB players that are baby seals thank you as well.
I would think they’d be doubly thankful…
I see that there’s a new feature of displaying users’ register date, very helpful and interesting! :)
Yes, it’s new!
This was requested by @sal9, so props to him on this one.
I like this feature too. You were/still are able to see the joining date of members if you click on their name when they’re posting in the Forum but it didn’t show in the profile info/rest of site etc. and not all members participate on the Forum. So thanks BL for introducing it and thanks @sal9 for requesting it. :)
Thanks @sal9 You read my mind. Wondering about this last week. Could not recall the date. Question answered.
aha, it is BirdLeader you need to thank for making all this happen!
great stuff regardless. Thanks guys!
Cool new design BL!
Agreed! Great new header too and the site loads faster than before maybe? @birdleader
Appreciate the positive feedback! I’ve been hard at work. Yes, the site could be faster as the new server is literally twice as fast and it’s load balanced.
Love the new look BL!
Good job ABN team keep up the great work! :)
Shouldn’t @sal9 be added here? Not sure when he became an admin, but it would be good to note it here.
It might be too early for that. I’m still in the “junior” phase so to speak.
But I’ll let BL call the shot.
We were doing a sort of “silent release”. This will be updated in time.
yeah i´m also waiting for sal9s entry. =)
Just curious — When did ABN first come on line? You say you started site in summer of 2010, but not exactly when it came on-line. Also, the updates log doesn’t have dates ABO first released, or dates for first updates. : ) What levels were included in original release?
In the updates log, it gives a link to the old non-sortable update list.
Thanks. Do you happen to know what levels were in original release? Your link doesn’t say. Also, do you know when ABN first came on-line? Were you and Fuji on-board at the beginning?
Nope, Birdleader was doing this all alone at first. He and I connected after I started putting up some videos of the santa hat glitch in Dec 2010. I then moved my AB efforts over here to ABN and started to help with moderation and to bounce ideas around. Slim came on a few months later with his sleuthing skills and joined us a chatter and moderation pro.
@mvnla2 I do not know the date but the first article that BL published on the site was: Posted on Aug 2, 2010 by Bird Leader, Listed on page 33. I read all the posts and those early ones stuck with me. FYI. Not sure is this is what AMslimfordy was referencing.
p 33 of what / where?
@mvnla2 on the bottom of the ABN title page there is a black box with all the previous posts the ABN site loaded. It is the last page. I took the time to read each one. Became aware of a lot of info I heard others post about but had not idea of what they were talking about. It was very educational for myself. I am not a computer orientated person. Just do AB and ABN for fun and it relaxes me.
@wrw01 –Thanks! Fascinating. I never looked at those pages. I still think a site map would be good for those of us who are continually finding things we’ve never seen before.
@mvnla2 You are welcome. There are a lot of avenues to travel on this site. I have made a list of the places I have not been through the buttons on the yellow bar, let along Chrome and Facebook.
I found the posts on the bottom by accident, had about 2 days of down time that I needed to fill mentally and started to read. It was fun. I would agree about the site map, especially for new folks. Improvement is a process which never stops.
Is @amslimfordy the only moderator of comments here on ABN?
How ’bout @sal9?
@birdleader?
@fujitoast?
I don’t believe we have publicly announced Sal’s responsibilities yet — though if I’m mistaken, Sal or BirdLeader can certainly interject.
In general, BirdLeader and FujiToast are not as involved in the actual comments section, but they are typically involved somewhere on the site every day.
@birdleader is Bird Leaders user name. I keep telling him he should change it, but…
It’s not that easy…
I know, but for BL, I figure anything is possible?
Yes, I think it’s possible, but I don’t want to break anything, so I’m testing it out first.
@mvnla2 My magic fingers have struck again! Happy?
cc. @Amslimfordy
I just noticed, whenever angrypig was mentioned it changed into birdleader
Yes, I am now officially @birdleader!
Fantastic! So you should tell us why you started out as angrypig
@sal9 – congrats on the official write-up – now can you tell us how many of those things you can do simultaneously?
@sal9 Congrats! So what are Sal’s official duties now?
@Sal9 congrats on the writ up good work
Congrats @sal9 I had feeling that you may become one of the admin so @amslimfory is your job of comment moderator gonna be sal’s? I hope you stay as moderator as your answer’s are awesome
I noticed that FijiToast is no longer creating the videos and instructions for the walk-thrus. Why is that?
FujiToast does create the videos but the instructions for the video are written by Slim.
Fuji still does some of the videos, but Slim does some now too. There were too many new levels coming out too rapidly for Fuji to do them all as quickly as our impatient members wanted.
I’ll reply as well. I often write the textual descriptions before Fuji does the videos. Also, the general construction is that Fuji does the 3-star videos and I do the Feather videos.
Thanks for all the answers. And thanks, Slim, for the videos! I hope you are making a super salary for all the work you do. :)
Hi @duffy, I strongly suspect that SpeedySlim isn’t paid at all. In fact I don’t think even the creator – Bird Leader receives any remuneration for this fantastic website. Site/Forum moderators rarely are paid so Fujitoast won’t be paid either. I believe that it’s all a labour of love.
I think there’s some advertising revenue coming in – I hope they’re all making some money…
We have a bit of compensation.
Oh, OK – that’s good. :)
Actually, I was only joking about your ” super” salary. But I expect you are not one of the 1%! But whatever it is,
I appreciate your hard work and hope you enjoy what you do.
Depends which 1% you refer to. I suspect you mean richest-of-the-rich, then you’re right. As a poor graduate student, I’m right about the poverty line, actually. In terms of a different 1%, one of my life goals is to be accepted into the Intertel.
I’m sure you’ll make it.
Incredibly difficult, but thanks for your confidence :)
Yet another word I had to look up. Presumably you already know if you have the qualifications? I didn’t think IQ changed with age? (At least that’s what they used to say in the Dark Ages.)
Hello @Chicadee,
Altho I was being facetious, I should try to remember that everyone does not share my sense of humor. Thanks for your comment.
Excellent Work GUYS
@amslimfordy what do you do besides this job?Or are you on ABN on full time basis
I’m earning my Ph.D. in Mathematics, specifically Number Theory, possibly p-Adic Analysis. That’s my full-time life.
Awesome!.I cant even think of getting a Ph.D.I am doing Engg in computers and afterwards will try to earn a masters in computers
Cool that @sal9 now is here to!!! Good to jogging backwards! LOL!!!