The Daily Teaser — 9-4-2016

You know, I got home, last night.

Did my usual thing of going to bed … 

And did my equally usual thing of waking up, this morning.

And found out that that the Reverand Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a bastard.

No, literally.   It turns out that his reverence had a family best described as confused. His mother had an affair with a chap she worked with: who turned out to be the last Private Secretary to Winston Churchill.

~≈†≈~

Oh, something else I’ve found out … ?

Or seen?

Is the new trailer for Rogue One, the Star Wars spin-off movie due out in December of this year?

Stars Felicity Jones as main character, Jyn Erso.

Who turns out to have been playing Emma Grundy in The Archers for many years.

Amazing what you find out, listening to Radio Four.

~≈†≈~

But let’s move on, shall we?

Yesterday’s Teaser saw a returned Debbi* putting in her answers: scoring ten out of ten in the process.

Let’s see how everyone does with today’s questions, shall we?

Here they are, along with the How To, License and video … 

Q1) April 9th is a film set during World War 2: starring Lars Mikkelsen.   It was filmed in which European country?

Q2) The film’s about the German invasion of that country.   On 9th April of which year: 1939, 1940 or 1941?

Q3) Which Eurasian country declared itself independent of the USSR: on 9th April, 1991?

Q4) Henry 5th was crowned as King of England: on 9th April, 1413.   His forces — famously — won a victory over a much bigger French army: at which A?

Q5) Finally … 9th April, 1806, saw the birth of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.   What was the name of the paddle-steamer he designed, in 1836?

Here’s yesterday’s questions and answers …

Q1) 8th April saw a team led — in part — by Grace Hopper, start developing the computer language called COBOL.   COBOL is short for Common Business Oriented … what?

A1) Language.

Q2) Development started in which year: 1958, 1959 or 1960?

A2) 1959.

Q3) Grace, herself was a computer scientist who held which military rank: Air Chief Commodore, Rear Admiral or Brigadier General?

A3) Rear Admiral.

Q4) Grace earned a nickname based on the title of a well known hymn: what WAS her nickname?

A4) Amazing Grace.

Q5) Like other computer languages, COBOL is/was supposed be used on many different computers.   In other words, it’s supposed to be what: portable, fixed or editable?

A5) Strictly speaking, portable.   (In other words, it’s usable on many different machines — PCs, Macs, mainframes, your games console, and, these days, your smart phone — with minimal rewriting.)

Q6) Like other such computer languages, COBOL is ‘high-level’: and needs to be translated for the computer to use.   This is called what: assembling, compiling or collating?

A6) Compiling.   (A Compiler turns the program we’ve written into either assembly language — a low-level language that’s easier for the computer to understand — or into machine code: the ones and zeros the computer’s central processor actually ‘talks’.)

Q7) Grace provided us with the term ‘debugging’: the term describing the removal of glitches from a computer program.   She coined the term, after researchers found a what, fried onto a valve: a moth, an ant or a spider?

A7) A moth.   (This was back in the days when computers used thermionic valves, instead of transistors.   Valves are similar in size, and produce similar amounts of heat, to incandescent lightbulbs.   The original bug is now in the Smithsonian.)

Q8) Languages like COBOL can be used to write computer programs.   Such programs are also called what: software, hardware or firmware?

A8) Software.   (Hardware is the computer the software runs on.   Firmware refers to smaller bits of hardware with the software embedded into it: things like phones, TV remotes, and dvd players, are all firmware devices.)

Q9) Those of us who grew up in the 1980s computer boom will be familiar with a computer language called BASIC.   What did the B stand for, in BASIC?

A9) Beginners.   (The full phrase is Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.)

Q10) Finally … which modern day computer language was named after a type of coffee?

A10) Java.

I’ll leave you with this thought …

“The plain fact is that we are starving people, not deliberately in the sense that we want them to die, but wilfully in the sense that we prefer their death to our own inconvenience.”
Publisher, Sir Victor Gollancz, 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967.

And, as it’s Rockin’ Sidney’s birthday, THIS tune … 

And his biggest hit …

You can never have too much twee … 

Have a good day.

*        Nice to see you back, Debbi!   How did the pitch meeting go?   And you do seem to be collecting bloggers! :D   (Hmmm … I think Olga’s answers have been eaten!)