The Scavenger Hunt - Week 4 Tutorial Task

So, we were asked to find answers to these particular questions... :

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park?
2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?
3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?
4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?
5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now compare with the power of a personal computer from 30 years ago?
6. What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?
7. When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?
8. What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?
9. Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?
10. What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name?

...without using Google or Wikipedia. And I can now tell you, it was a requirement that proved surprisingly difficult.

1. Apparently, Alan Turing would ride around Bletchley Park on his bicycle wearing a Gas Mask. The information can be found here. I used Bing, Microsoft's new search engine and I just kept scrolling and scrolling - taking me far longer to find the information than I had initially anticipated.

2. Trying a specific search term ("computers first communicate") on Yahoo, it returns a search result that points me to the Southern Oregon's 'Mail Tribune'. According to them, the year computers first communicated with each other was "the same year men first walked on the moon" - 1969. Not surprisingly, the advent of Computer-assisted communication was overshadowed by the Moon Landing.

3. Bill Gate's birthday is on October 28th. At the age of 15 (1970), Bill (along with his friend Paul Allen) developed a computer program that monitored traffic patterns across Seattle. It earned them $(US)20,000.

4. The Internet first began in 1969, when the United States Department of Defense created the ARPAnet, a computer network through which organisations involved in military research could exchange information. It was further developed in a joint project by Computer Scientists from four different universities: the University of California at Los Angeles, Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.

5. Two prominent computers 30 years ago are the Apple II and the Atari Model 800. But focusing on the Apple II, its hardware specifications are so prehistoric, so meagre, that conventional (digital) wrist-watches would have higher computing grunt. To go geeky for just a moment - the Apple II had a computer speed (in Megahertz) of only 1 [Mhz]; today, computers are higher than 3500 Mhz (and are mostly dual core) - my computer at home (which in itself is over 5 years old,) has 2400 Mhz. If we're to focus only on the evolution of this particular advancement, you could say that computers today are then 24oo times more powerful, and that's not taking RAM, Bus Memory, Graphics Processor's and Hard Drives into consideration.

6. For my next answer, under the segment: Information You Just couldn't Live Without (Joke), the heaviest parsnip ever grown was by Canadian man: Norman Craven, whose Parsnip weighs 5.7kg. I used the search term "heaviest parsnip" and used Bing, and it directed me to the Telegraph's website - it had to be the Brits who knew, didn't it?

7. (a.) Queensland became a state in 1859.

(b.) The Tweed River is in New South Wales because, once (20 Million years ago) it was an area of Volcanic activity, eventually the Volcano died and over thousands of Years, the rain has washed the residue away creating a new rift in the valley: The Tweed River. It once stretched from Nerang to Byron Bay but today, it only reaches as far as - you guessed it: Tweed Heads. I struggled with this question, eventually using the search term "tweed river history" in Bing which put me onto the Tweed Tourism website.

8. According to this article published by the Bureau of Meteorology; the Weather in South-East Queensland on the 17th of November, 1954 was Cyclonic. (This was difficult to find as I spent most of my time trawling unsuccessfully through the extensive lists of statistics on the BOM's website.)

9. Lord Byron, the Poet, will be remembered in Venice because it is where he died - and, before he died, he famously and most poetically whispered to his Lover's: "Make Voyages." This was a particularly difficult find. I waded through pages and pages of search results until i came across an article published by The Sydney Morning Herald, that featured a link to another article, where the introduction began with that particularly juicy tidbit.

10. Sirhan Chapman plays in the band called: The Black Assassins and I believe (through careful scrutiny of some hazy photography) that he is our Lecturer: Stephen Stockwell. Quite humorous..