How strong should lights be for a route partially in a city and partially outside city on a public road?

Question: I'm commuting 3 days a week 20 km one way (40 km daily) on an e-bike in the UK. It takes around 50 minutes. Days are getting darker and I am about to buy a better light. I'm tempted to buy a 1600 lumen light, but not sure whether that's worth the money as it would be £50-£60 which is quite expensive for a light. Also I'm contemplating a 100 lumen back light. The route is part city, part outside urban area, but all the time on public roads.
Comment: Note that you will be highly unpopular with other riders if you ride on a bidirectional path with a 1600 lumen light.
Comment: The most important part is that it has a proper cut-off so you don't dazzle oncoming traffic. If your light illuminates stuff >1m above the ground it's certainly dazzling people and wastes a lot of power as well.
Comment: Bike lights in my opinion fall into two categories.  Be seen and See.  Be seen lights are so other road uses can see you and offer little illumination.  See lights illuminate the path for you.  So, it's really up to you to make the call what is safe.  I would have anything over 1000 lumen in the See column, anything under is so other users can see you.  Personally, I'm happy riding single trail through bush on my MTB with a 1100 lumen light.  Rear light, IMO strobe mode probably more important than output
Comment: I _strongly_ second @Michael's comment above. You can get away with a much brighter light safely if you've got a proper vertical cutoff, and it will typically last longer too. Unfortunately, depending on where you are in the world these can be hard to find (in the US for example, it's a serious pain in the arse). Your best bet here unless your country has laws mandating vertical cutoffs is probably to search for StVZO (German traffic law) compliant bike lights.
Comment: 1000 lumen is blindingly bright for "to be seen". Especially if the light is mounted incorrectly, which is likely. 100 lumen is quite sufficient for this purpose.
Comment: The best light with a proper cut-off I've used so far is the Lezyne Power StVZO Pro 115 (actually its predecessor, but they are very similar). It only has 300 lumens on paper but it uses them very well and it doesn't dazzle oncoming traffic. The only disadvantage is that the default rubber strap mount is garbage and the much more solid hard plastic screw mount is tricky to align perfectly (but stays there forever).
Comment: Also see [Is it possible to get a light that is too bright?](https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/31557/is-it-possible-to-get-a-light-that-is-too-bright)
Comment: FWIW (latitude 60 here) I use a "quickly" detachable [M Tiger Sport Theia](https://global.smsport.se/produkt/theia-2019/) as my main light source (and a tiny red light in the rear). 3000 lumen is excessive when riding a bike, but if you do night time orienteering, all of it is welcome. It is easy to adjust the brightness to a useful (and battery saving) level while riding. I wanted that brightness and happily coughed up the +200euros. An inconvenience is that I don't want to leave easily removable expensive gear on a parked bike.
Comment: It's also worth pointing out that good reflective tape is very effective at enabling drivers to see cyclists (possibly more so than lights when it's very dark). Of course, you also need lights as well. I'm a big fan of backpacks with integrated reflective tape.
Comment: @JyrkiLahtonen: Headlamps should never be used on the road (by cyclists). Unless you are fixing a puncture or something :D
Comment: @Michael Agreed. I would not dream of wearing that light *on my head* when riding a bike. A selling point for that particular headlamp (for me) was exactly that it can also be mounted on the handlebar instead of a band wrapping around my head. Plus there is a velcro case allowing me to either hang the battery from the top tube, or carry it inside a vest on my back (when using it as a headlamp). Certainly that item is not for everyone, but it is multipurpose by design. I get relatively little use of it for orienteering, but I could justify the investment to Missus by using it on my bike.
Answer: https://bikelightdatabase.com/ has a lot of good information.
There is much more to a light than output. Optics is far more important (and in parts of the world, its illegal to use bike lights that do not meet specified standards).
The problem with Lumen as a measure is it is the entire output of the light in all directions. If the light has a super bright center spot, and no wide-angle light, you get blinded to the side by the brightness of the spot. If the light is evenly spread over too wide area, you get to see the periphery, cannot see far enough ahead to ride safely at speed.  Lumen values are usually overstated in cheap lights, when it comes down to it, "Mines Bigger than Yours" is used by marketing geeks more than jocks.   For comparison, a halogen car headlight on high beam has around 1200 lumen of actual output (Theoretical maximum of around 1600, but you only get about 75% of that in real life). You are probably not riding around at 60mph - 80mph, so you probably don't need the same light output and range as a car.
For the rear light the same applies -no point having a bright rear light if it throws a narrow beam that most motorists will not see. It needs to throw a wide enough beam motorists off at an angle will see you - for example a four lane road and a car in the left lane (right lane for those that drive on the left) lane changes to the right lane you happen to be in.
Suggest you look at reviews and focus on quality of optics as far more important than light output.
Comment: It looks like the website was last updated in 2016 (6 years ago), and that is a long time for consumer electronics.
Comment: Really solid advice. Other characteristics of the light, such as battery life, durability, mount compatibility, can also be more important than lumen rating to deciding on an appropriate light.
Comment: Concur - I value a light that tells me it is approaching flat rather than a surprise serving of blackness.
Comment: @Criggie one I've retired had an indicator that went red for low battery - about half a commute *after* I could tell it was getting really dim, and only about 10 minutes before dying on full power.
Answer: For illuminating the road ahead at speed where you'll get motor assistance on a UK-legal e-bike, 300 lumens in a well-shaped beam is plenty.  You only need the sort of output you mention for off-road, and those super-bright lights tend to have very wide and high beams (useful for seeing overhanging branches).  If I ride home from the trails with my 1200 lumen light I refit the top cutoff I made, and use it on low (about 1/4) power.  That's adequate even with its rather wide beam.
At the back I strongly suggest running 2 lights, of which at least one is steady. That's easier for someone to locate in their field of view than a slow flash, and far easier than a strobe.  A bright flashing light on a helmet or high on a backpack can be seen from far away and won't dazzle a cyclist coming up behind like one on the seatpost or lower would.  Two lights are far better than one with both functions - if one fails, it's a very good idea to have a second already on.
Comment: @MartinBonnersupportsMonica I formed that view when driving, and cycling has only reinforced it.
Comment: _"A bright flashing light on a helmet... won't dazzle a cyclist coming up behind"_ - my experience of city cycling is the opposite. Rear-facing lights mounted at head height in front of you are the worst for focusing light towards your own eyes. With a solid narrow beam it is virtually impossible to look forwards at all, and even with a broader flashing beam it was common to experience a few seconds of flash blindness for each flash if it was dark and the flash was bright/close (proximity being unavoidable at traffic lights etc.).
Comment: @Peter-ReinstateMonica, as a driver, a flashing light tells me "there's a bicycle somewhere in the next half-mile stretch of road".  A steady light tells me "there's a bicycle *there* going *that direction*".
Comment: @bain it may be a matter of posture.  I find that absolutely dreadful on seatpost or chainstay, but on a helmet, the light is out of the top of my main field of view when I'm close, and fainter further away.  There may be a bad zone in between with some lights.  I'm still not talking about ridiculously bright thinks like the 80 lumen daytime flash on my rear light (also good in fog)
Comment: I might add "... of which at least one is flashing" ;-). Your life depends entirely on the driver coming from behind noticing you: There is not much you can do with respect to traffic from behind, while you exert some control over what's going to happen in front of you. A flashing light in the corner of the driver's eye may make them look up from their cell phone.
Comment: @Peter-ReinstateMonica Your life depends on the driver noticing you're there *and avoiding you*. A flashing light helps the first, but it doesn't help at all with the second. If you don't have a steady light, then for the "unlit" time of the flashing light you are effectively cycling without any lights.
Comment: @Peter-ReinstateMonica As a driver, I find it very hard to locate a flashing light source - it's not just the "cyclist goes invisible while the flash is off", it appears to be more that the bit of my visual processing which is to do with "exactly where is that?" can't cope with flashing.
Comment: @MartinBonnersupportsMonica The general sentiment here not withstanding: I still find a flashing light more important than a steady one. I have a steady one and a blinking one on my bike but if I had to choose I'd keep the blinking one. The reason is that *not being noticed at all* by a distracted driver is the main risk. Once they are alerted to your presence they will most likely manage to avoid you even if they cannot pinpoint your location to the inch. Obviously you don't want the frequency too low -- but e.g. the 5 dollar smart light does the job well enough.
Comment: @MartinBonnersupportsMonica That said, I am not very passionate about it. All I wanted to say is "consider a flashing one as well" because it is more likely to be noticed at all, since human perception is hard-wired to detect movement (which flashing emulates while a steady light from the perspective of a driver approaching from behind appears near-stationary).
Answer: You must see more, not less with the powerful light. What is the point of the bright light if you actually see less? This may be contra-intuitive, but:

A light so bright that you see colors of the flowers in the grass will cause your eyes to adapt to brighter light conditions. You may see less where this super bright beam does not reach well.
And if the light has "good optics", of course it will not. The beam will be properly directed to the ground and not too wide, so while the shoes of the human in front of you may be perfectly illuminated, the rest can stay in the darkness. Same for the side, especially if you are making the turn.
Finally it is really annoying when another bicycle faces you with the light such that you need to brake because of not seeing where are you going. A weaker or moderate light is bearable also with bad optics or wrongly adjusted, but not the really bright light.

As no optics is perfect and it will often be some light outside the shaped beam anyway, less extreme brightness level may actually give more overall situation awareness.
As a result, brighter is not always better, unless you use a wide angle "wilderness light" shining like a high beam of the car without any care about optics. My light has a separate "high beam" button for this mode that I find much safer when alone on the bad gravel forest road. But, of course, I need to be as careful with this beam as the car drivers are.
Answer: A tricky topic, and one that is ever evolving as technology changes.
15-20 years ago when LED lights were new we'd have told you 200lm was excellent, these days some will tell you 2000lm is not enough.
For me, the answer depends on fitness, terrain and riding style.
If your roads are flat and you never find yourself going over ~15mph then 200-300lm with a well shaped beam is probably enough.
At 20mph this requirement raises to more like 600lm.
If you are riding in rolling/hilly terrain and are frequently reaching speeds of 30mph things become more tricky. At this point you might want 2x1000lm. One with a broad and flat beam and one that punches further ahead (consider this like low and high beam on a car).
Note that currently in the UK the vast majority of high powered lights sold have very wide floody beam patterns that are not particularly well suited to road riding and can dazzle other road/path users.  Please be wary of this when setting the position of your light and turn down power levels when appropriate to do so.
Comment: It does of course depend on eyesight too; I have friends who need far more light than average because their night vision isn't great (including one whose vision, even corrected, isn't adequate for driving)
Answer: I had a similar commute. 1600 lumens would be far too much (if it really is 1600 - keep in mind that some manufacturers will claim a light to be brighter than it really is).
I had a front light that could be switched between 800/400/200 lumens (Cateye Volt 800). 200 lumens was sufficient for cycling in the city, on cyclepaths, and on roads with street lighting. At 200 lumens, I would still occasionally  get complaints from other cyclepath cyclists that it was too bright, even though I took care to follow the instructions and mount the light so that it was angled slightly downwards towards the ground. Test your lights after mounting - prop the bike up, walk away a short distance, and then look back - if blinded, reduce the lumens or angle further down. Using a lower power than the maximum also has the advantage that the battery will last longer (8 hours versus 2 hours in my case).
I'd recommend also getting two rear lights (as suggested by others). Partly this is so that you can have one constant and one flashing, but also it provides a bit of redundancy in case one of the batteries runs out. I found this happens more often to rear lights, which tend to have smaller batteries.
Another recommendation is to get a cheap  hi-viz vest from ebay. The reflection they provide is far superior to almost all regular jackets, and you can get a oversized XXXL that covers both yourself and a backpack if needed.
For some specific recommendations, and a visual comparison tool, see road.cc's 2021/22 front lights comparison engine.
Answer: Personal experience: between me and my wife we have a Magicshine Allty 1000 and a Cateye AMPP 1100 which each do about 1000 lumens. And either of those is absolutely enough and then some to bike at night on completely unlit paths. We usually have them turned somewhat downwards so as not to blind other people.
Answer: Two considerations are 1) how well lit the roads travelled on are and 2) regulations.  You mention your route is public roads in city/urban UK, but are there regular lights from buildings or street lights?  The adjustable bike lights may be a good option here, but also True Commuter recommends 600 Lumens tops.  I personally feel blinking lights work better for being seen, regardless.  Regulations in the UK stipulate that both a front white and rear amber lights must be fastened to the bike and not the helmet, and that at least one red reflector be attached to the back of the bike.  This Bike Radar article sums it up nicely.
Answer: 1600 lumens is overkill. Car H4 headlights have 1650 lumens per bulb at high beam, and 1000 lumens per bulb at low beam. Note that most cars with auto high/low beam these days switch the high beam on only at about 45 km/h, and high beams are generally used at speeds up to 100 km/h.
The amount of light needed is proportional to speed squared, because illuminating an area at certain distance requires luminosity proportional to square of that distance.
So if car high beams have 3300 lumens total at 100 km/h and if we can assume they are good enough, and with bikes you won't exceed 40 km/h if riding in complete darkness, this means 528 lumens is enough for a bike headlight (square law).
Actually the luminosity you need may be even smaller, for example most cyclists ride in areas with street lights and those areas require very little light. If your route has a small area with no street lights, you can perfectly well restrict your speed to 30 km/h only in these non-street-light areas, which means 297 lumens is acceptable according to the square law and comparing bike lights to car high beams.
Consider also how you are going to power the light. If it's a lithium ion light, most likely the battery is built-in and not designed to be changed. In this case, you can expect a life of five years. If you buy a NiMH AA light, one Eneloop low self discharge battery with 27 grams can produce 2.4 watt-hours (Eneloops have a useful life of at least 15 years, I just measured a pair of 13 year old Eneloops and they had lost less than 10% of their capacity). You should probably have 3 hours of light to allow for battery degradation and unexpected circumstances. 1600 lumens at 130 lumens/watt (many of these high brightness lights have only 1-2 emitters that are driven with such high power levels the lumens/watt figure suffers) is 12.3 watts. So to have three hours of light, you'd need 37 watt-hours. That's 16 batteries or 432 grams for the batteries alone. Are you really willing to carry that many batteries? Do you have the possibility to charge 16 batteries every day -- for example Maha MH-C9000 charger takes 4 batteries and costs maybe $60, so you need 4 chargers and $240 in charger costs if you want to charge all of them at the same time.
37 watt-hours is more reasonable with lithium ion lights, but then you need to factor in the expense of replacing that light maybe every 5 years due to battery degradation, whereas one NiMH light and a set of Eneloops lasts at least 15 years.
Dynamo headlights are restricted to about 3 watts by the dynamo. So if you have a dynamo powered light, the best you can do is maybe 400-450 lumens by the limited power you have.
Also, if you find a 1600 lumen light for £50-£60, I'm 99% sure it's either not really 1600 true lumens (just marketing lumens), or has a very poor beam pattern that makes it worse than a 200 lumen light with an optimized beam pattern, or has a very poor battery life, or a beam pattern that blinds all oncoming traffic. Most likely all of these four are true, plus maybe the battery li-ion cells are cheap Chinese cells that won't last even the 5 years (been there, done that, my lawnmower cells last about 2 years -- today, I use a gasoline powered lawnmower to avoid having to replace the cells every 2 years).
To find a light that doesn't blind oncoming traffic, your light should be StVZO-compliant (German law). StVZO lights have an optimized beam pattern which means they are infinitely better than a non-StVZO light having a circularly symmetric beam, even if that non-StVZO light has 5 times the lumens.


what is a QR code used when applying for or receiving a ETA for India

Question: Have obtained a ETA for India but there is no photograph.  Is it o.k. to just print off the ETA and carry it with me?  What is a QR code?
Comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code for a full description of QR codes
Comment: Go to Indian eVisa website and get from there your eVisa. I think you already understood that Indian eVisa website is not intuitive (or worse). I do not understand why they send a PDF about visa information but not the eVISA.
Comment: @GiacomoCatenazzi they do that because the actual visa is put into the passport by the immigration officer when you enter India for the first time.
Comment: @phoog: it was not my comment: there is one PDF with almost all information send to email, and a second PDF with also the photo on the website, AFAIK no direct link. They requires this second document to be able to have the stamp on the printed PDF and on passport The printed document with stamp should be carried. Ah, and that printed PDF (with photo) is checked 3 times in three different step/places before really entering in India.
Answer: This forum post details what's going on:

I had already checked the status on the website, but the query returned the exact same text-only reply from my email. There is a "PRINT" button at the bottom that I assumed (assuming was my error) that this would just print out this text. However, when I hit PRINT, it actually brought up the full PDF of the visa with the barcodes and the photo.

(Note the original post didn't link "website", I did, using the URL from a previous post in the same thread.)
And note another post in the same thread:

you need to bring the hardcopy with you to immigration. You'll be photographed, finger-printed and the visa stamped into your passport.


Determining zoom level from single LatLong in Google Maps API

Question: I'm having some trouble with the Google Maps API; I want to determine a LatLong for a certain place (for example, from the name of a city), then focus my map on it. The LatLong part is working, and so is centering the map on that point. However, I cannot figure out how to determine what a good zoomlevel might be when I only have that single point. I cannot just go to some standard zoomlevel that might look good most of the time, 'cause what happens when the user enters "Russia" instead of "Amsterdam", for example? Some help would be appreciated :)
Answer: I just asked this question at Google IO.  This feature exists, but is undocumented and doesn't have accessors for it yet.  What you want to do is get the Structured Address.  Inspect the json structure you get back and look for these new parameters.  I'll post more information when I get a chance to try this out.
Answer: Your question is missing a input parameter . You are saying LatLon point but actually you need  LatLonBounds to do the focusing for available map window size . I assume you want to mimic the official Google map behavior. Besides geocoding they rely on other data which Gmap API doesnt have access to. So you have to provide your own.
Answer: The following call will give you the zoom level if you can provide it with an appropriate rectangular bounds object:
GMap2.getBoundsZoomLevel(bounds)

But how to calculate the bounds?
You can manually annotate each source record with a rectangle determined "by eye" using a map and have someone type in values.
Ideally you want data, and luckily there is shed loads of data on DBPedia.
My geometry and algebra is a little rusty, but with a little of both I'm sure you can calculate a rectangle given the area of the location you want to view. (Maybe start with the square root if assuming a square city, or rearrange πr2 if assuming a circular one)
Try out this query to extract the areas of regions.
PREFIX geo: <http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX dbpedia2: <http://dbpedia.org/property/>
SELECT ?url, ?label, ?lat, ?long, ?area WHERE {
   ?url geo:lat ?lat .
   ?url geo:lat ?long .
   ?url rdfs:label ?label . FILTER ( lang(?label) = 'en' ) .
   ?url dbpedia2:area ?area . FILTER ( datatype(?area) = xsd:double )
} LIMIT 10

You'll need to cache the results or load them into a faster more local datasource as DBPedia is searching millions of triples of unstructured data (well RDF data). You can download the Titles, Infobox and coordinates data sets from DBPedia and load them into e.g. Jena. Remember to turn off all the validation options during loading :-)
You can also access this data using a RESTful API which has fairly usable Web form, and its possible to pull the URL its generating using "Copy download link button" in the firefox downloads window, or setting the output format to HTML. It also generates XML and JSON.
Don't forget to add a margin for wobbly shaped cities...
Answer: I had the same question, and Nick Retallack's response, is what worked for me. To provide more detail, the name of the undocumented property is "ExtendedData", and within that you have "LatLonBox" which contains the north, south, east and west boundaries of the appropriate zoom level.
For instance, if you were to do a search for "90210", here's the output (which I've formatted for readability):
{
    "id":"p1",
    "address":"Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA",
    "AddressDetails":{
        "Accuracy":5,
        "Country":{
            "AdministrativeArea":{
                "AdministrativeAreaName":"CA",
                "SubAdministrativeArea":{
                    "Locality":{
                        "LocalityName":"Beverly Hills",
                        "PostalCode":{"PostalCodeNumber":"90210"}
                    },
                    "SubAdministrativeAreaName":"Los Angeles"
                }
            },
            "CountryName":"USA",
            "CountryNameCode":"US"
        }
    },

     // This is what you're looking for
     "ExtendedData":{
         "LatLonBox":{
             "north":34.13919,
             "south":34.067018,
             "east":-118.38971,
             "west":-118.442796
         }
     },

    "Point":{
        "coordinates":[-118.4104684,34.1030032,0]
    }
}

This is undocumented though, so I'm not sure if it'll survive API changes. Best not assume it'll always be there, and define some reasonable default zoom value.
Answer: Are you getting your location points from the Geocoder?  If you are, you can grab the accuracy of the point and base your zoom on that (higher accuracy = higher zoom).
Answer: I've implemented a version of Nick Retallack's solution in Objective-C here.
Equivalent Objective-C code for Google Maps GMap2.getBoundsZoomLevel(bounds)?
Answer: I had the same issue here, but with a newer API version. The new solution is map.fitBounds(autocomplete.getPlace().geometry.viewport);.


How do you make things instant build in CK2?

Question: How do you make things instant build in CK2? I tried to look up commands but I couldn't find any. From a long time ago I sort of remember there was one but I couldn't find one.
Answer: No such option exists in the standard game. If you want things built in your own holdings, you have to order it yourself. Your vassals should upgrade their own holdings by themselves as their own money is available.
If you are interested in some mods there is one that allows you to setup a build order available here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=345788750&searchtext=
OR here:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/auto-build-mini-mod-and-generator
that's about the best you can do I think.
Answer: According to CK2's wikia page:

The console is opened by pressing § + Shift. Alt + 2 1 or ~ may also work ( ~ seems to be the majority console button, located beneath esc ). The cheat console is a transparent overlay above the character's tab.

Although, on my keyboard neither works and I have to do Shift + ` + space

quickbuild = Player's construction are finished immediately (One day).
Answer: open the console and type quickbuild
Comment: Welcome to the site. While you provide an answer to the question, please describe how the console  is opened. try to be as complete and thorough as possible.
Comment: So you downvote instead of editing... gosh
Comment: @Oak It's not required that anyone fix other people's mistakes, and you're making a couple of big assumptions, that Dulkan is the downvoter and that Dulkan knows how to open the console in CK2.


Exercises for marching with tenor drum

Question: All I have is a pair of marching sticks and a cheap pad, what are some exercises that can help with coordination and muscle required for marching tenors.
Comment: You may know "chops" but that means little to most of us.  Please define.
Comment: Sorry, assumed that was a common name for it. It's eighths but goes pianissimo to fortissimo and vice versa
Answer: Many DCI corps have publicly available warm up books (e.g. Oregon Crusaders' Quads Pack). Many of these exercises are easier than you'd expect for DCI, and focus on the fundamentals of technique - you can play these at whatever tempo you feel comfortable, ensuring technique is good, and then build up the speed.
Rudiments are key to almost everything you will do. Try to voice some rudiments around all the different drums, then when you feel comfortable try playing through them all whilst watching TV, so that you can spend 30 mins or so on the same thing without getting too bored. This will help with the muscle memory aspect.

Exercises for marching with tenor drum


I think I chose the wrong road bike size

Question: I went to a local bike shop a couple days ago and picked up a road bike. I think I chose the wrong size. I bought a medium size instead of a small. I'm 5'7 and I feel comfortable during the first two hours of riding and then the back of my neck starts hurting. The salesman told me that I have a long torso so I agreed to have a medium bike. Any suggestions to fit my bike better for me? I'm 22 years old and spent a ton of money for my bike and I really want to get the best out of it.
Comment: You don't tell us about your riding skills. If you just took up riding or restarted after a long period off a bike, a two-hour-ride is likely to cause some discomfort. Adjustment of the position and acquiring some core-strength will ease things. The shop where you bought the bike should adjust or correct the seating position for you. It's a minimal service when you get a new bike.
Comment: At 5'7 a medium probably *is* the right size for you. I'm just shy of 6' and my bikes are both designated as "large" (56 and 57 cm respectively). A smaller frame would probably be too small for you. I don't really have anything beyond that to add to Vladimir's answer.

Oh, one thing: are you riding with a backpack? I find that if I have a lot of weight on my back/shoulders, my neck starts hurting more on my road bike (where I'm riding a lot more aggressively) than on my fixie (where I sit more upright).

Make sure to try it without a backpack and see what it feels like.
Comment: If I am checking correctly then 5'7 is 170 cm. I am 174 cm and I ride small. But with a different manufacturers the ranges may be very different.
Comment: Have you been fitted for your bike? There are many adjustments that will effect your comfort and quality of riding. Some but not all are: length of your pedal crank; the type of saddle and saddle adjustment (how far forward, tilt);the height of the seat post;the height of your stem; the type of handlebar; and more
Comment: What is small, medium, large? I'm used to measurements like 54cm center-to-top.
Answer: Almost all road bikes have your torso leaning forward to some degree, meaning you have to hold your head up constantly. If you've never ridden a true road bike before, you've probably never had to do that. What's the longest ride you've done on a road bike before this two-hour ride?
Since you didn't mention your hands or arms hurting, you're probably not leaning too far forward.  Leaning forward (to get lower and more aerodynamic) can put more weight on your hands and can make your hands, arms, and/or shoulders hurt or go numb after a while, especially if you're not used to doing that.
But since you rode for 2 hours before things started hurting, your bicycle's size probably isn't too far from being correct.
So your sore neck is probably just from doing something for two hours that you're not used to.  There's a good chance you just need to ride more and get used to holding your head up.
As you ride more, you may find other fit issues.  You may have to get a completely different saddle, and it might take you three or four different attempts before you find a saddle you can ride without discomfort after some period of time.  You may find your shoes and/or pedal combination starts making your feet hurt or gives you hot spots (you'll know what a "hot spot" is and why it's called that if/when you get one....).  You may find certain brands of shorts have padding that rubs your nether regions raw.  As already noted, you might have your hands go numb after a while.  Welcome to cycling - that's all a part of it.
But it's important to note that you apparently had NONE of those issues in a two-hour ride, and you seemingly haven't ridden your new road bike for that long ever before.  So you're really doing pretty well, and in my opinion you probably don't have to change much, unless you've left something out of your question.
At least not yet...
Answer: If you cannot return it you can still modify the setup of your bike. In fact, an incorrect setup could be your problem, not the frame size.
The first thing is to correctly set the saddle height, it is paramount. Then you can move the saddle front and back (within limits), install a seat tube with a different setback and move your cleats back and front (if you use clipless).
Then you can move your handlebars. You can move your shifters on the handlebars (that was crucial on my current road bike!), turn the handlebars up and down slightly, move the step up and down (it is probably at the top in a new bike, though, but check) and buy a shorter (or longer) stem. You can also buy handlebars with a different reach.
There is a lot to play with. A professional bike fit would help, but it is not cheap and is better done before buying a bike. Still, it could help a lot, if you have the money.
Comment: Thanks! I'll look into those things when I get money. I just got into cycling recently I used to ride a cheap bike and then I upgraded to a better bike and I had no idea how to find your size when it comes to road bikes. I thought I did my research and I obviously didn't do a good one. I watched videos on how to fit your bike and most of the videos told me that there should be a gap between your crotch and the bike. Well mine is seating right on it. I will probably go to the bikeshop and try my luck returning it
Comment: +1. Unless OP is already on a short stem and the bicycle still feels too long.
Comment: Just consulting with a friend who is a cycling enthusiast might be helpful.
Answer: You don't say how much you're used to riding for 2+ hours, and on what bike, but a sore neck (especially at the back) may be that you're too low for what you're used to. A shorter (and possibly higher) stem, and/or more spacers under the stem will lift your hands, and you won't have to crane your neck as much.  I have certainly found that hand/arm height affects the comfort of my neck.
Another potential issue is transmitted vibrations.  Double-wrapping your bars, and better-padded gloves can both help with that.
Comment: An often overlooked point - road bike helmets tend to omit any form of visor (peak/brim)  So if someone is riding a dropbar bike with a more MTB or upright biased helmet, this forces the neck to crane more.  Answer is to remove the visor and see if it helps.   Most of them simply pop off and can reattach later with a simple snap.


Is "Look down upon us" correct?

Question: So I was watching a movie viz. Les Miserable, where some convicts sing a song with "Look down" phrase and they sing "Sweet Jesus does not care" for them and they wanted Jesus to look after them . So I thought if I try to say "look down upon us, O sweet Jesus", will it be meaningful? I mean can we use "down" and "upon" two opposite prepositions side-by-side?
Comment: Sure we can, and _Les Miz_ doesn't have the sole example. Consider: _Look **out into** the distance; pull **off onto** the breakdown lane, the bird soared **up beneath** the clouds._
Comment: +1 to StoneyB's answer, but let me just make the side note that "look upon" is largely obsolete, Modern speakers would generally say "look at us, Jesus" (or whomever) or "look down at us" or "look down on us". You'll find "look upon" in the King James Bible and Shakespeare and other English of that time, but not often in modern English.
Answer: Yes, indeed, you may say look down upon (or on); divinities, kings, employers and such superior beings are often spoken of as looking down upon their worshippers, subjects and employees—sometimes benevolently, sometimes wrathfully—and someone on a high building or mountain may look down upon the street or valley below.
Down and upon are not opposite but supplementary here. Down, which is employed as an adverb, not a preposition, designates the direction of looking: the subject is above what is being looked at. Upon is a preposition and heads a prepositional phrase designating what or who is looked at.
There is also a figurative use of the same idea to mean regard with scorn; the subject treats what is looked at as if it were "lower"—inferior:

Students from affluent families look down on those whose families cannot provide them fashionable clothing.
  Many 18th- and early 19th-century grammarians looked down upon the recently invented passive progressive construction.

On is more often used with the figurative use and upon with the literal use; but this is by no means a rule.
The collocation VERB + ADVERB of direction + Prepositional phrase is perfectly ordinary: look up at/to, poke around in, put up with, get away with. In many cases a collocation has an idiomatic sense which cannot be derived by analysis of its components, and such collocations are often classed as phrasal verbs; but this is not the case with look down upon.

Is "Look down upon us" correct?


Using 12 ga wire to pigtail a receptacle

Question: I have a family room with 15 amp breaker feeding a few receptacles. I replaced an old receptacle but had to use 12 ga wire as pigtails on that one receptacle. Is that ok or no?
Answer: The 12ga wire is perfectly fine to use as a pigtail for a 15amp circuit.
Just note, The pigtail needs to be securely bound to the existing wiring.  So a couple of twisted wires and electric tape is not enough, wire caps or something similar needs to be used.  And if the existing wiring is aluminum, you will need to use specialized caps to bind copper wire to it.
Comment: Also note that you probably never want to use 12G copper to pigtail aluminum.  It won't bend enough and there is a high high chance it will cause your aluminum to break in the future.
Comment: Thanks Diceless. I should have specified I used the ideal 4 wire push in. 3 black and 3 white with the pigtails.
Comment: Sorry. It is all copper wiring. Thanks again.
Comment: A few other caveats: the "backstab" terminals found on some outlets may only allow for 14GA wire, in which case the side screw terminals should be used. Also, make sure that the wire nut being used is correct for the number and size of conductors (not really enough information from the question to answer that part).
Answer: As mentioned by diceless, that's perfectly acceptable, as long as it is connected properly, which was also mentioned.
Just wanted to note that the inverse is not acceptable, to use a 14ga jumper in a 20amp circuit. This runs the risk of that section of wire melting before the circuit breaker trips.
Where your 12ga jumper is able to handle more current than the rest of the 15amp circuit, you're all set.
Comment: Actually the real danger with using 14 AWG on a 20 Amp breaker is it causing a fire, not of it melting. ( I have used a modified transformer to melt 14 Gauge wire, and even then it takes quite a bit before it melts )


Creating a freeze frame type effect purely in post

Question: It it possible to create a sort of pseudo freeze frame effect in post production on ordinary video or archival footage. For example, doing this in After Effects?
Comment: Is it possible to create a freeze frame effect *not* in post? Run the camera infinitely fast so that time slows to zero? Position the actors close to a black hole?
Comment: You can easily freeze a frame in AE, but it's a bit unclear exactly what you mean. What's the difference (to you) between a freeze frame and a pseudo-freeze frame or a 'freeze frame type' effect?
Comment: I am looking at not only freezing the frame, but panning the After Effects camera around in 3d space (just a bit) to make it as though the shot was captured this way in the original footage with the subjects standing still.
Comment: Are you looking for a [bullet time](https://youtu.be/bKEcElcTUMk) effect?
Comment: Yes, similar to a bullet time effect.
Answer: Yes it is. The idea is rather simple - you want to create a parallax effect.

Basically you take an object of interest in the foreground and roto/mask the object/person out.
You then duplicate that layer and reverse the mask for the background. At this point it should look exactly as it did at the beginning.
Now what you do is turn the layers into 3d objects. Position the background far away in 3d space, and scale it up so that it matches with the foreground layer as it did during Step 2.
Now create a camera and you can pan slightly and zoom to create the desired effect. Note that this may take some playing around, perhaps by scaling the background or the foreground layers more so that there is no clear 'space' between them.

If you want to do this with moving footage I would say it's probably not worth it as you'd have to do a lot of roto. But assuming you just want to do this with a freeze frame, it shouldn't take you that long.
Site note: usually what sells this effect is if you have something else moving really really slowly with the still frame grabs. Such as a 3d object you can manipulate in space. See this.


Can i use an anaolgue IC switch to change a 10 m yagi's directivity by somehow combining received signals with different variable phase?

Question: Can i use an analogue IC switch being triggered at the same frequency I am receiving on to change a 10 m yagi's directivity by somehow combining received signals with different variable phase either from the same driven element or two or more driven elements?
Comment: Can you rather explain what problem you're actually trying to solve? You can't "combine" signals from a single driven element, and two driven elements means it's a custom antenna anyway, not an off-the-shelf yagi. And "Triggered at the same frequency" doesn't make sense. Antenna and matching systems are generally Linear, Time Invariant, receivers do mixing and stuff.
Comment: horizontal directivity or vertical directivity?  Do you want to rotate it, or is reversing front / back good enough?
Answer: No, you can't; what you're building by switching something at its carrier frequency is a mixer to twice, four, six,… times the carrier frequency and to a broken 0 Hz baseband, so that's not useful.
The math is simple:
Just as your normal mixer multiplies with a cosine to mix the signal to the sum of the cosine and signal frequencies, and to their difference, the same happens when you multiply with a square wave instead of a cosine.
A square wave can be mathematically represented as sum of cosines of the fundamental frequency of the wave, and every odd harmonic.
Ergo, switching with some frequency $f$ just produces mixing products at your signal's frequency $\pm f$.
That's a standard mixer type, the switching or chopping mixer, but it's not a way of combining things with an adjustable phase.
Looking at that:
What you can do is use a switching mixers for each of two signals, where one square wave has a time (and hence: phase) offset; these mixers would produce a sum-frequency signal each, but with different phases. Then, add these and you get a phase-shifted sum.
You'll have a lot of unwanted harmonics to filter, and your phase adjustments of your square wave can be a bit hard to achieve, and you wouldn't want to use the carrier frequency of your signal, but a higher, adjustable frequency so that you end up on a useful IF.
But, technically, this is fun thing to consider, and whilst I'm pretty sure you didn't think it'd work like that, yes, you can use switching to phase adjust – but only in the context of using it as mixer.
Comment: this is the x,y problem for me again :( the reason i ask this question is because i want to null out reception from a particular direction using variable phase and amplitude and two antennas and i thought using a fast switch could somehow accomplish this, the answer i need is in another question i posted answered by you and a few others.


How to create metalic reflection effect in pixel art?

Question: Currently I just randomly drawing right leaning segments with lighter colour, and sometimes It looks better sometimes it doesn't. But I don't understand what kind of pattern should I follow.
Comment: You probably need to define the self-limitations you are imposing, mainly the number of colors in the pallette.
Comment: I don't really work with that kind of limitations. I just hand pick the colours, and too lazy to do it for every pixel. This picture contains 6 colour, 2 for the border, 2 for the main body of the plaque, 2 shades for the reflection, if a third shade would help the looks I wouldn't mind adding.
Answer: I find using gradients with a bunch of semi-random grey stops can replicate a chrome mirrored effect pretty well. It helps if there's some lighter points towards the top, but also a nice reflection from the ground.
For a bit of fun, you can also overlay another gradient with some colour in it. I'm using a gradient from solid purple at 0% opacity to 100% opacity for the Purple Gradient layer below.

The example below was created really quickly, using Dan Fessler's HD index painting for some automated lo-fi dithering.

And, from there you can hand tweak to get things exactly as you'd like.
The same technique can work for other shapes and gradient types.
Answer: I don't do a great deal of pixel art, but I do create a lot of vectors with pseudo-metallic appearances.
In my experience, there is no specific pattern you need to follow to give the impression of metallics. Primarily because in life there's nothing consistent and every pattern is different based upon ambient lighting, surrounding reflective materials, cast highlights and shadows. There's no absolute pattern anywhere in nature, so you don't need one either.
Use whatever you feel works.
There are a few things I do overall for metallics, but these are absolutely not "rules" or restrictions. They are just personal "trends' i seem to follow:

Remain consistent with whatever pattern in use, based on percieved underlying material. What the pattern is doesn't matter overall. I do tend to stick to 3 values.... dark, medium (base), and light. Every "gold" object should use the same pattern. Every "steel" object should use the same pattern. But gold and steel should have slightly different patterns to help further differentiate them visually.
Remain consistent with lighting direction. If gold has a 45° pattern, steel should have a 45° pattern, silver should have a 45° pattern, etc.
If giving depth to a side face or trying to give the impression of
edge depth, reverse the angle of the pattern. That is, if the front face has a 45° highlight pattern, for a side face or edge, use a -45° pattern - this helps create a visual edge with color/shading.


Lightbox close button rollover effect

Question: Ok, not really seeing any previous help for this one specifically. What I want to do is have a "hover" effect for the close button. I have got it to where when you hover over the the close button itself it will display and go away when you move the mouse out. But, what I want is when you hover over the image being displayed in the lightbox I want the close button to display and when you mouseout I want the close button to disappear.
Also, some pointers for using the transitions effects or sources for that would be good. I am still a student working on portfolio pieces. I graduate in August 2013.
All help is appreciated =) I am also researching on my own, but not all of what I am reading is working or making sense. I am coming into places like this and Yahoo! Answers for extra help. Thanks!
Answer: I suggest you to Lightview was well configured.
You can download here:
http://projects.nickstakenburg.com/lightview

Lightbox close button rollover effect


what word class do the words 'so' and 'really' belong to? (intensifiers or adverbs)

Question: Some sources say that 'so' and 'really' are intensifiers and the dictionary says 'so' and 'really' are adverbs, which leaves me confused. Are they intensifiers, adverbs or both? Are intensifiers a type of adverb? I am also confused as to how they can be adverbs because adverbs describe verbs and 'so' and 'really' describe adjectives instead of verbs. If they do describe verbs please give me some examples. I also want to know if I am getting the definition of adverbs confused. Do adverbs only describe verbs or both verbs and adjectives?
Comment: "Really" as an adverb: "I really think we need to talk."
Comment: There are different opinions. Classically, intensifiers and other modifiers of adjectives and adverbs are lumped in the 'adverb' class, but I agree with those who think the function of these is so different from that of prototypical adverbs that they're better labelled 'modifier of adjective' etc.
Comment: What makes you think that a word must fit only one classification?
Answer: Assuming you only mean the senses of those words in which they intensify the meaning of another word (they each have other senses)…

Are intensifiers a type of adverb?

Pretty much. Now, there are different senses to words and disagreements about just whether something counts as an example of a word and so on, and this includes those words that are used to talk about other words.
It's perhaps better to think that by some ways of classifying words, they are adverbs, and by other ways of classifying them, they are intensifiers. Nor do you have to pick a side here, sometimes its more useful to use the classical classifications than other times.

… how they can be adverbs because adverbs describe verbs and 'so' and 'really' describe adjectives instead of verbs.

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. These more often modify adjectives.

If they do describe verbs please give me some examples.

As above, they more often modify adjectives, but really can also modify verbs.

While that can be really confusing [modifying adjective], I really like [modifying verb] that things aren't always in the neatest of boxes.


Shops, theft, and your pet(s)

Question: How do you get your pet(s) to steal things from shops?
Comment: Something about waiting for your pet to pick up the item you want. I don't know almost anything about nethack, but that's the core of the plan, I believe.
Answer: All the details are described in this spoiler. The short version is: carry at least one tripe ration so your pet keeps close to you and reward your pet by giving a treat every time it drops something valuable in front of your feet.
Alternatively you can also let your pet fight monsters until it's tough enough to kill shopkeepers, after which you can just take everything in the shop (plus the shopkeeper's money) for free. (Though obviously that takes longer than training your pet to steal if it's still early in the game).
Comment: Thank you very much. I main Knight so I've always got some apples and carrots on me.

Shops, theft, and your pet(s)


Real player plugin not working with Firefox 5

Question: I am on Windows 7. I was using firefox 4 with real player plugin for autodownloads from sites like YouTube etc .  The upgrade to Firefox 5 has disabled that feature. Is there any good alternative to that ? I am no big fan of Real Player , I mainly used it to autodetect and offer download of video streams currently being played in the browser window. Any alternative to real player that has this feature will do .
Answer: Not a Firefox plugin, but JDownloader will offer to download YouTube videos in their various available formats.


PHH Mortgage Company Practices

Question: I have a loan with PHH and my loan ratio has reached 77.7% last month.  I contacted them to inquire about why the PMI has not dropped off for my payment this month. I was told that it was not scheduled to drop off for several more months based on the "initial amortization" schedule that was anticipated when we did the initial loan.   Because I have paid extra some months I reached the required <78% sooner.  They told me I would have to get an appraisal and submit a request for "early cancellation"? Is this legal? I thought the goal was to reach less than 78%...not reach a specific date.  We have had the loan for almost 5 years and have never missed a payment. It's not even about the money at this point but what seems like kind of a shady practice in general.
Comment: This potential duplicate question has some differences but my answer to your question would be almost identical. Possible duplicate of [PMI removal with LTOV <78% and decreased home value](https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/100821/pmi-removal-with-ltov-78-and-decreased-home-value)
Answer: Note: I believe this exact question was already answered, and this will likely be closed as duplicate.
Yes, PMI gets removed at the 78% LTV at the time of original amortization. If that occurs sooner due to additional payments, it's tougher to remove, an appraisal paid by homeowner, might be required.
It wouldn't be tough to imagine one getting through a closing, 10% down and then raising the 10% to get to 20, by an unwise means. In effect, now having a 90% LTV, but with a high rate loan mixed in.

PHH Mortgage Company Practices


What is the difference between Arminianism, Molinism, and Calvinism?

Question: I know the basic difference between Arminianism and Calvinism in the soteriology subject, but when Molinism comes I can't grasp the core doctrines that it teaches. I'm not asking for which is better, just a concise, easy, and helpful definition of each one without too much philosophical blather.
Answer: I found an article that explains Molinism in simple, easy to understand language.  The second part of the article asks whether it is biblical, but I have left that part out since this is not what you ask. Here is a partial quote:

Molinism is named for the 16th-century Jesuit, Luis de Molina. Molinism is a system of thought that seeks to reconcile the sovereignty of God and the free will of man. The heart of Molinism is the principle that God is completely sovereign and man is also free in a libertarian sense. Molinism partly seeks to avoid so-called "theological determinism": the view that God decrees who will be saved or damned without any meaningful impact of their own free choice. Today's highest-profile defenders of Molinism are William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga.

The primary distinctive of Molinism is the affirmation that God has middle knowledge (scientia media). Molinism holds that God's knowledge consists of three logical moments. These "moments" of knowledge are not to be thought of as chronological; rather, they are to be understood as "logical." In other words, one moment does not come before another moment in time; instead, one moment is logically prior to the other moments. The Molinist differentiates between three different moments of knowledge which are respectively called natural knowledge, middle knowledge and free knowledge.

1. Natural Knowledge – This is God's knowledge of all necessary and all possible truths: all things which "can be." In this "moment" God knows every possible combination of causes and effects. He also knows all the truths of logic and all moral truths. This knowledge is independent of God's will, a point few if any theologians would dispute.

2. Middle Knowledge – This is God's knowledge of what a free creature would do in any given circumstance. This knowledge consists of what philosophers call counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. These are facts about what any creature with a free will would freely do in any circumstance in which it could be placed. This knowledge, like natural knowledge, is independent of God's will.

3. Creative Command – this is the "moment" where God actually acts. Between His knowledge of all that is or could be, and all that actually comes to be, is God's purposeful intervention and creation.

4. Free Knowledge – This is God's knowledge of what He decided to create: all things that "actually are." God's free knowledge is His knowledge of the actual world as it is. This knowledge is completely dependent on God's will.

Using middle knowledge, Molinism attempts to show that all of God's knowledge is self-contained, but it is ordered so as to allow for the possibility of man's free will. In other words, man is completely free, but God is also completely sovereign—He is absolutely in control of all that happens, and yet humanity's choices are not coerced.

According to Molinism, God omnisciently knows what you would have been like had you lived in Africa instead of Australia, or had a car accident that paralyzed you at age 9. He knows how the world would have been changed had John F. Kennedy not been assassinated. More importantly, He knows who would choose to be saved and who would not, in each of those varying circumstances.

Accordingly, it is out of this (middle) knowledge that God chooses to create. God has middle knowledge of all feasible worlds, and He chooses to create the world that corresponds to His ultimate desires. Therefore, while a person is truly free, God is truly in control of who is or is not saved. Molinists differ on how God defines His underlying desires. For example, some believe God is seeking the maximum number of people to be saved. Others believe God creates in order to maximize some other divine goal.  Source: https://www.gotquestions.org/molinism.html

As to how it differs from Arminianism and Calvinism, I doubt I could do justice to that.  Perhaps you could draw from these articles:
https://www.gotquestions.org/arminianism.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/calvinism.html
https://www.gotquestions.org/Calvinism-vs-Arminianism.html
Like Nigel J, I am simply presenting one particular point of view in the hope it will help to answer your question.  I have permission to copy and paste the Got Questions article on Molinism.
Comment: According to your answer, Molinism is just the addition of middle knowledge of God? And despite being a great answer, I still have the doubt when you indicate that God knows who will choose to be saved and who will not, do men have the ability to choose to be saved in Molinism?
Comment: As written, I missed the fact that your quotes from the article are from the gotquestions link you provide. You might want to make that more obvious--maybe when you first mention the article (e.g. "...article on www.gotquestions.org which I quote from below; link below the quote. ...").
Comment: The conflict between Molinists, Calvinists and Arminians appears to be over issues about total depravity and limited atonement.  The notion that God knows who will choose to be saved is a most appealing idea, but it has been my experience that it is the inward and irresistible call of God that brings sinners to repentance and from there, to salvation. In other words, some people are predestined to salvation. This article deals with "middle knowledge": https://www.gotquestions.org/middle-knowledge.html
Comment: @bob No problem - happy to make it clear.
Comment: Awesome, thanks!
Answer: Extract from William Lane Craig answering a question on the complexity of Molinism :

Actually, I have no problem with certain classic statements of the Reformed view. For example, the Westminster Confession (Sect. III) declares that

God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

Now this is precisely what the Molinist believes! The Confession affirms God's preordination of everything that comes to pass as well as the liberty and contingency of the creaturely will, so that God is not the author of sin. It is a tragedy that in rejecting middle knowledge Reformed divines have cut themselves off from the most perspicuous explanation of the coherence of this wonderful confession.

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University.
The whole article is on Reasonable Faith .org

(I do not personally subscribe to these arguments and proposals. I simply report the existence of the references and statements.)
Comment: I take everything WLC says with a very large grain of salt. He has a history of not working hard enough to understand the doctrines of those he disagrees with. For example, on dyothelitism, [he wrote](https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/monotheletism/) "I cannot understand how Christ's human nature could have a will of its own, distinct from the will of the Second Person of the Trinity, and not be a person." So while *he* may not see much difference between the Reformed and Molinist positions, that doesn't mean Reformed people don't see big differences.
Comment: @curiousdannii Yes, I was none too sure about WLC, knowing nothing about him but such websites put me off and I quoted only as a source, but without enthusiasm. I agree with your last sentence.
Answer: TL;DR: Calvinists and Arminians disagree about whether man is able and/or free to choose God, Molinism is to do with God's knowledge and not salvation, so can fit with either.
Molinist here - Molinism isn't technically a view of soteriology (meaning to do with man's salvation), but is a view of God's knowledge, summed up pretty well by the gotquestions article referenced by Lesley. Molinism's two main points (or core doctrines) are:
1: God has Middle knowledge
2: Man, at least some of the time, has libertarian free will (although the precise definition is disputed, a reasonable interpretation of the term is 'the ability to do otherwise')
Arminianism and Calvinism, on the other hand, are directly opposing views that are to do with soteriology, not God's knowledge. Thus, you could be an Arminian Molinist or a Calvinist Molinist. The latter, however, is quite rare.
Calvinism is a very difficult doctrine to clearly define, but a working minimum of the system is summed up by the acronym TULIP. I won't go into a lengthy description of each of the letters (it's well documented in many places) but in summary Calvinism teaches that man, in his natural state, is completely unable to come to God (T) . God then 'elects' certain individuals whom He decides to save (U) and draws them to himself via irresistible grace (I) (literally irresistible, the elect person is unable to reject or refuse the grace). Additionally, Christ's atonement only covers and was only intended for these elect (L), and finally, the elect will never fall away or apostasize (P).
Arminianism is even harder to specifically define, but the gist is that although man would be unable to come to God alone, God's grace (prevenient grace) overcomes this state and enables all men to come to God and be saved, although it doesn't guarantee any will or force anyone. Christ's atonement covers any and all who come to Him, and is not limited. Beyond that, there are a lot of variations of Arminianism that I don't know as much as I should about.
It is worth noting that some (Many? Most?) Molinists hold to a soteriology which is similar to Arminianism but goes further in regards to God's providence and the election of individuals while maintaining free will, but that is beyond the scope of the question as it technically isn't Molinism proper.
Hope that helps


Is it possible to return a Dutch rental car to a different location in Amsterdam?

Question: I plan to rent a car at Schiphol and may need to return it to the Enterprise auto rental or SIXT in Station Centraal Downtown.  If I pivot and decide to return it to downtown and not the airport (or vice versa), I am wondering what, if any, problems this will cause.
Comment: Did you try asking the car rental company? There is usually a fee for dropping the car off at a different station.
Comment: It is a short travel time between them, I do not see the problem with traveling back to the location you collected the car and use train (and maybe bus) to get to the other one. But just call the company, sometimes they have a stream of cars going one way and are wiling to wave the extra fee if go the other way around. (Brother used to work for a car rental at Schiphol.)
Comment: Good question.   There is no email to ask the question (always best to have response in writing), but I did try booking a different return station and the price is double ($50 -> $100)
Comment: Good comment: thanks.  When travelling time is at a premium, so if I can avoid standing in a line or avoid unnecessary transit it is worth it to me.  I have to drop her and luggage at the hotel near Centraal and would need to go back and forth to the airport.
Comment: I would imagine (but can't show) that a last-minute change of drop-off location is unlikely to be allowed, as it interferes with the rental company's logistics.
They are likely to have the car booked to another customer later that day. Although they will have spare cars in case of accidents, or late returns, they do not want to encourage returns to other locations.
Answer: If you are serving by SIXT (which I used, that's why talking about this one, not because it's the best one) rental company the answer is yes, you can drop of the car in any of their office (most of the rental companies allow it), BUT if you going to drop it of in another city you get it you have to pay much more money even if your route known beforehand. Sometimes it costs more even if the offices are different in the same city.
Comment: Thanks for the good insight.  I rented from the airport at SIXT and ended up returning at the airport because Schiphol has a train station and hotel in the airport.


Buffers are left even when `nohidden` is set

Question: I have explictly said in my vimrc that I want nohidden behaviour (I am jumping between files a lot, with long lasting session, and after some time buffers list is very polluted). However when I jump to other file and I run :ls I still see old files listed. Is there a way to prevent such behaviour?
Answer: The 'hidden' setting
The 'hidden'/'nohidden' setting tells Vim what to do about buffers that are "abandoned".

'hidden' means an abandoned buffer becomes hidden (similar :hide).
'nohidden' (the default) means the buffer is unloaded (:bunload).

Both :bunload and :hide do not remove a buffer from the buffer list. Therefore 'hidden' setting will not affect if a buffer shows up in the buffer list.
For more help see:
:h abandon
:h 'hidden'
:h hidden-buffer
:h :bunload
:h :ls

Removing hidden buffers from the buffer list
To remove a buffer from the buffer list by doing :bdelete (unload buffer and delete from buffer list) or :bwipeout (really really get rid of the buffer).
Buffers can "automatically" be removed when they become hidden by changing the 'bufhidden' setting on each buffer.
autocmd BufReadPost * set bufhidden=wipe

I would not recommend this method a it can ruin the following commands:

Switch to the alternative buffer, <c-^>/<c-6>
Popping back from a tag, <c-t>
Moving through the jump list across buffers with <c-i>/<c-o>
Not to mention it may interfere with some plugins which uses a temporary buffer.

Switching buffers
I imagine the root problem is how you navigate between buffers. I am guessing you use buffer numbers or cycle through via :bnext/:bprev. There are some alternatives to these methods.
Behold the power of :b:

Uses <tab> completion
Use <c-d> to list out completion
Use partial file name. e.g. :b foo. Works great with <tab>.
Globbing. e.g. :b foo*bar or :b foo/**/bar
Might want to use 'hidden' via set hidden
Split variant of :b is :sb.
Also accepts a buffer number

A common mapping:
nnoremap <leader>b :ls<cr>:b<space>

If you like plugins you may want to check out something like CtrlP to switch between buffers. For more advanced file navigation use tags, cscope, GNU global, or plugin like projectionist.vim.
For more help see:
:h :ls
:h :b
:h 'hidden'
:h wildcard
:h c_CTRL-D
:h starstar
:h tags
:h cscope

Conclusion
Personally I would change how you switch buffers. I typically have 50+ buffers open and switch between without any issue. You can remove the occasional buffer via :bd or :bw when the need arises.
Comment: Actually I am quite heavy user of projectionist and Skim (FZF alternative) but thanks for explanation.
Comment: And also I stopped cycling through buffers as I use files instead. I often cycle through tabs as I am heavy user of NeoVim built-in terminal with Dispatch `:Start` and `:Console` command


Best yeast to make a sweeter mead

Question: I've just about finished my first attempt at mead. I'm now thinking about my second batch.
The yeast I have used is pretty aggressive, Bulldog mead yeast, so was wondering if anyone has some better suggestions. Looking to make an orange and ginger mead and possibly a peach mead.
All advice gratefully received.
Fitz
Comment: To make a sweeter mead, I will just add some honey after it fermented dry.
Answer: As @skvery suggested, backsweeten it to make it sweeter.
Mead is quite devoid of nutrients (as honey is basically straight fructose) so a strong yeast bred specifically for mead / low nutrient fermentations will outperform an ale yeast and not become as stressed. Due to the strong yeast, more of the sugar will be converted to alcohol which is why backsweetening is required.
You could argue that you could use an ale yeast and when it gets stressed out and stalls there will still be some sugars in there for a sweeter taste. However, when  yeast becomes stressed it starts throwing out esters which will make your mead taste "yeasty" like bad homebrew :). Better to backsweeten with some of the honey
Comment: Thank you for this advice. I've not heard of back sweetening before. What is the best way to do this and at what point? How much honey do I use to make a medium sweet mead?
Comment: Backsweetening is typically done when fermentation is complete, because you have to kill the yeast to prevent bottle bombs after adding the extra sugars. I can't say how much honey you need because it's going to vary based on volume of mead and your tastes. For more information, see here: https://byo.com/article/backsweetening/

Best yeast to make a sweeter mead


Unicode problems while writing selected features to a new shapefile with Fiona

Question: I have a shapefile with a large number of geographic features (marine protected areas).  I'm trying to read through all of the areas in the shapefile, select those that fit a certain criterion, and write a new shapefile with only the selected areas (areas with reefs).
Many of the areas have names with non-latin characters (i.e. in Swedish or Croatian).  I believe I have properly encoded everything in utf-8.
import shapefile
import fiona
from shapely.geometry import Point, shape
import pandas as pd

#read in habitat code list
hab_data = pd.read_csv(habitat_data.csv)

#read in shapefile
with fiona.open("all_protected_areas.shp") as source:
    polygons = [pol for pol in source]
    with fiona.open('reef_habitats.shp', 'w', encoding='utf-8', **source.meta) as outfile:

        #loop over polygons
        for i, poly in enumerate(polygons):

            #match the site code with the habitat code from csv
            sitecode = poly['properties']['SITECODE']
            habitatcodes = hab_data.loc[hab_data.SITECODE==sitecode]['HABITATCODE']

            #choose only reefs (1170)
            if '1170' in habitatcodes.values:

                outfile.write(poly)

The code works fine until I run into a polygon with a record containing non-latin characters.  The first one is: ('SITENAME', b'Obala izme\x1au rta \x8ailo i Vodoto\x1a').  The shapefile fails to write on the final line with:
ValueError: Invalid field type <class 'bytes'>

I'm using Python 3.  From my own investigations I've seen that there are some tricky differences in the way that Python 3 and 2.7 handle unicode.  There also seems to be some weirdness in writing unicode with fiona.
By using Python 2.7 and various combinations of .encode() and .decode(), I've managed to get errors like UnicodeEncodeError and UnicodeDecodeError but no solution.
I'm open to using a different package if there is an easier way to do this feature selection.
Comment: That doesn't seem to change anything.  I believe the problem is in writing to the new shapefile.  I can, for example, print all of the records of each selected polygon no problem.
Answer: Fiona has a built-in parameter to specify the encoding of your data. Since you're not explicitly setting the encoding, its probably defaulting to utf-8 (unless you are on windows). If your data is from a decent source it should specify the encoding somewhere in metadata. My best guess would be Latin-1.
with fiona.open("all_protected_areas.shp", encoding="iso-8859-1") as source:


Is topology used outside of cosmology in philosophy?

Question: It seems like topology is used to model spacetime, but outside of cosmology, it seems like topology has absolutely no use in philosophy. Is topology used to create models that relate to abstract and non-physical concepts in philosophy? I was looking for evidence of this, but couldn't find anything.
Comment: Topology is a sort of generic theory of space that doesn't require a commitment to Euclidean or non-Euclidean, a distance metric, or other features that might be controversial. This aspect of topology has drawn interest from some in the philosophy community.
Comment: [Topology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology) is used extensively in mathematics, and it is a very vigorous branch of mathematics which continues geometry. Topology itself is mature enough to have its own branches, like algebraic topology, differential topology, etc etc. For examples of where topology is used in mathematics, you could take a look at eg [zbMATH Mathematical Subject Classfication](https://zbmath.org/classification/?q=topology). I don't know if topology is used in philosophy very much. It would probably have to be related to geometry? Maybe one can make arguments based on ne
Comment: See [Less Wrong](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yTvZFzcgt7rGYMxP5/topological-metaphysics-relating-point-set-topology-and) on uses of topology in modal logic and metaphysics. See also [Phillips](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263276413480951) on its uses in continental philosophy of culture.
Comment: Cosmology is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe.
Comment: Professional cosmologists as physicists probably don't classify themselves under metaphysics. The methods of investigation would be different.
Comment: @Sayaman I disagree. Cosmology typically means physics. If there is not context people will assume you are talking about spacetime curvature and dark energy and the electroweak epoch and yadda yadda yadda. If not you should be more specific and call it Metaphysical Cosmology or Cosmological Metaphysics, or Kosmology if you want to be really fancy.
Answer: For an unfortunate preliminary example, Christopher Langan's infamous theory of everything uses the concept of topology in a way similar to how Alessio Moretti uses the concept of geometry. My take on Langan's theory is not that it is so bad that it is pseudoscientific (or pseudophilosophical), but instead that it occupies the grey zone of informed-but-still-weak attempts by mathematical/logic-minded folk to apply their special and important concepts to metaphysical questions. Other examples include Tegmark's "ultimate ensemble" (that he apparently had to backtrack to countable worlds) or Stephen Wolfram's "ruliad."
So, anyway, depending on where you situate Langan in the social history of philosophy, he either is or isn't an example of a philosopher who applies topology to metaphysics. But so in fact, shadowing the nod to Moretti, we should say that what has historically been a "geometrization" of metaphysical systems could be, or become, a "topologicalization" of the same, given the slightly obscure distinction between geometry and topology.
Actually, we in fact already see this, from a certain angle, in the question of topos theory. The Wikipedia article says:

Since the early 20th century, the predominant axiomatic foundation of mathematics has been set theory, in which all mathematical objects are ultimately represented by sets (including functions, which map between sets). More recent work in category theory allows this foundation to be generalized using topoi; each topos completely defines its own mathematical framework. The category of sets forms a familiar topos, and working within this topos is equivalent to using traditional set-theoretic mathematics. But one could instead choose to work with many alternative topoi. A standard formulation of the axiom of choice makes sense in any topos, and there are topoi in which it is invalid. Constructivists will be interested to work in a topos without the law of excluded middle. If symmetry under a particular group G is of importance, one can use the topos consisting of all G-sets.

It is also possible to encode an algebraic theory, such as the theory of groups, as a topos, in the form of a classifying topos. The individual models of the theory, i.e. the groups in our example, then correspond to functors from the encoding topos to the category of sets that respect the topos structure.

The first paragraph especially is reminiscent of plenitudinous platonism and "the" set-theoretic multiverse. So although "particular" results in mainline topology might not evidently be relevant (or, attempts at relevance have not been well made) to metaphysical problems as interpreted in philosophy (historically-speaking), yet the nature of topology is arguably relevant to the nature of all mathematics whatsoever, in the sense of the search for "foundations" of mathematics.
Comment: If I understand correctly, a topos is a particular mathematical doodad that is sufficiently abstract that both topological spaces and set theories are examples. On its own, I would not call this a use of topology in set theory or philosophy. The name is a red herring.
Comment: Taking your mention of toposes to its logical extreme, we could talk about the general doodad of "fields of study". Since biology and philosophy are both examples, we have an application of biology to philosophy.
Comment: @Daron well from a coherentistic point of view, it might really require making obscure, weird connections between different fields of study to make progress in at least some of them (e.g. philosophy). Internally to the philosophy of mathematics itself, though, the relationship between the concepts of topoi and topology and then foundationalism/nonfoundationalism in the arrangement of subfields (e.g. algebra, geometry, arithmetic, calculus...) seems to be easy to philosophically reflect upon. I mean they've used graph theory in epistemology; why not topology somewhere, too?
Comment: I don't follow you.
Comment: @Daron the SEP article on category theory [explicitly mentions topos theory in connection with the foundation question](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/category-theory/#PhilSign). But that's as far as I see a connection; I'm not saying that *particular results in topology* (except maybe translations from other frameworks) have much in the way of philosophical implications (although, to be self-skeptical, I also don't *know* that such obscure relevance is necessarily absent; *maybe* there's a weird theorem somewhere in topology that implies something "important" on the outside).
Comment: Perhaps philosophy of physics is where the application would best occur: there are topological QFTs, and the Wikipedia article on them appears to delve into category theory even, so one might think through the phil.-o'-math value of topos theory down into the phil.-o'-physics to judge TQFTs in some capacity.
Comment: Do you have an example of what you mean?
Comment: @Daron unfortunately no, although philosophers come up with quirky arguments on the regular, so I wouldn't put it past at least one of them to either already have such an argument in play in this context, or to be given to conceive of one in the near future. Best guess where to start looking: SEP articles on quantum physics, but I don't recall anything specifically relevant therein (off the top of my head).
Answer: Stone Spaces
If you consider formal logic to be part of philosophy then topology is relevant. The basic result is about Boolean Algebras. A Boolean algebra is something like a bunch of sets where you can take unions and intersections and complements. Another example of a Boolean algebra is a bunch of formal statements and you can take disjunctions and conjunctions and negations.
For any such algebra there is an associated topological space called the Stone Space. In fact there is a one-to-one correspondence between boolean algebras and Stone spaces. That means all the logical properties of the algebra are encoded somewhere in the topology of the space and vice-versa. Depending on the context, it can be more useful to look at the Stone space than the algebra itself.
Stone spaces are fairly exotic. The most well-known is the Cantor set, which is what you get by continuing the process depicted below ad infinitum:

You will notice the Cantor set contains no intervals. It is a bunch of totally disconnected dust sprinkled on the number line. The manner of arrangement of the dust is what makes the Cantor set the Cantor set and not, for example, the set of irrational numbers. Stone spaces in general have this property.
There are many generalizations of Stone's theorem for things that are not quite Boolean Algebras. For example you might not want the law of excluded middle to hold for your collection of statements. In that case we get something more general than a Stone space.
The upshot is that if you are interested in studying formal systems in general, rather than a particular one, it might help to know some point-set topology.
Answer: I will elaborate a bit more on the connection between topology and the law of excluded middle (LEM), which Daron and Kristian have already mentioned.
In logic, the basic objects of study are formulas (or sentences), and studying these amounts to studying the syntax of a theory T. The Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra of T is a type of reification of T, which offers semantics of the theory.
Boolean algebras are somewhat familiar in that they are the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebras of classical propositional theories (and so reflect the LEM). By the Stone representation theorem, Boolean algebras arise from sets, and so one does not need topology to generate these.
The Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra of a propositional intuitionistic theory is a
Heyting algebra. It turns out that the lattice of open sets of a topological space is an example of a Heyting algebra, hence giving rise to a semantics for propositional intuitionistic calculus. In fact, there is a kind of duality: Every Heyting algebra H is naturally isomorphic to a bounded sublattice L of open sets of a topological space X.
So to get an idea of what failure of the Law of Excluded Middle looks like, form the Heyting algebra of open subsets of any non-discrete topological space X. Then there will be an open set U whose is complement not open (this will correspond to a proposition P), and so the interior of the complement, V (corresponding to the negation of P), will be strictly smaller than the complement, and hence the union of U and V does not comprise all of X. There will be some nonempty boundary Z in between U and V, and this Z is the No Man's Land in between the proposition P and its negation not P.
To see where I initially learned of these ideas, see the answer here, the first comment, and the attendant link:
http://mathoverflow.net/a/120737
The topos theory also mentioned elsewhere on this page is a staggering, grand study of this circle of ideas as well as utterly mind-blowing generalizations.
Answer: The average person is more familiar with space-time as a concept then mathematical theories, so the other domain in which topology matters, and may not be noticed, is the philosophy of mathematics (SEP).
More specifically, there are two domains of discourse where topology would be relevant in discussion. One of them is mathematical foundations which has come to include category theory. Category theory deals with representations that are graph-theoretic, and therefore they are topological in nature. Are topological structures better for reducing other forms of mathematics including logic? Why would a set, which extends the notion of containment or extension in space not be sufficient? The other is in defense of structuralism (SEP) as a mathematical metatheory. Some mathematicians believe that mathematics is the study of how objects are constructed and how they and their structures relate to each other. Topology is an interesting case because like a rubber band, one can hold the structure of points invariant, but change the distance between them.
Besides that? The only other thing that comes to mind is measurement theory (SEP) which can make use of the invariants that come along with topological spaces. Engineers and scientists, for instance, may have an interest in measurements of things that deform and translate in space.
Answer: There are some works on Analytic Philosophy. One important work on this area is called mereotopology. In formal ontology, a branch of metaphysics, and in ontological computer science, mereotopology is a first-order theory, embodying mereological and topological concepts, of the relations among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries between parts. I recommend this paper to read something about topology in Analytic Philosophy and Mereotopology: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/20495/1/ITAPv3-1.pdf
Answer: Topology is, in fact, very intrinsically linked with more or less entirety of mathematics and all of its derivatives. It also has a very big role in theoretical computer science. Let me highlight some of the connections for you:
Homotopy theory is very closely linked with category theory, a framework which is used in basically all of modern algebra since Grothendieck popularised algebraic geometry. In fact every infinity category can be viewed as a topological space, with higher order morphisms being viewed as homotopies.
Topology is very closely linked to logic. Someone mentioned Stone Spaces here before, but the connection goes even deeper. Curry-Hkward correspondence shows that there is an isomorphism between logical propositions and types, showing a connection between logical systems and computations. And a lot of modern intuitionistic type theories have topological interpretations. So basically logic, topology and models of computation are all closely linked.
I am pretty sure due to it's connection to both logic and category theory, you can derive the entirety of mathematics from topology. And the fact that topology describes the very ways we talk about maths (logic and category theory) makes it useful not to just prove things, but prove statements about how we prove things.
Also take a look at Homotopy Type Theory, my dissertation topic. It provides univalent foundations for mathematics and uses topological spaces as a model.
Hope this helps. You can do more research on your own with the details I've given you I'm pretty sure.
Tl:Dr - The entirety of logic and computation theory more or less boils down to topology in our modern understanding, and those are very basic mathematical fields that the entirety of maths is built upon. Moreover, these fields are also very important in philosophy.
Answer: I'm assuming that formal logic also counts too.
Topology is a crucial component of Dana Scott's denotational semantics / model theory of lambda calculus.
The fixed-point combinator, which is what you need in order to do recursion, is defined as the limit of a sequence in a topological space.
See for example Scott's papers Lambda Calculus: Some Models, Some Philosophy or proposition 3.14 in Continuous Lattices, or Park's The Y-Combinator in Scott's Lambda Calculus Models.
Answer: I guess it would depend on what the geometric representations of ideas are and what constitutes a deformation.
An argument (linear thinking) consists of inferential links (vector lines) connecting the premises (nodes) to the conclusion (another node). Refuting an argument is to break these inferential links (the vector lines). What's the topological relevance? The line is torn. In other words, philosophy is an enterprise dedicated to finding toplogical ideas aka sound arguments where the logical/inferential vector lines are unbreakable.
Also, in re graph theory, is it applicable to the ideaverse consisting of a network of ideas? Is it possible to traverse the entire ideaverse such that each inferential connexion is crossed once and only once?
Comment: What do the italics and brackets mean?
Comment: [Seven Bridges of Königsberg](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Bridges_of_K%C3%B6nigsberg)
Comment: I see you have nothing meaningful to contribute. Have a lovely day.


Linq Syntax issue

Question: I'm having some issues with a bit of LINQ syntax and I believe I'm missing something very simple here.
I've got a basic class defined as:
public class ParseData
{
    public int Offset { get; set; }
    public int Length { get; set; }
    public string AssociatedCode { get; set; }
}

I have a collection of these class items that will be processed:
public ObservableCollection<ParseData> OffsetList { get; set; }

I have a method that queries this collection to see if there are any entries that match a particular criteria and based on whether or not any do, will process the items involved differently.
Here's the syntax I'm using (LINQ syntax first in while loop):
private void ParseText()
{
     //Prep code for while loop
    while (currentSpacePosition != -1)
    {
        var possibleOffset = OffsetList.Where(offset => offset.Offset.Equals(currentCursorPosition)).ToList<ParseData>();
        nextCursorPosition = currentSpacePosition + 1;
        currentTextBlock = Text.Substring(currentCursorPosition,(currentSpacePosition - currentCursorPosition) + 1);
        if (possibleOffset.Count != 0)
        {
            //Process one way;
            AddHyperlinkButton(currentTextBlock);
        }
        else
        {
                       //Process another way.
            AddTextBlock(currentTextBlock);
        }
        currentCursorPosition = nextCursorPosition;
        currentSpacePosition = Text.IndexOf(' ', currentCursorPosition);
    }
    //More processing
}

What am I missing here?  The poosibleOffset variable keeps returning an empty list, though if I step through the code, there is an an item in the OffsetList that contains an offset prerty that will meet my criteria for selection, which suggest that my syntax isn't correct when trying to check values.
If you need more code or information about the process, I'll be happy to provide it.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
Steve
Comment: Your code looks slightly inefficient, but correct. I would be inclined to write this "var query = from offset in OffsetList where offset.Offset.Equals(currentCursorPosition) select offset; bool hasMatch = query.Any();" This style runs the query only until the first result is found; your style runs the query to find all the results, builds a list, and then counts it. If all you care about is whether there is something that matches your criterion, then just ask whether there is any match.  Why you're not getting any results at all, I don't know; we'd need more info.
Comment: Why don't you just write (offset => offset.Offset == currentCursorPosition)? No need for `Equals`.
Comment: Put some curly braces around your if/else blocks. It appears as though you have two statements you want in your else, but only the first will be there.
Comment: Ryan's right... its not clear if there is one or two statements under the else branch (comments not counted)
Comment: Sorry about the cut & paste mixup.  Added braces for clarity.
Comment: Eric, you are correct.  I arrived at this syntax because I started having trouble with the other.  If you look at my answer below, you'll see that I was the major issue in this equation and after resolving that I reverted to exactly the sytax you suggested.
Answer: There's nothing wrong with your use of Linq really:
    public class ParseData
    {
        public int Offset { get; set; }
    }

    public ObservableCollection<ParseData> OffsetList { get; set; }

    public Program()
    {
        OffsetList = new ObservableCollection<ParseData> { new ParseData { Offset = 5 } };
        int offset = 5;
        int found = OffsetList.Where(o => o.Offset.Equals(offset)).ToList().Count;
        Console.WriteLine("Found: " + found);
    }

Output:
Found: 1

Answer: I believe you're running into "access to modified closure" issue. You need to copy currentSpacePosition into a local temporary variable prior to Where Clause and then use that within the where criteria.
Comment: I don't think so... he's ToList-ing it, which should trip enumeration prior to currentCursorPosition is changed...
Answer: Could you please tell me what is the type of currentCursorPosition variable?
For example, if it is of long type compiler will choose to use Equals(object) overload of Int32 and in this case it returns false even if the variable has mathematically equal value to the one in Offset property.
Answer: Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to apologize for wasting your valuable time.  I however, am a massive idiot.  In the process of debugging some issues, I commented out the code that initialized the property OffsetList, which was the key element in my search criteria.  Had I noticed this earlier, the LINQ query would have worked the first time out of the gate.
Thanks to all of you who tried to save me from my own stupidity.  I will leave the question up for a short while so that you can all point and laugh, then I will close.
Comment: I'm sure all of us have made equally stupid mistakes - it doesn't make you any more of an idiot than the rest of us!

Linq Syntax issue