I'm a beginner (I bike 10km a day on a BSO MTB, but I guess that doesn't count) to long distance biking. I signed up for a 40km charity bike ride that happens next month. Thought I'd practice for it yesterday and found out my current bike is not up to it.  I'd like to invest in a decent bike (say 500 euros?). Is the BTwin rc 100 road bike any good? Or does anyone have suggestions for a decent bike, that will help me get into long distance biking?  Or should I get an MTB/hybrid?
I've been riding a mountain bike for years, but I prefer to go longer distances on paved ground, so I think a road bike would be better. When I ask what is a good bike, I don't need brands or models - more like what components of the bike should I look for, and what should I avoid? Additionally, is it necessary to "go big or don't go at all" as far as spending - getting a real good quality road bike for $500 to a few thousand, or should I cheap out on a $100-200 road bike, as it is my first, then get a better one when I'm more experienced?
How to get the date in a batch file in a predictable format? In a batch file I need to extract a month, day, year from the date command.  So I used the following, which essentially parses the Date command to extract its sub strings into a variable:  set Day=%Date:~3,2% set Mth=%Date:~0,2% set Yr=%Date:~6,4%   This is all great, but if I deploy this batch file to a machine with a different regional/country settings, it fails because month, day and year are in different locations.   How can I extract month, day and year regardless of the date format? I tend to use the terminal a lot,  So I wondering if there is a way I can make Ctrl+Alt+T focus the existing terminal if there is one, otherwise create a new terminal? Why does parseInt yield NaN with Array#map? From the :  [1,4,9].map(Math.sqrt)   will yield:  [1,2,3]   Why then does this:  ['1','2','3'].map(parseInt)   yield this:  [1, NaN, NaN]   I have tested in Firefox 3.0.1 and Chrome 0.3 and just as a disclaimer, I know this is not cross-browser functionality (no IE).  I found out that the following will accomplish the desired effect. However, it still doesn’t explain the errant behavior of parseInt.  ['1','2','3'].map(function(i){return +i;}) // returns [1,2,3] R2jags does not remove the burn in part sometimes? I've read and have heard of both 'as per' and 'per' being used conversationally, both with the same connotation of either 'according to' or 'on authority of'  Examples:  "Tell Ron to start molding new rollers for the mecanum wheels, as per me"  "Per Mr. Crane, you need to start the molds for the new rollers."  They both establish the same context by setting that something should be done on the authority of someone else (or the speaker, per the first example (see what I did there?)). Or it acts as a way to cite a source of a statement, directive or fact in conversational speech.  My question is, what is, if any, the functional and syntactical difference between as per and per. If there are no differences, which is apropos to use? Let $D \subset \mathbb{C}$ be the open unit disk, $f:D \to \mathbb{C}$ a holomorphic function and $d=\sup \{|f(z)-f(w)|:z,w\in D \}$. How can I show that $|f'(0)|\leq \frac{d}{2}$?  I tried using Schwarz's lemma on the function $g:D \to \mathbb{C}$ defined by $g(z)=\frac{f(z)-f(0)}{d}$, but I am only getting $|f'(0)|\leq d$. How to Pass an Object Method as a Parameter in Delphi, and then Call It? I fear this is probably a bit of a dummy question, but it has me pretty stumped.  I'm looking for the simplest way possible to pass a method of an object into a procedure, so that the procedure can call the object's method (e.g. after a timeout, or maybe in a different thread).  So basically I want to:   Capture a reference to an object's method. Pass that reference to a procedure. Using that reference, call the object's method from the procedure.   I figure I could achieve the same effect using interfaces, but I thought there was another way, since this "procedure of object" type declaration exists.  The following doesn't work, but might it help explain where I'm confused...?  interface    TCallbackMethod = procedure of object;    TCallbackObject = class     procedure CallbackMethodImpl;     procedure SetupCallback;   end;  implementation  procedure CallbackTheCallback(const callbackMethod: TCallbackMethod); begin   callbackMethod(); end;  procedure TCallbackObject.CallbackMethodImpl; begin   // Do whatever. end;  procedure TCallbackObject.SetupCallback; begin   // following line doesn't compile - it fails with "E2036 Variable required"   CallbackTheCallback(@self.CallbackMethodImpl); end;   (Once the question is answered I'll remove the above code unless it aids the explanation somehow.) IPv4 vs IPv6 priority in Windows 7 I have IPv6 connectivity through Hurricane Electric tunnel. Since IPv6 day this year, many services (google.com, facebook.com, etc.) enabled IPv6 on their main domains. On my Windows machine, IPv6 is preferred over IPv4. This means that whenever I visit Google, all traffic goes through my tunnel to Hurricane Electric, which raises the latency by more than 100%:  C:\&gt; ping www.google.com  Pinging www.l.google.com [2001:4860:8005::68] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 2001:4860:8005::68: time=85ms Reply from 2001:4860:8005::68: time=84ms Reply from 2001:4860:8005::68: time=112ms Reply from 2001:4860:8005::68: time=86ms  Ping statistics for 2001:4860:8005::68:     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:     Minimum = 84ms, Maximum = 112ms, Average = 91ms   C:\&gt; ping -4 www.google.com  Pinging www.l.google.com [173.194.79.103] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 173.194.79.103: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=48 Reply from 173.194.79.103: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=48 Reply from 173.194.79.103: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=46 Reply from 173.194.79.103: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=46  Ping statistics for 173.194.79.103:     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss), Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:     Minimum = 28ms, Maximum = 55ms, Average = 35ms   Question: How can I make Windows 7 to always prefer IPv4, when both IPv4 and IPv6 records are available for a specific domain name? What would have happened if Voldemort had won Priori Incantatem before Nagini had been decapitated? As wielder of an elder wand that belonged to Harry, during Voldemort’s Last Stand, there are two instances of Priori Incantatem occurring, back to back.  Basically, the current order of events makes total sense. Since Nagini was the last horcrux, when the body died, the fragment of Voldemort’s soul locked in it was released. This disrupted the first instance of Priori Incantatem, and Voldemort was now significantly weaker than Harry – so Harry won. Naturally, the Elder Wand’s killing spell was reflected back on Voldemort because of Priori Incantatem outcome.   But, if Voldemort was just told by Harry that the Elder Wand wouldn’t work against Harry because it belonged to Harry, and was a wand that would win any duel for its master, why would Voldemort willingly try and continue to use it? This is doubly so, since after he had cast the killing spell on Harry once it had only torn Voldemort’s soul from Harry’s body – wouldn’t that even imply that the Elder Wand would realistically refuse almost any attempted direct harm against its owner?  Also, wouldn’t a first refusal of the Elder Wand to kill it’s own master also imply an additional refusal even if Voldemort had won either of the Priori Incantatem matches (in which case, the worst that could happen in this line of thinking is, Voldemort has Harry’s wand since Harry’s spell is Expelliarmus)? How can you profile a Python script? How can I keep low resolution textures pixelated? Does editing still bump a question? Many times in the past I've edited a somewhat recent answer—say, from 30 minutes ago—and noticed that the concomitant question didn't bump to the top.  I just confirmed it with ; the question is currently sorted in the JavaScript page based on when it was asked, not my edit.  I've never made edits just to bump a question to whore rep—my original answer was wrong which was why I fixed it—but my understanding is that the CW self-edit trigger exists to prevent  edit-then-bump-then-score-rep—profit! activity.    If non-ancient edits no longer bump a question, should the self-edit CW trigger be brought inline with this?  Should an answer be made CW if you make 10 edits that actually bump the question?  and to avoid any implication of impropriety, I'm already capped on SO, so I'm not looking for any sort of "meta effect" on my answer How fast does electricity flow? Why don't I have the right to create a text file in my root directory? Mouse cursor flickering and disappearing I installed Ubuntu today and since the first start up I have a problem with the mouse cursor.  It starts randomly disappearing and flickering a lot.  I have searched for a solution on Google and here but didn't find anything. Should a retrieval method return 'null' or throw an exception when it can't produce the return value? How can I clone an ArrayList and also clone its items in Java?  For example I have:  ArrayList&lt;Dog&gt; dogs = getDogs(); ArrayList&lt;Dog&gt; clonedList = ....something to do with dogs....   And I would expect that objects in clonedList are not the same as in dogs list. Unable to see anything after importing .obj file How to create a sub array from another array in Java? How does Linux handle multiple consecutive path separators (/home////username///file)? I'm working on a python script that passes file locations to an scp subprocess. That's all fine, but I'm in a situation where I may end up concatenating a path with a filename such that there's a double '/ in the path. I know that bash doesn't care if you have multiple file separators, but I'm wondering how exactly that is rectified. Is it bash that strips extra /s or does it really not matter ever?  I ask because it will save me several lines of code to check for extra /s while concatenating. I know it's not a big deal, but I'm curious as well. I have a bash script that has the line cd //usr (instead of cd /usr), which seems to imply there might be a significance to using multiple /s in a path