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Seems I've been coding Java for the last year and a half under the misapprehension protected means what it does in C++. Now I've discovered it doesn't (aside: so that's why that paragraph in that book about package protected made no sense!), I find myself rather narked that there's no such thing in Java as C++-style protected.

There, that can go and join my being narked that there's no such thing as a const function in Java, and keep it company.

Wikipedia syndrome in full flow

This is fascinating:

In Sephardic Middle Eastern Jewish prayer services, each Shabbat the congregation conducts services using a different maqam. A maqam (مقام), which in Arabic literally means 'place', is a standard melody type and set of related tunes. The melodies used in a given maqam aims effectively to express the emotional state of the reader throughout the set liturgy (without changing the text)... As a general rule, the same maqam will never be used two weeks in a row.

Read the whole article.

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At snjstar's birthday party last Saturday, snjstar instroduced me to a keen cyclist friend of hers, and we cycle geeked for a while. We were talking about SPDs (clip-on pedals), and I mentioned that I hadn't seen the benefit out of them I had expected. He said they were really worth it going up hills. I said possibly I was using them wrong.

He was right. I experimented the next time I commuted to work; and discovered the thing to do, when going uphill, was not to try supplementing the normal downwards force on them with upwards force, but to abandon the downwards force altogether and concentrate on pulling the pedals up. This gets you up the hill a lot more efficiently.

The corrollary of this, of course, is that there is a crossover point at a certain incline where "pull" pedalling becomes more efficient than "push" pedalling. I find the existence of this crossover point fascinating. Is it constant, or does it depend how tired you are of the pedalling style you've been using? Is it hysteretical, or is it the same on the way "up" (increasing incline) as the way "down"? And, of course, what does it feel like to cross this point as you cycle?

There we go: scientific entertainment on my commutes to work for the next while. :o)