All members of Humorfeed are peer-reviewed to ensure that the quality and consistency of their sites and articles are of the highest level. But it’s still funny stuff. Beyond the daily postings, the site hosts an annual Satire News Competition each January.

If you’ve already signed up to receive Humorality.com’s articles, why not sign up for Humorfeed.com as well? Your funny bone will thank you.

Tired of the same old boring news? Worried that the talking heads will give you nightmares? Worried that nightmares will give you talking heads? Now you can wipe these fears away with the new headline service from Humorality.com: Humor Flash.

Humor Flash takes the latest news from all around the world, erases it, and puts something better in its place: humor! Sure, you could read a newspaper or listen to hourly reports on the radio. But statistics show that people who do those things end up dying sometime in the next 120 years. Why take the risk?

Sign up for Humor Flash now by becoming a follower of Humorality.com’s Twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/humorality

And remember, Humorality.com makes a great conversation starter for those awkward silent moments at parties. Be sure to visit Humorality.com regularly.

• On the web: http://www.humorality.com
• On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Patrick/105237502964
• Good old Twitter: http://twitter.com/humorality or @humorality
• In the White House: 2016 (maybe, but probably not)

[Image Credits: The Children's Television Workshop -- Thanks Kermit!]

Now in its twenty-seventh year, this international fiction contest draws thousands of submissions from dark and stormy typewriters across the globe, each with a single purpose: to craft the worst possible opening sentence to the worst possible imaginary novel.

This year I submitted eight opening lines to the contest. When the results of the 2009 contest were announced in early July, it was with much sadness that I found my name absent from winners’ page. But perhaps it is all for the best. The contest winners receive as their reward “a pittance” and the chance to be known forever as someone who can generate truly pathetic prose.

To experience the eye-damaging results for yourself, visit the contest web site:

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

For your consideration, here are the eight sentences I submitted to the contest.

• Fred hated geometry, but here it was again, angling for his attention, bisecting his feelings, and arcing past the hopes of his youth, and he felt that his life was once again taking a big tangent as he started to sign and cosign the loan documents.
• Charles hated geometry, with its circles and dodecahedrons, its angles and vertices, its endless lists of rules and formulae that threatened to dissuade him from his plans for world domination, and as he sat down in the classroom’s gum-encrusted chair-with-desk, he remembered that it was geography, not geometry, that he hated.
• Smith—and it just goes to show you how you can’t always judge someone by their given name, since in Smith’s case his quest for adventure in the darkest jungles of Africa, his near-hero status on five continents, and his MacGyver-like ability to overcome whatever malice the enemy could throw at him carried him far beyond the generic qualities of his common surname—died.
• Gwendolyn’s golden locks cascaded over the delicate lace and puffed sleeves of her powder-blue gown, the gown she knew would ignite the fires of passion in Roberto’s eyes, and as she fingered the insignia and badges of military honor that graced her womanly form and that identified her as the ranking officer on the ship, she quickly realized that her author had once again put her in the wrong book.
• As he cruised across the California desert and into the hot Arizona landscape, Bruce thought about how he would have to pass through Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas,  Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois,  Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts,  Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,  New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota,  Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota,  Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming before he could claim to have driven through all fifty states, although not necessarily in that order.
• Mark boarded the eastbound train from Track 9 in Los Angeles’ Union Station, his thoughts already 2,000 miles away in the Windy City, and as he read again the tear-stained letter from Beatrice, he realized that a westbound train departing from Chicago station traveling at 40 miles per hour would meet with his train in 20 hours, assuming his train traveled at a constant 60 miles per hour and departed at the same time, which seemed unlikely given the railroad strike.
• From a glance at the blood-red coloring on his clothes, the heavy boots wiped clean of any incriminating dirt or fingerprints, and the bag he carried that contained heaven-knows-what, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
• As I looked with love on the face of my wife Delores, knowing how much this once-in-a-lifetime trip to Las Vegas to see the Rat Pack meant to her, I was unprepared for the guttural screams that emitted from her mouth as hundreds of rodents filled the stage.

The sponsors of the Internet would like to take a moment to introduce you to a new humor web site, Humorality.com. A spendid site for humorous news and social commentary, Humorality.com is suitable for those who are the life of the party, as well as those who prefer to sit on the sidelines and watch the Type A’s make things happen.

Humorality.com is the brainchild of Tim Patrick, which in itself is somewhat gross given that brains don’t have children, at least not male brains. Tim has been a software developer since the early days of personal computers, so you know he’s qualified to write offbeat humor. And that’s just what you find in the pages of Humorality.com.

That’s it for the announcement. There’s nothing more to read here, so why not head over to Humorality.com and see what all the fuss is about.

Also available in English

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been enjoying the writings of Tim Patrick for many years. Sadly, your enjoyment has been limited to Tim’s mother tongue of English, since his publishers did not see fit to include a universal translator in each published work.

Now there is good news for foreign language readers hungry for slightly-outdated software development references. While wandering somewhat recklessly around the Internet the other day, I discovered that my Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell book had been published in the Polish language. It’s available for sale right now at your nearby Polish book reseller.

When you thumb through the pages, you’ll learn about essential Visual Basic 2005 programming topics such as “Zmienne i typy danych,” “Wprowadzenie do programowania obiektowego,” and of course “Dodatki.” It’s a feast for Eastern European eyes!

Programming Visual Basic 2008

When Microsoft moved Visual Basic from its version-6 roots to the new world of .NET in 2002, it endowed the language with a level of power and flexibility never before seen in a BASIC variant. But that move also brought a competitor on to the scene: C#. This new language-on-the-block is a formidable rival, especially in terms of perceived language value. Some commentators believe that C# will become so popular that Microsoft will discard its beloved Visual Basic into the ultimate bit bucket. What started out as an inside joke on C++ developers has turned into the VB community’s worst nightmare.

It’s not that C# is any better than Visual Basic; the very idea is laughable. But for some reason, people actually think that C# is more powerful. The root cause of this misperception has remained elusive, but after years of careful observation, I believe I have identified the core issue.

The Problem

The problem is one of productivity. For nearly two decades, Visual Basic programmers have written complex applications that ran the engines of industry and business, typically with little development effort, and often coming in under budget and in half the expected time. It was all thanks to that great VB feature set, and to the talents of programmers intelligent enough to select the best language. With all of that extra time and money on their hands, these developers were buying pinball machines for the office, searching for philosophical answers to life’s questions through Minesweeper, and performing other similar tasks that allowed them to maintain their competitive edge in the coding world.

Unfortunately, some of these developers lacked the professional business sense to make these off-project tasks look like real work. So when management came down the hallway, instead of seeing highly-productive software developers preparing emotionally for the next big project, they saw kids playing games on their computers. When those managers discussed the situation at the management lobster fest that night, they found that other departments had resolved the issue by replacing VB programmers with C# programmers. With C#, the development team had their faces to the screen 24/7/365, with worried looks and with a steady stream of requests for more money, more time, and more understanding. Clearly, these were real programmers with real problems to solve. For management, migrating their projects from Visual Basic to C# provided the urgency needed to hit up the company for a bigger budget.

The Solution

I am the first to admit that I didn’t take the warning signs seriously. But now that over-extended software projects have brought the economy to its knees, it’s time to act. There are clear actions that we, as Visual Basic developers, can take to restore the language to its rightful place in the minds and hearts of business leaders.

• Stop having so much fun. For instance, wear regular shoes to the office instead of roller skates. I know this is a painful decision, especially given the sense of euphoria that Visual Basic development brings to your daily routine. But it’s for the good of the VB community.
• Lower your productivity. You need to make development in Visual Basic look difficult. Try swapping out your standard English keyboard with a German-language model. Or better yet, develop prototypes of your new application in C# and then migrate these portions back to Visual Basic for the final release. This should more than double your development time.
• Lower your technical standards. Focus your less-than-rigorous efforts on the key areas of documentation, code comments, and code consistency. Unfortunately, Visual Basic includes a level of syntax standardization not fully enforced in C# applications, so your code is still going to look slick no matter how sloppy you are. But do your best. Click here to find out what Microsoft could do to assist you in this endeavor.
• Play Minesweeper: Visual Studio Edition. To the uninitiated, it looks just like Visual Studio, but it’s actually a highly addictive time waster that is guaranteed to increase IQ points.
• Sob audibly at your desk. Make it seem like developing in Visual Basic is a chore. We all know it’s not, but your boss needs some proof of your hard work that he can discuss at your next review. You’ll also make friends more easily with C# developers–if you want to, that is. They tend to be easily fooled; they already believe that C# is a superior language, so they’ll pretty much believe whatever you tell them.

Don’t expect things to change overnight. It has taken seven years of steady use for C# to exert its influence. But by engaging in a little faux misery now, you will have the inner peace of knowing that your productivity tool of choice will serve the computing needs of both major corporations and small businesses joyfully for decades to come.

For more great advice on Visual Basic development, click here to select and purchase one of Tim Patrick’s books on VB programming.