Written stuff

Pangrams: A collection of pangrams - short sentences containing every letter in the alphabet. Contains several english variants, and of 20 languages besides english.
Socius quotations (Dutch): Several funny quotations of teachers at the Stedelijk Gymnasium Leiden, as they appeared in Socius.
Loesje (Dutch): One month of Loesje funnies from the 2001 tear-calender, for easy reading (buy the real thing if you like them of course).

Also a note of interest because it is very text-related: go see the page about the Dvorak keyboard layout. Because your fingers deserve better.

MURPHY'S LAWS

I found life pretty much happens in compliance with the famous Murphy's Laws. Knowing this can prevent a lot of unexpected disappointment. Main rules:

Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you think.
If anything can go wrong, it will.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.
If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which something can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop.
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Mother nature is a bitch.

Murphy's Technology Laws:

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition.
Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
The opulence of the front office decor varies inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.
The attention span of a computer is only as long as it electrical cord.
An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing.
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
All's well that ends.
A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
The first myth of management is that it exists.
A failure will not appear till a unit has passed final inspection.
New systems generate new problems.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
A computer makes as many mistakes in two seconds as 20 men working 20 years make.
Nothing motivates a man more than to see his boss putting in an honest day's work.
Some people manage by the book, even though they don't know who wrote the book or even what book.
The primary function of the design engineer is to make things difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts the job will take the longest and cost the most.
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable and three parts which are still under development.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
If mathematically you end up with the incorrect answer, try multiplying by the page number.
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File."
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
The more cordial the buyer's secretary, the greater the odds that the competition already has the order.
In designing any type of construction, no overall dimension can be totaled correctly after 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The correct total will become self-evident at 8:15 a.m. on Monday.
Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.
The only perfect science is hind-sight.
Work smarder and not harder and be careful of yor speling.
If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
Everything that goes up must come down.
Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.
Any simple theory will be worded in the most complicated way.
Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will want to use it.
The degree of technical competence is inversely proportional to the level of management.
A difficult task will be halted near completion by one tiny, previously insignificant detail.
There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
The remaining work to finish in order to reach your goal increases as the deadline approaches.

DENTHOR QUOTES

This quote is by Grant Smith AKA Denthor of Asphyxia which was in one of his VGA tutors (#16). I can really recommend those tutors; Most of the PC-graphics programming I've learned from these tutes myself. Anyway, I like this one: (and it's true... or it might be)

"Sir! My computer has just gone haywire!"
"What?" shouts the CO. "That is a multimilliondollar machine! Find out what's wrong! This is a critical time lieutenant!" "Yes sir"
The young lieutenant furiously types away at the keyboard, but the machine totally ignores her.
"What is going on, soldier?" "I don't know sir! It is just doing totally arbitrary things after it's assigned tasks are completed. In the computer world this is known as Denthorisms."
The computer starts to make random beeps, and prints out a payroll program. "Get it working NOW soldier"
The lieutenant ignores him, and contines typing. She gets partial control of the system, she can run programs, but the computer is continually running arb tasks in the background. One of the techhies who have gathered behing her suddenly cries "Hey! It's accessing the missile codes! It wants to launch them!"
The typing gathers speed, but to no avail. Another techhie says "I could disconnect the computer from the link, but that would take hours! And this thing will have the codes in under five minutes at the speed it's going!"
A smile forms on the lieutanants face, and she leans back in her chair. "What the hell are you doing?" yells the CO. "Why have you stopped?"
Again ignoring him, the lieutenant instead turns to the techhie. "Go disconnect the machine, I know how to get you the time you need." "How on earth will you do that? The machine's going at top speed!" She smiles again, leans forward, types in three letters and hits the carriage return. The computer grinds to a halt.
The smile breaks into a grin. "Maybe it does have it's uses after all."

Grant Smith, 15:30 23-9-94

Another one right here.