If you take this route then see these sites:
http://www.atarimagazines.com/
http://www.atariarchives.org/basicgames/
http://www.atariarchives.org/morebasicgames/

It was 'More Basic Games' that got me hooked. Best $7.00 I ever spent on a technical book. I still have my copy.

MythBusters 'proved' that motorcycles are not more 'green' than cars. They tested bikes from the 80's, 90's and 00's. In all cases the motorcycles produced more pollution than the cars. They only tested gas milage and pollution levels. They did not mention the manufacturing and recycling impact. Not sure if they used real 'science', but their methods made sense to me.

I have a Roku 2XS. It has a Plex client. I've run the Plex server on my Mac and on an Ubuntu box and in both cases this setup works just fine. I've streamed a handful of movies and TV shows and so far am very satisfied with the results. I have an older Linksys E1000 using stock firmware. I haven't even bothered to optimize my wifi network. With some QOS I might get higher quality streaming but I have an old SD TV so my standards are low. Will get an HDTV sometime this year and will want 720p or better so will probably upgrade the WLAN. When I had the Plex server running under Ubuntu it was running inside of a Proxmox VM. That worked really well. I'm rebuilding the Proxmox host now and will probably go back to that setup.

Festivus for the rest of us!

Or use Chipmonk BASIC. http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/basic/ Yes, we all know that BASIC is evil. But that's how many of us started and it's hard to argue with the instant gratification. Pygame may be a better staring point.

Load up a C64, Apple ][, Atari, or other 8bit emulator. Demonstrate BASIC. Then point them here: http://www.atariarchives.org/

James Blish did some novelization of some of the TOS stuff. I really liked it way back when. Maybe hard to find these days.

Absolutely love Vinge's 'The Peace War'. Bought that on a whim in an airport once. Made me not want to deplane so I could finish it.

Back when I worked as an intranet developer at a corporate gig I imaged the Windows hard drive and copied it up to a file share. The I installed Gentoo and did my own thing. Nobody from IT ever asked about my system. I never, ever asked for anybody to fix it. It worked better than the Windows machines (no thanks, I'll skip the McAfee and Norton crap) and I worked just as effectively (or more so) as the other devs. At that corp if you didn't bother IT they didn't bother you.

I used 'Bluetooth File Transfer' to copy some apps from my EVO4 to my rooted Nook Color. It packaged the app into a *.apk file and copied it across for me. I then navigated to the *.apk file with the file manager app and installed it from there.

http://readr.ru/roger-zelazny-last-of-the-wild-ones.html

For the last several years I've requested and received copies of all medical imaging data. for myself, my Mother and, my Father. In a couple of cases they mailed me a CD but in all others they gave me the disc before I left. Never any hassle, I just had to ask.

The data is in DICOM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Imaging_and_Communications_in_Medicine format. There are free viewers for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

I had a CT done of my head. Pretty cool to watch in 3D.

My Dad has a stint in his aorta. Watching the imaging of them testing it for leaks with radioactive contrast is wild.

As a native Texan I think both types of hacking are appropriate.

I installed it via the 'App Store' app on the iphone. No iTunes needed.

You can view the sun with a telescope without burning out your eyes. I had a friend who had a refractor that came with a white metal screen and a special lens that had a dark green filter. The setup would project the image of the sun onto the screen. We could see surface details.