Where I live in California, stores are required to charge you 10c per disposable bag you use. This even goes for non-grocery stores. This sounds nuts, but it's an example of taxes being used to encourage people to alter their behavior. That and many local people actually voted for this tax because they were horrified by images of trees covered in plastic bags, animals choking on bags, and bags floating around along the sides of roads. Really, when you think about it, the use of thin plastic bags just to bring home a few items (more stuff/bag and they break) is kind of a gratuitous use of plastic and the petroleum required to make it, recycling or not. Anyways, yeah, I thought the ban would be completely obnoxious, but I ended up collecting a set of large cloth bags and bought a couple of the thick plastic ones the stores sell for 99c. I have 3 large bags that were free conference schwag bags and 3 that I bought for 99c each. I've used them for three years now and they're all going strong. I might have never done this had it not been for the convenient bags going away and I have to say... THEY ARE AWESOME. Don't knock it until you try it, I swear. It sounds like it will be so annoying, but they're so so nice once you get used to them. I can actually fit HUGE amounts of groceries in these bags and they never tear on me. With the long, strong, handles, I can sling several bags of groceries over my shoulders and make fewer trips to unload the car. Keep in mind, nearly all of our food in the US is pretty much laminated too. Seriously, the FUD about people getting salmonella from grocery bags is just that: FUD. If you put a tray of meat in your bag and it leaks, yeah, you ought to wash it. You might even designate a "meat bag" if you're paranoid (I don't and have never had a problem). It's not the case that you have to wash them after every use. I don't wash mine after every use and we've never had any issues. I'm more likely to get salmonella from produce or eating out. I do still use plastic produce bags for veggies. Most people in the US do that anyways, plastic shopping bags or not. Actually, I ended up liking my non-disposable bags so much, I just bought some reusable produce bags to try out too. They claim to make produce last longer... we shall see about that... After every shopping run, I typically hang the bags on the door so I remember to put them back in the car on my way out. It almost always works. If not, I have to pay the 10c and deal with annoying little bags that tear easily. I think the annoyance of the easily tearing bags that I used to treat like just part of getting groceries is more effective at changing my behavior than the tax at this point.

Agreed!! My N900 recently semi-died (USB port unreliable) so I got an N9. I love my N9 much more than I thought I would. It has all the polish that the N900 was missing that I never realized I wanted until I had it. However I would also absolutely love having a proper Linux tablet on which I could use a pen! I have a Samsung Note tablet which I use for taking notes in meetings and classes, but Android is just so lacking after Maemo or Meego Harmattan. I got used to its limitations eventually, but the frustration curve is definitely there, even still. That said, I just love the Wacom pen that the Note comes with. It seriously owns over anything the N900 could do as far as pressure sensitivity and such. Now, if we could get something like the Samsung Note, only with a full Linux OS... I'm hoping the Ubuntu unification project will get us there, but it's hard to say. I'm afraid that a product like this may be too far outside of mainstream customer desires to be profitable for any company to seriously pursue. As someone in the same boat though, if you haven't checked it out, you might actually really like the Samsung Note tablet. The new one is out and the screen is beautiful. There's a cool app for drawing and painting that's comparable to mypaint called Sketchbook Pro too. I think it's fun with the nice pen. :)

You might find Python a good place to start, even though it's not for your target platform. I learned it in a class as my first popular programming language. I was using Prolog before that, but I'd only recommend that if you're into very particular types of problems. Anyways, my class had a great book called "Python for Software Design - How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" by Allen Downey. It's a super newbie book for building from the ground up, very conversational, and a handy reference for when you forget stuff (I have memory difficulty too, though from ADD mostly). It doesn't cover all things you'd ever want to know, but as a foundation, it's really excellent. Python is nice too because it's not so verbose, there are lots of libraries available, and it's fairly popular so getting help when you need it (online or from friends) is easy. Oh, and if your working memory has troubles, you might also find higher level languages easier to work with too. This was one of the good things about Prolog for me (that and I have an extensive background in formal logic). It gave me a place to tackle a specific type of problem (natural language grammar) in a declarative way that actually inspired me to study computer science. Had I started in something like Java, I don't think that would have happened. I didn't get into that until much later. That said, I do love all the stuff available for Java. Learning that was like getting access to the world's biggest Lego set. Also, especially valuable for memory problems, you might want to also really consider the IDEs available for the language you pick. It seems pretty trivial for most people, but a smart, user friendly IDE can make a huge difference in frustration levels if your working memory is affected at all. For Java, which I've been working in most recently, I've been using Intellij IDEA, which has proven to be a lot better than Eclipse for me. They have one for Python called PyCharm, but unfortunately it's not free. Anyways, I think your story is inspiring and I wish you the best!