Tho85

Build your own private, encrypted, open-source Dropbox-esque sync folder

Prerequisites:

• One or more clients running a UNIX-like OS. Examples are given for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, although all software components are available for other platforms as well (e.g. OS X). YMMV
• A cheap Ubuntu 12.04 VPS with storage. I recommend Backupsy, they offer 250GB storage for $5/month. Ask Google for coupon codes.

Software components used:

• Unison for file synchronization
• EncFS for folder encryption

lahwran

This list was originally authored by a friend who has been learning programming for some time (tuningmind)

Programming learning resources

Note: Many books may be available from a nearby public library. Check there as well!

These two are about the best I've seen for starting from scratch:

• Head First Programming (book, for pay: amazon, python 3)

tshort

Matthew Dowle is working on a fast CSV reader for data.table. Here is test data case generated in R along with some timings:

require(data.table)

n=1e6
DT = data.table( a=sample(1:1000,n,replace=TRUE),
                 b=sample(1:1000,n,replace=TRUE),
                 c=rnorm(n),
                 d=sample(c("foo","bar","baz","qux","quux"),n,replace=TRUE),