Went to BlackBerry Jam in Waterloo with a co-worker who did a co-op at RIM previously. They played a similar music video and the key joke from my co-worker was "The cost of that music video could've paid the salary of the guy who used to be beside me."
Not to mention, using high resolution graphics when only displaying at a lower resolution increases battery usage and lowers performance of the webpage.
As much as I love Ender's Game I've turned my head away at it since I found out that Orson Scott Card was an extreme right-wing mormon. While I don't like to attribute a book's content to it's author I feel like this sort of ruins a bit of the book's magic.
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was an excellent read and then of course you can't go wrong with Douglas Adams. Excellent stuff.
I don't think this analogy really carries over to software development. I think being able to develop quality code in X time even using libraries is a great demonstration of experience.
I'm currently 16 and have a job making five figures as a software engineer at a company making millions. There is no reason to not start right now.
On the matter of education, I'm taking independent learning at home - this allows me to get my OSSD under my province's Learn to 18 act but not have to physically attend an educational institute. Check if you have something like http://ilc.org where you live.
I would personally not start my own startup at the moment (however getting involved in something is a great idea) as I am still building up contacts and experience. I believe as the founder of a startup you should be the go-to guy, with only two years of experience in what sounds like L/WAMP stack programming environments, you need to spend more time.
Of course, learning from a failed startup is good too.
My whole family felt entirely spoiled this year so next year we're ditching gifts and donating to the Pinball Clement Foundation (http://www.mpcf.ca/).
Anywho,
Neoprene iPad Case, microSD card for phone, desperately needed wallet, RobotShop gift card.
It's a shame so many young people these days don't have her spirit. You don't save a years worth of allowance, you go find what you're good at and share it with others.
I commented on the blog about how she was overreacting and told her to think about how the TSA agent must have felt (having to do that several times per day). My comment got deleted.