I was expecting a more pragmatic explanation of why Clojure, Mac OSX and Google App Engine. Although at this point, the pragmatic selection of Mac OSX and iOS is understood.
What did Clojure do for you that the hundreds of others don't or didn't? What is unique about your infrastructure? What challenges did you find? Etc..
Why the Google App Engine? Cheaper? Free? Faster? Why not the others?
yes, please read the linked blog post. they used both hg and git quite a bit but found hg easier to host, use and move over from subversion (convert repos but also command line).
so yes, cheerleader piece you are right on that. not much cheerleading for hg these days.
$300-400 is going to buy you plastic crumby lenses. I do a lot of various photography... weddings, family, portraits, kids, landscapes, etc. If you bought your DSLR to take more photos than quick shots at family gatherings, invest in prime lenses.
That being said, the best (cheap) lens I have ever used/bought was 50mm 1.8/f lens. It was for the Nikon, but Cannon has one similar. The price is about $100 depending where you go.
I don't know the cannon world very well, but those guys talking about Nikons 18-200 is truly one of the best lenses there is. In terms of what it can do and cost. I bring it when I travel alot because it's small, great zoom, great wide angle (all considering), great in low light, great for outdoors and decent indoors.
Another thought is to visit your local camera shop and rent some lenses. Try them out for a weekend. Borrow from fellow Cannon owners. Go out on Flickr meetups and see what they are using.
Quite honestly hackernews crowd is the not the best place to find other photographers for advice :)
i know its not git, but bitbucket (mercurial, same type of dvcs as github) has free private and unlimited repository hosting.