From 1988-1991 I lived in a hut in a small African mountain village. No running water or electricity, but I wrote programs on paper and waited with bated breath for every issue of Byte (several months delayed of course). I would read them from cover to cover a dozen times, perusing every article, every advertisement, every editorial. I remember a listing that created a fern using a short, recursive PostScript program.
About once a month I would journey down to the capital, where -- in exchange for my IT services -- they let me tinker to my heart's content and type in my programs (the only language available, and the only one I knew at the time was GW-BASIC).