I always end up using my private server as a second development sandbox, so, if it were me, I'd pick something that's different from the stacks you have elsewhe

I always end up using my private server as a second development sandbox, so, if it were me, I'd pick something that's different from the stacks you have elsewhere. Of the servers I have that aren't attached to any actual projects, I have one Solaris box, two Ubuntu Linodes, Github, an EC2 Micro with Ubuntu and a Fedora Slicehost. Oh, and a couple apps on AppEngine. I rarely have to look far for an environment to 'test things out on' quickly without having to stand up a whole new VM or anything crazy. That's just me though, and I don't know of anybody else that does it this way, so I wouldn't call it optimal. The point though, was that if you've never played with the quirks of setting up something to run on EC2, do that. It's fun knowledge to have. Never coded against AppEngine? Do that. It's worth learning. Stick something up on Heroku if you want. Build a blog there.