I've had some form of personal site for more than 15 years now, usually with a hand-coded theme. It's unremarkable technically, but as a UX designer, it certainly gives me more confidence that I know how the web works.
I'm a fan of HabitRPG[1], been using it since the very first public version. It allows you set both positive and negative habits which you then track daily. Mobile app is coming soon, I hear.
It's rather hypnotizing like that. I wouldn't mind having a fireball like that as my desktop background. Never mind the resource usage and all that, because this has character!
I don't recall when I last used the start menu to turn off the computer. I have a button on my laptop and pressing it hibernates the computer. Very handy.
For a lot of the world population, english, as common as it may be in programming, is still a foreign language. People less fluent in English are that much less likely to try scripting something. Not only would the language keywords make little to no sense, but the supporting materials and comments as well.
I'm sorry, but I fail to understand your grief about Opera. They've been nothing if not standard compliant since before most people had internet access. Not to mention the huge amount of not-PC-hardware they have provided a browser for (Opera Mini for feature phones, Opera for TV's with internet, Opera for Nintendo DS, DSi, 3DS)
I may be biased as long-time users often are, but they're definitely not comparable to the plague that is IE.