Whenever training topic questions are asked, the answers are fairly typical, and involve a pretty limited subset of topics like OO, design patterns, algorithms, web services, SQL, etc., but I wonder if there are some fringe topics that are still applicable to the programming field and would give me a more rounded approach to development. When I think of "fringe", I think of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly articles that discuss how to use real world (sometimes obscure) exploits, or something like Maker Faire that demonstrates embedded systems programming using Arduino. I have around $1500-2000 to spend, and my job entails Java technologies, but that does not limit my options.