If you can afford a buck, you can sign up with
freeshell.org (just ssh to freeshell.org) They'll give you free access to perl etc. but your hostname will be freeshell.org/~foo w/ 10mb limit. (You have to send in a buck so that they know you are a real person and not a spamer...) If you can afford 36 bucks for lifetime membership, you can get a
something.freeshell.org w/100mb limit & 100mb home dir. If you can afford a monthly premium, they will host something.your.domain They also have mysql access but you have to pay additonal for that, though you get another 100mb to fool around with... Uptime is reasonable (90%) for my $36 that I spent w/ them. (I'm not affilated w/ them in any way.)
Zak