In many countries around the world, $432 is more than enough.
BeWelcome.org is free accomodation for travellers, so if you need somewhere for just a couple of nights, you can stay. It’s safe; there’s an entire safety team dedicated to handling complaints.
If you settle down for too long though, it is recommended to share in paying the rent or utilities, out of politeness.
Looking for a way to freeze an HDMI feed so that the current image (a PPT slide) stays up on the projector/TV while edits are made. Any suggestions welcome.
I'm not saying this is the most practical or affordable solution compared to a more specialized product, but if you definitely want a hardware solution, I do know (depending on your HDMI spec requirements) this would be achievable with any FPGA dev board that has HDMI In/Out. I can't say I've worked on this exact solution, but I did some basic development with a Xilinx (Z7?) board years ago that involved overlaying and modifying an incoming HDMI signal. What you're looking for should be achievable by the same means assuming there's no signal issues I'm failing to account for.
The blogger recommends Warmshowers for accommodation. That's good, but costs money.
BeWelcome.org is free accommodation, like Airbnb or CouchSurfing but without money! And open-source, in many countries, and very hospitable to refugees.