I'm definitely going to give this a shot, thanks for the link. Approaching ML at a higher level is exactly what I need to develop a better interest in it. I realize that underpinnings are important, but waiting 30 minutes for mnist on to process on my localhost is just unbearably boring.
If you try the course, be sure to make use of the forums for it too: http://forums.fast.ai . As you'll see, they're extremely active and helpful for all deep learning students (and all practitioners in general).
Disclaimer: I teach the course. Although it is free and ad-free... :)
Regarding AWS, one participant has created a system that lets you use spot instances for the course. It's published on the forum. Great way to save $$$ (400% or more...)