project ideas for a noob
showerst: A few standard 'toy' learning projects come to mind:Try building a client/server chat program, using TCP/IP, 
a mass-file Renamer, or mp3 tagger, including a GUI for your OS of choice.In python, try building something using either google app engine, or implementing a full blog using django (with packages for all the useful features).Build something that downloads stock data from yahoo or google, parses it, and charts it.Most of those are more towards the 'trivial' end of the spectrum, but they'll make you familiar with the standard libraries, and the last 10% of 'polish' will sharpen your skills.