I will talk about the projects I've started, am working through or have finished here and publish links to other sites/references that have helped along the way.

In learning Java and other languages and concepts, I have utilized a number of books/resources:

To begin learning Java, I am reading "Java: The Complete Reference" (7th Ed., 2007), see here another good text here (see java4.pdf), another free online text book (and pretty good!)
To compliment and reinforce these lessons, I am working through the materials at University of Washington's CSE142 site and the BuildingJavaPrograms.com powerpoint slides. Video from the UWashington course is available here - part 1, part 2 - have also found them here. In my case, I am also listening to an MIT Intro to Java course while reading the CC for UWashington's videos (multitasking).

I began learning about XSLT and XSL-FO through a Skillsoft course, while at SAIC and am continuing to make progress on that still. Details on that are available here. I am currently about 1/2 way through that course. You might note that I succeeded in getting eXist DB (native XML database) up and running. Read more on that experience here.

should i decide to move over to learning python, I might refer back to MIT's python intro material

Lately, I seem to be motivated by groups who are organized around organizing. The CSCLUG, NCMA, and Metagovernment are few such groups whose activities are consuming some of my time. On this brief statement, their interests converge on the notion of process flows using technology. I discovered "ditaa" which utilizes CMD-line java to output workflow diagrams. These diagrams could serve NCMA or Metagovernment purposes (as per here") and this notion contributes to the programming concepts supported by csclug.

Recent escapades into the programming paradigm have revealed Java's prominence in emerging tools and frameworks, not limited by choice of platform or commercial encapsulation. IDE's for rich internet application (RIA) development are emerging constantly with components developed under the Java framework underlying them. Such concepts are illustrated by the zkoss framework, as may be slightly more understandable to non-programmers after reading this Ajax tutorial page.

In this case, Java allows the SS processing to take place and the framework allows developers to focus on the middle-ground where biz logic (Java) meets the content delivery interface on the server (DOM or XML object) which is then passed to the client (XHR) and exposed for real-time client-side manipulation within the browser, stored locally.

Additionally, today (05/20/10) I made noticeable progress towards implementing a resume search feature that queries a SQL table for keyword match. See here if you want to try keywords to see if we have a person that matches your search criteria!

Update (06/22/10) - It seems that to further gain familiarity with programming business applications and design systems to enhance business process efficiencies, an understanding of Java Programming IDE's will be necessary. Since there is good industry support for the OSGi specs and framework to implement them through Elipse, I am following this tutorial. (6/24) Got the RCP mail demo working. Why can't I get the rap.elipsesource.com demo going on Windows? grr I got it working on my Linux (ubuntu) machine? (see image)