mirek03 - I'll definitely be watching my back you should pick up a lot of good stuff from those tutorials. I saw the free intro to one of those and it looked nicely paced and well presented.
When you finally get to learning python for maya it might be an idea to have a look at pymel. It basically takes all the maya python commands and classes them up so they can be used as objects - which is what python is, object oriented. Although this might not make any sense at the minute, it will do once you get stuck into the python side of things. It also means you end up coding far more efficiently in the long run
I'd be interested to see if the bit about making plugins with python is useful.

Steve - I'm not surprised its still on your todo list if you're playing about with mocap techniques, that sounds cool.
We've got a Vicon mocap system at Uni but I've not really had the chance or a reason to play with it just yet
Dont forget to do some research into the staggering changes of drunken people - the research for getting mocap on that should be fun

Simon