I have recently started playing with an Arduino UNO yesterday and It is a great learning tool. It was my first experience with C. I am learning it along with a new programmer. We are just playing around with LED's and Servos.
If Anyone is interested you can integrate the Arduino boards with Processing. If you have never heard of Processing, it is a visual processing tool writen in Java.
Head over and check it out at
http://processing.org/
If you have ANY questions on how to get it up an running with your Arduino board add me on skype jacob97061
I am happy to answer any questions and lend a helping hand. If you havn't seen it already, after last season I had gotten the kinect up and running and posted the code over in the programming forums.