I would be grateful if anyone could suggest how to get started with electronic projects. I've visited a lot of sites but almost all of them assume prior knowledge. On the other hand, some of the introductory material I've seen isn't useful as it tends to spend a lot of time explaining the physics background, with which I'm fairly comfortable. I have some theoretical knowledge about components and can build simple circuits with passive components, but I'd like to make more complicated circuit and projects. One of the main issues is that I don't know much about the actual components that you buy and how you can use them to build circuits. Nor do I have a lot of electronic items lying around so I can't pillage any components. The experiments section of the e-book on this site was useful but as I'm in the UK, I can't find the same components for some of the projects and don't know what to substitute; also the ac projects use 120 v. Sorry for rambling on for so long. I just want to start making circuits without spending too much money, or hassle. As I said, I would really appreciate if anyone could give me any tips. Thanks in advance.