The TopCoder reference is a really odd one. Code written in programming contests is generally not written to be maintainable. Rather, the focus is on submitting it fast and having it pass all tests. TopCoder contests, with their challenge phase (where participants review competitors' code and benefit from finding bugs in there), seems to particularly encourage writing obfuscated (and therefore unmaintainable) code.

A book co-written by a father-son team as the son learns Python programming developing small games
http://www.manning.com/sande/

And when you're done with that, move on to slightly bigger games, still in Python
http://inventwithpython.com/

For the same effect on classic hardware, you might want to look at https://sharemind.cyber.ee/.

Yes, I do have some friends in the project team.

Could anyone recommend a good tutorial for photo touch-up using the GIMP? Everything I have found so far is for Photoshop. Being a newbie in both the photography and GIMP departments, and having never used Photoshop at all, it's quite hard to translate Photoshop advice to GIMP (it seems the terminology used by the two tools does not overlap too much).