I have figured a good way to develop my skills will be to contribute to open source programs. The most obvious for google to track down is sourceforge which is brilliant but its hard finding a small enough project for a newbie in this arena. Is there a good way of finding suitable beginners projects either on sourceforge or another site?
Then you have to get your head round Git, subversion et al.
This thread is not getting as much attention as it should. You should move it to Lounge. You can do that by pressing "Edit topic" and then selecting "Lounge" from "Forums:" list.
Sorry I can't help with the question. I've never done that, although I probably should..