[sdiy] Newbie? AHHHHH!

[b 111]

Hello List,
I'm new, not just to this list, but to electronics in general. I've been 
into analog synths since the age of 15, about 10 years now, but never 
thought of building anything until recently. I've been learning out of Craig 
Anderton's Electronic Projects for Musicians, and Radioshack's Basic 
Electronics books. So far so good. I've learned a bunch, but the first 
project I built failed to work. Oh well, learn how to troubleshoot. I have a 
plan, build a few of the projects out of Craig's book, then move to a small, 
easy synth, and on to bigger better things. Now that you know what I'm up to 
I have a question. Christmas brought me the gift of a cool tool box with 
lots of compartments. I want to put resistors, capacitors etc, in their own 
little space but i'm afraid that once I seperate them from their packaging, 
I won't know what they are. The resistors are easy, so no problem there. 
Capacitors! Different story all together. I mostly buy Radioshack parts a) 
cuz' they're cheap b) cuz' they're close. How do I translate whats on the 
packaging to whats printed on the capacitor itself?
Example:
Package reads:

.022uF
Polyester-Film Capacitor
Sub-mini PC-mount  Radial Leads  50WVDC max

Capacitor Reads:

2A
223K

I can assume that 223k = .22uF +/- 10%.
What is 2A?
Does this have something to do with the fact that this is a Polyester-Film 
Capacitor vs  Disc/Ceramic or Electrolytic?
What is Sub-mini PC mount?

I have another one that reads:

270pF 1KV
Disc Ceramic
+/- 10%
Capacitor

the unit reads:

Y5P
271K
1KV

What is Y5P?
These books, as good as they are, fail to explain this.
Also, are there any websites that explain how to construct on vectorboard or 
breadboard? I think it would be good for me to learn this way before sinking 
the cash for building my own PCBs.

Thats it for now. Been lurking on the list for a couple of weeks just making 
shure it was not way out of my league.
Thanks in advance.
Brad

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