New Project: Learning how to do electronic cartography

Despite early exposure to computers and using computers for both personal and business ends, I am not very savvy outside of spreadsheets and accounting/tax software.  Back during the hey-days of DOS 5.x through 6.x, I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about software, so much so that I had memorized the slash commands for Lotus123 and WordPerfect and had a hard time adjusting to Excel and Word.  With the arrival of Windows 3.x in the early 90s, I decided to go the accounting route and leave the computer route to those who liked to run cable through drop ceilings and constantly take courses to keep up with new computer technology (funny thing is about that decision, accounts are constantly training themselves).

So, since I've got back into gaming and I love maps and I love to draw maps (poorly I confess) I've been wanting to do my own maps on the computer.  I don't care for what either, Battletech, Traveller, Warhammer, generic D&D.  I just want to be able to do maps.  Guess what.  Its a pain in the ass.

I picked up Fractal Mapper 8 a number of months ago (why didn't I choose CC3, you don't want to know) and have taken/read a number of tutorials and have prowled the cartographer forums and I still haven't produced crap.  I feel totally lost when I look at graphic programs, whether its CC3, FM8, Inkscape, GIMP, what-have-you.

Well, I think I've finally have started to make some headway and I'm going to start posting examples of what I'm doing for both comment and pointers.