Hey i just registered and thought id say hi and ask if anyone has any advice they can give me ? Im really new to this whole thing but im hoping to go to university to study Ethical Hacking & Countermeasures, so i was wandering if anyone could give me any projects to work on to try and get used to what it is like, i have many networked PCs in my house so i could use one to test on etc.

Here's a few things I'd recommend from my experience:

Read the Hacking Exposed books

Buy a copy of VMware Workstation, or just download VMware server if you can't afford it. Setup a lab, install and try every OS you can get your hands on, run pen testing and vulnerability assessment tools against them. You'll likely be using VMware on the job as well. From experience I recommend running it under Windows, simply for the effortless hardware support (it'll save you time, trust me)

Throw out any major OS bias if you have one. OS zealotry will get you nowhere in this field...you better know Windows just as well as Linux, because you'll be seeing it a lot. It's not too hard to stay sharp on both though, since you'll be running most of the tools from Linux

Start studying the CISSP CBK, even if you're a ways off from taking the test. It's a very good foundation of knowledge for security and gives you a good idea of the business aspects of it as well.