Choosing your knitting needles

I'm not much of a knitter, really I'm quite the newbie at it. I have one short scarf and a pair of socks under my belt for the last 1 1/2 years since I was taught to knit. That's not going to stop me from touching on this subject though.

Okay, so we've established that I'm not an expert by any means. So in this case I will defer to the mass appeal of internet knowledge out there. Cause seriously, even I know that the right set of knitting needles means the difference between success and heartbreak.
So let's start at everyone's favorite, Wikipedia. The article there on knitting needles is nice and relatively simple. The good thing about Wikipedia is that it's user created so the article is most likely to be written and edited by people who know what they are talking about. The bad thing about Wikipedia is that it is user created so sometimes (beside the obvious intentional edits by bad seeds) the terms can be a bit too technical. That or I'm an extremely lazy learner... the verdict is still out on that one.

Okay, so maybe I need something that catches the eye a bit. You know, the kind of thing that tells you were all the important sentences start. Not that every sentence isnt important. Just that, if I want a quick browse through I know those sentences are going to provide more information then a random one in the middle of the page. Just like the eHow.com Article on "How to Pick Knitting Needles." It's short, simple has bullet points... it even list the difficulty as Moderately Easy. I think that was being very generous.
So, maybe you want something more indepth then EHow.com but less then Wikipedia. Well, keeping with the theme of user-edited websites, lets combine the two and search wikiHow.com. Why not? Obviously in this age of "anyone can write on the internet" you managed to stumble across my blog, filled with my opinion/reaction/wordiness. Why not zip to another site were someone else can teach you something that you didn't even know that you needed to know until you decided to Google it one day.
But really I like wikiHow's knitting article because it uses the ancient art of the bold lettering. How many times have you skimmed over an article and not stopped at the bold print. Seriously. You have to try to miss something important about the size, diameter, length or material types. Plus if you are looking for specific information you can jump right to it. But alas, again user created and edited so how do you know if what you are reading is valid or any good? I guess you just don't unless you have been there. It's always been said that experience is the best teacher.
So for what it's worth, I would just go over to Expert Village and ask Michelle about it. Why read something for the next 5 - 10 minutes when she can tell me the same thing in under 2? Sure she is prepping us on how to pick needles to knit a scarf. You can't really blame her though since most new knitters (such as myself) always end up knitting a scarf as their first project. But hey, if a scarf wasn't your first knit object, I'd love to know what you chose and why?