Starting with AVR Programming and ATMega Chips

I really enjoy microcontrollers but wanted to understand them in more detail. I saw on O'Reilly media they were having a book sale and noticed one specific to AVR programming. It essentially is a book of programming the chip series that is used on the Arduino and many more. The book is called Make: AVR Programming and I happened to get it 50% off. It takes you through three levels including beginner, intermediate and expert. It doesn't take much to get started. I purchased a few components I did not have on hand and the biggest purchase is an AVR programmer. I bought the AVRISP mkII from Digikey (I think it is now discontinued?). There are others that will work as well. I've started to walk through the book and worked on some basics. Everything is coded in C and the book walks you through on installing all the necessary programs as well. The image to the left is just an example of controlling multiple LED's. I altered the code several times and created several different patterns. Most recently I had the chip hooked up to the computer using Serial-USB communication. Everything I've done thus far has been outputs. The next chapter is inputs so the famous push button example will be up next. Here is a video of one of the patterns I created.

AVR LED PATTERN