Two projects (plus final exam)

I have two projects I want to tackle to get me over a few programming concept humps.

The first is something practical - read in and dump out values in a .plx (Plexon file format) file. I choose this because it's relatively straightforward and would be a big boost to my street cred at work (as well as, you know, help me be helpful to my customers probably). I have started this project already and the issues I've had with reading files will be the subject of my next few posts (spoiler alert: local variables - including pointers - are destroyed after exiting a function).

The second project is a bit more ambitious. I'd like to make a small simple little game. The traditional console-based game to write is blackjack, but I'd like to get out of console world sooner, so I'll be attempting to do some basic GUI programming. I'm trying to narrow down my options, but QT seems to be the obvious choice. I don't think there will be too many hindrances (says the newb) trying to do it in straight C (as opposed to C++). If there are, I'll look at TK or something. I'm still in the early research phase here.

I have actually decided on what project will be my litmus test for being "good enough" at C to move on to other things (C++ or whatever). It's another game since games integrate so many concepts of programming. So, I'd like to make a Lunar Lander clone. It's a simple 2d game, and it will force me to try and do a little physics programming and learn OpenGL along the way. It would be super awesome if I could integrate hand-drawn graphics and sound. I'd like to shoot for early 2011 to be at this stage of the learning process.