I've discovered a great site for tutorials in blender and it's like a full course curriculm with videos and lessons that would be useful to the rest of our writers. Just today I finished the first lesson which goes over some basic modeling and animation. Here is what I created from that first lesson.
The name of the site is the Blender 3D Design Course. http://www.gryllus.net/Blender/3D.html. This site and the lesson are put together by a man named Neal Hirsig and he does a great job with the presentations. Try it out, you may find you will learn some tips and tricks that you did not know before.