Hacking your own electronics

People are saying it's becoming easier to do one's own gadgets in recent years. I was given a couple of cool references related to this:

"Hack a Day", for the ideas:
http://hackaday.com/

and "SparkFun Electronics", for parts:
http://sparkfun.com/

I am not sure that I can do any of this yet, given my "great talents".

But then if someone would have told me a year ago that I'll be playing piano or making my own ceramics, I'd be very surprised, and yet I have done quite a bit of both in the last few months. But I had very good teachers in both cases.

I wonder whether there are teachers running electronic labs around here...