How to begin with wordpress and start creating themes

Hello All,

I’m just new to wordpress and I want to know some things about it so I hope you guys can help me.

First of all I have a couple of websites that I want to convert to wordpress site’s.The question that i have is not just how to do it but more how can i learn it. I have an account on lynda.com and there are some videos about wordpress. Here are the links to the vids. beginning and the second one is creating a theme

Now how can i best begin to learn and understand wordpress and learning how to create themes and convert themes in general.

Are these video’s a good way to learn it or does someone have a better tutorial/way for learning these things