Hey there, another fellow wandering in from the no doubt epic tides flowing from Penny-Arcade's linking.
I'm an aspiring GM for D&D campaigns and I'm also eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Exodus gear as my friends are big fans of Fallout style campaigns so learning to map effectively and create environments will be a helpful skill for me to learn, particularly in the GIMP, but I'm sure there's a copy of Photoshop lying around here somewhere.
So, in short, nice to meet you all, I look forward to learning all these useful techniques and probably cribbing some of your awesome maps because the odds are they're far better than anything I can achieve.