Oh yeah, forgot to add: any general/beginner tips are more than welcome. 
For photography:
Don't shoot in full automatic mode, you should shoot in either Av or M.
Av is aperture priority which means you can set the aperture manually, then the camera will set the shutter speed automaticly. That way you have have full control over you depth of field.
M is the full manual mode where you must set ISO, Shutter speed and aperture manually, that way is slighty more complicated, but you will have full control over your camera.
If you are shooting fast moving objects, such as freestyle its really important to set you shutter speed as high as possible, that will enable you to "freeze" you subject so there wont be any motion blur. For taking freestyle pictures you should set your shutter speed at 1/320th of a second or higher to freeze your fast moving subject. Just know that the higher you set you shutter speed, the less light you let in, therefore you should bump up your ISO (always try to keep you ISO as low as possible), or you could set the aperture as low as possible to let more light in to the sensor.
that was mostly about photography, but hey its a photo camera ;)
Hope that made sense