newbie wonders how to start c++

ok, here is the problem
i need a real life project to learn stuff like this. at least this is how i learned asp and php... u know, u face problems that u have never thought about during these projects in contrast to problems faced while reading tutorials telling you to print hello world on the screen, calculate the area of a rectangle, or creating a simple object... (i already know these)

i found some online syllabuss but while some are just simple, some are just too much (involving graphic stuff)

does anyone have a suggestion for me regarding how to move to the next stage? anything that is comprehensive and challenging enough for a beginner would do...

tic tac toe done in console is pretty easy, especially if you don't do any AI. Can you make that? If not, start there.

Why not just get a book and look at the more advanced exercises?

Sorry, I'm not thinking of any good problems right now... Tic Tac Toe is good and it gives you practice with two-dimensional arrays. (So does Connect-Four, I had to do that for a Java class.) The class where I learned C++ was actually a Data Structures class, so unless you want to implement an infix to postfix parser or a B+ tree, I don't have any good ideas for you!

Try reading through some of the contest ideas here, maybe you'll find something to do there.