Completely new to DIY electronics

And I had a couple of questions: 1) About how big is the circuit board that I need? 2) In the cable schematics, I think I see that there's a couple of resistors in the ICSP cable for programming the pic; what's the best way to make said cable, and how would I wire said resistors into cable? 3) This isn't a megadrum question; why do I always want to capitalize the first letter after a semicolon?!