Hey,
So for some one who is starting out with Support Vector Machines, there is just loads of material out there which does not make immediate sense. I found the following resources (may suggest in exploring in the order mentioned) really helpful, maybe they can help you out too :http://www.tristanfletcher.co.uk/SVM%20Explained.pdf
http://pyml.sourceforge.net/doc/howto.pdf ( Personally, I found this brilliant and it took some effort to dig this up)
Finally:
http://videolectures.net/mlss06tw_lin_svm/
Hope this helps..