I also would recommend Understanding Exposure. Also, go on youtube and search manual mode tutorial and you'll get a bunch of stuff too. Same with searching aperture, ISO, and shutter speed.
I almost always am shooting people/portraits. I keep my shutter speed no lower than 160 - preferably 200 or higher, and I like my ISO (shutter speed) as low as possible to keep graininess down. I prefer to have a shallow depth of field, so 90% of the time, I use as low an aperture as I can. It really reduced background busyness. I almost always keep my aperture (f-stop) set to the lowest possible setting for my lens, then I adjust my shutter speed to 200 usually, and the ISO is what I normally change to get the lighting I need. I just look at the in-camera meter and adjust. That probably sounded like a lot of psycho-babble, so sorry about that! I know somewhere there is a tutorial thingy where you can play with the settings online and it shows you the results just like you are looking through the camera. I loved playing with it. I will try to find it, but I don't think I have the link anymore.
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