Comments

1) The "bullet" is a junction point. That dot is telling you that you must make an electrical connection there (i.e. solder the wires together). If the wires cross and there is not a dot, then they should not be connected. Be careful, though, some schematics are sloppy and don't always make things clear. Also, some schematics will have a little "hump" when two wires cross (but don't connect), to make it easier to determine if it's a junction or not. 2) For pots, you're always going to wiring the center pin, that's the wiper (the arrow in the above diagram). Your other wire will go to either the left or the right (viewing from front/shaft), depending on desired behavior. If this is a volume control, I'd say put it on the right, that way your resistance goes down as you turn the pot clockwise (lower resistence, in this case, means greater power to speaker = louder). Worst case, you'll wire it backwards and the sound will go down when you turn clockwise. Just swap the sides. Pots are pretty hard to kill at these voltages. 3) I'd recommend picking up a little "breadboard" and using that to practice with, as you can focus on the circuit and not your soldering skills. Once you have it breadboarded up, and have it working, then you can solder it up. Also, see if you can pick up some sockets for the chips. That way you can solder things together and not have to worry about overheating the chips in the process. 4) The 555 has been around since the early 70s, so there's a lot of documentation out there. Very widely used for blinky-stuff, etc. I've found this site to be very helpful: http://www.kpsec.freeuk.com/555timer.htm