Creating Left hand side blocks for menu items

[gateway]

I have played with alot of software but this seems to really be causing me issues on modifing the look of my theme.

I want to create a block on the left hand side of the screen with all the menu items for the user, and under that another block that shows the last pictures uploaded.

im looking though theme.php but its a bit confusing, not sure I like the way the header, footer is set up in this file. well i guess im just not used to it.

[gateway]

hehe never mind, i found it, just pretty tired today and had to much sun.. but i would like to know about the last pic uploaded being shown..