Lol, the school of hard knocks man. Just reading a shitload of analysis, spending lots of time analysing charts (trying every indicator in the book before realising I didn't need any of them), and making a lot of bad trades on a live account. Nothing teaches you like losing money.

For my demo account, I went with Capital Spreads (they let you use a demo as long as you want).  However, FXCM has the most awesome charting package around, and the way their platform works makes trading really easy.

As for my background - I have a degree in literature and philosophy and I work in online marketing ;)  I've always been fascinated with things like economics and the stock market, but I've only even known anything about trading for about a year and a half.