A noob trying to grow

After doing several nights of research and crunching numbers and stats I decided I wanted to root my phone.

I consider myself a power user or a tinkerer like Jerry says in the podcast. I'm always looking to customize my device further until I realized I couldn't go any further.

Anyway, the 5 minute process of rooting got stretched to about 30 just trying to make sure I didn't do anything wrong. (Taking notes, watching YouTube and reading from the forums) but in the end my phone was rooted! But now that I've got root, what should I do next? I don't know a lick about custom roms or kernels, but if it's as easy as rooting the phone I'm ready to dive in when I'm off work tomorrow.

Basically I want to add cool stuff to my device. I want to change everything I can to make it my own. I downloaded metamorph but found out I couldn't do anything without the themes or files. I played with the titanium backup for a couple minutes and installed adfree. Other than that I'm looking to get deeper into the customization thing. What's the best Rom or kernel? How do I change icons in the notification bar? I'd really like soft keys at the bottom. Phil talks good about cm10, maybe I wanna try that out.

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Android Central Forums

There is a nice post over on the [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...].
CM10 is great, I would also suggest Paranoid Android.
You can find a lot of ROMs for your S3 at [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...].

So, i downloaded a rom called liquidsmooth. but the home button doesnt work and the play store isnt there. also when i go into recovery it says “couldnt open directory. no files found.” what do i do now?

If there are none of the default Google Apps installed, you need to flash them yourself.
Go download them from [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...]. Get the latest JB one. Put that on your phone. Then reboot into CWM and flash the file you got.
As for the problems with the rom, you can try reflashing the rom, or you can take it up with the developer in the forum thread [Only registered and activated users can see links. Click Here To Register...].
You might want to get a newer rom, just to make sure it's supported.