LED Cubes

So I've had my Arduino UNO for about a week now and have been playing around with all it can do by hooking it into a breadboard with some other electronic components to get a grip on the programming and functionality.  One of the goals of this was to build an LED cube, but the really amazing 8x8x8 cubes use custom programmed ATmel AVR chips.  While this is something I want to learn how to do it's a bit too big of a stretch for me at this point since I'm only just starting electronics.  The little bit of programming background I have has been really helping with the coding needed, but I'm just too much of a noob with electronics yet.  So I'll have to learn the fundamentals first, luckily I just found a half decent guide I'm going to try and follow that should get me up to speed with a single color 3x3x3 cube using an Arduino UNO.  I'd like to move onto RGB LED's eventually, but I don't want to make this first task too difficult.

I need to find out if any local shops carry electronics like I need.  Living In Juneau, Alaska right now and we don't have much in the way of electronics stores.  There's a small radio shack store, but they don't carry electronic parts anymore just consumer stuff.