Is there a way to make smart selections in blender? Say I select an edge, skip the next edge and select the next one, I need a tool/script that extrapolates this selection pattern across the edge loop. Preferably this tool should be able to do the same thing with faces/vertices. A friend of mine is trying to learn blender (he actually has some experience with other software packages) and when he asked me this question I couldn’t answer him. Strange thing is that it never even occurred to me in the four or so years that I’ve been using blender 
There’s a “pattern select” script which may do some of what you want
http://www.hybird.org/~guiea_7/#PATTERN_SELECT
From the Geom Tool guy.
Many thanks to you and to the Geom Tool Guy. This seems to work perfectly 