In fact, I do have one similar to progress bars. Have a look at the skills section in home page (http://veerasundar.com) where I show a strength bar for each skill.
When I ported the skills section, I just decided not to include the progress bar.. may be I should add it there too.
No. That was a good call on leaving it out. For your layout and font size, the progress bars add no value (in fact it has the opposite effect).
For your layout, I would recommend a colour scheme of four colours, with a certain colour denoting expert and certain colour denoting novice, and others in between. Have legend on the top saying what is what and that will provide the same effect.
Since you are also using hResume, why not use http://judy.github.com/ which would do a better job of showcasing your side projects like "twitkural" in a better way?