Whatever race you choose in Eve Online you can train other races ships so you are never stuck to one race. The races are actually reasonably balanced. The only exception to this is Caldari who are the best pve race but the worst pvp race.
The most important thing when creating a new character to think about is your attributes as these affect your training time: Perception is generally regarded as the most important attribute as it directly relates to your ability to train skills to fly different types of ships. Intelligence is in my opinion the second most important attribute. Memory and Willpower are reasonably important and Charisma is pretty useless.
If your looking to do a lot of pvp I would advise not starting the name of your character with either A,B or C. The reason for this is that in larger fights targets are usually sorted alphabetically and then killed from A down.
To plan character development an excellent tool is EVEMon
