Random Circle Generation

Hello Group

I'm completely new to Grasshopper (I'm a woodworker) and thought this would be a great tool to explore forms that I can translate into sculptures after the design process, so this is my jumping in point.

What I am looking at doing is using noise (perhaps Perlin) to generate random circles shapes that flow along a curve defined my me. Each circle gets extruded later leaving small gaps in between them. An example of what I am attempting to accomplish is similar to Daniel Widrig's Kinesis Neckless seen here. (That guy rules!)

I spoke to a friend who does procedural programming for a massive video game company (a company which shall remain unnamed ;)) but he sent it to me in Houdini which he uses. The logic made sense but translating it into Grasshopper is difficult for me as the component names are obviously different and less refined for newbies like me.

Here is what he came up with (simplified along a simple curve to demonstrate it to me):

I believe the logic would go something like this?

Generate circles along a NURBS curve which are perpendicular to it. Create a plane or patch within these circles then tell GH to apply noise to the edit points on the circle but only perpendicular to the patch plane so that the planes don't fold or kink. Then I tell each patch to extrude itself it a variable length. 

Does this sound at all correct? I've attached the first stage of what I've come up with but it's kindergarten level and far from complete, I can't figure out making random shaped circles and then figuring out how the noise changes each progressively as they propagate along the curve.

Any ideas would help incredibly! It's tricky stuff to figure out intuitively coming from an art background without programming experience but here I am trying to figure it out. I've been watching tutorials and got a book but jumping into a personal project has always been the best way for me to learn.

All the best and apologies for such a simple question. 

LG

circles_01.gh