[titan9]

Regarding the alternate picking thing, there's actually a helpful exercise in a book I bought a while back(can't think of the title). Anyway, what you do is you spend two minutes each on the six strings(total of 12 minutes) and you just do alternate picking. You start slow, and as you get more precise, you increase speed. Eventually, you'll be able to alternate pick really fast(that's what happened to me after using the exercise for a month or soon). And it won't be sloppy picking, it'll be precise, crisp picking.

However, the exercise does get really boring after a while. So I like to apply the alternate picking to scales. I'll play the chromatic scale(0-1-2-3-4 on each string except the third where it is 0-1-2-3), e phrygian scale, pentatonic minor scale and some other ones as well. Usually this is a part of my "warm-up" routine, which typically lasts 30 minutes(the next 30 are usually spent on songs, originals and covers) and includes scales, techniques and things of that sort. I have a pretty structured practice routine because I tend to get sloppy if I'm not organized.