Software side of the things will be the biggest challenge early on in the process.
On that front, I thought I would post a quick software tutorial so that people can get started quickly, again ghetto style,
I have been asked if I could post my complete projects used earlier in this thread. My projects utilize tons of middleware so it is quite "bloated" - a blinky for example takes over 2 minutes to compile on a dual quad-Xeon (3.0+ghz), 12GB machine, for example.
Instead, in line with the ghetto spirit, I would post 1 single file that can be compiled under CoIDE to blink an led - that would greatly simplify your life.
The code posted will be code in such a way that if you wish, can be split into multiple modules for future uses.
First of all, pre-requisites:
1) you have CoIDE installed. I am running 1.7.4, with updated components. You can download the latest one and install.
2) you have gcc-arm installed. I am running an old version (4.6 or 4.7 I think). I think the latest is 4.8 but I never bothered to try it.
Once CoIDE is installed and gcc-arm linked in (you only need to do this once), you are ready to go.