Getting started with FPGAs

FPGAs are pretty awesome. But what are they, and how do you use one? Search no further than here!

A Cyclone III FPGA chip on an Altera DE0 dev
board, up close.

An FPGA is kind of like a CPU, but more awesome. Just like you can reprogram a CPU to do different things, you can reprogram an FPGA to be different things. In other words, you are given a whole bunch of logic gates and the complete freedom to hook them up however you want. Think about that for a moment.

That's the awesomeness of FPGAs.

You can make audio processors, password crackers, Bitcoin miners, and even parallelizable GPUs and CPUs - all on an FPGA.

The question is, how?

Building a home workshop

My work table. The pill bottles at top left
are for storing SMD components. The adhesive
labels Digikey sends with these components
are the perfect size! 

This post is for all the serious hackers and EE majors out there who want to build cool stuff at home. Some of my friends have seen the mess that is my apartment/workshop, and began wanting to build up their own home workshop. So they ask, "What should I get first?"

To begin, you can check out a list of things I think a serious hobbyist should have on SparkFun. I am assuming that you have maybe a few basic tools, but you want to do some more advanced stuff. Of course, I'm not giving a Divine command ("Thou shalt buy a temperature-controlled soldering iron with a brass sponge and a chisel tip!"); this is just a strong recommendation.
https://www.sparkfun.com/wish_lists/62754