I was talking to some friends at school tonight, and I realized what a barrier it can be to actually get some of the open-source geospatial tools I’ve talked about on this blog going. So I’m going to start a series about how one can get started with these tools, from a level-zero technical knowledge (of course, I assume basic GIS knowledge—if you know what I mean when I say buffering, geocoding and vector analysis, you’re fine).