The article looked fairly generic enough to be able to use the other CSPs: RijndaelManaged, DESCryptoServiceProvider, and RC2CryptoServiceProvider. The trick was finding the right key size!
Wikipedia to the rescue, again. From the info I found there, I was able to extend the simple encode/decode application I wrote yesterday. I also thought up a fairly good schedule to start on my quest.
From there I shall go over the other algorithms and hashing stuff.