Custom Boot Loading

I too have noticed many gaping holes in the Altera documentation regarding boot loaders. I am beginning my own design and am considering the use of a boot loader. I am a newbie on this sort of FPGA/NIOS based design and need some assistance in consdering all of the pitfalls I may run into on this. There is some great info in this post, but at this time is over my head. What other resources can I refer to while I come up to speed??

I have already obtained quite a bit of the Altera documentation regarding Serial Configuration Devices and have read them over thoroughly. My intent is to use a single NIOS in a system to reprogram the Serial Device itself. One thing I don't know at this time if I need a separate FLASH component to do this trick or not. I have a NIOS dev kit with Quartus 7.0 and will be experimenting on this very soon.

Any input to this will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.