Start a compost pile

I just finished reading The Complete Compost Gardening Guide by Barbara Pleasant and Deborah L. Martin, and I have decided to start off composting like this:

• Turn all of the vegetable garden I'm not going to plant this spring into compost beds. Since most of it is grass right now, I'll lay down cardboard (of which I'll have an abundant supply, post-move) right on top of the lawn and cover with layers of whatever of browns and greens I can obtain. Next spring, I'll just have to chop up the piles and plant.
• Stick with the super-simple, wire-mesh cylinder kitchen compost pile I started at my first house. But actually monitor the moisture content and try to balance the carbon and nitrogen. One excellent idea in the book is "walking compost," where you keep moving the pile around every time you turn it. This makes available for planting the nice soil that develops at the bottom of the pile. I might make two of these and let them progress from the backyard to the front along the property line.
• In the fall, I'll catch some of my own worms and start a vermicompost bin in the basement so they can work on my kitchen scraps all winter.

This is a really simple system to have gleaned from such an enormous book, but I did get a lot of useful information out of it. I'm not sure if I'd recommend the book for urban gardeners with teeny yards, since most of what they describe would be ridiculous to attempt in the space of a standard city lot.

Materials/tools I'll need right away:

• Wire mesh/hardware cloth, 1/2-inch - 3 feet wide, 20 feet long (to make two bins)
• Zip ties
• Brown/carbon materials - anybody have bags of leaves from last fall?
• Greens - I'm going to start collecting coffee grounds at work, and anyone who would like to donate a freshly-clipped bag of grass is welcome to do so.
• Shovel
• Digging fork
• Hose
• Spray nozzle