Rigging Logistics

Just stumbled across these tutorials/threads in my research - I'm collecting them and thought I'd share them here to run them by you guys. Some of them seem complicated/over my head, and I was hoping you could let me know if they're feasible options.

Stretchy Spines:
http://www.darksuit.com/tutorials/StretchSpine.html

(or, apparently, I can just scale the bones mathematically - check out the last post):
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=88&t=821678

Spline IK for the Tail:
http://www.animationartist.com/2003/08_aug/tutorials/softbody_tutorial.htm