sTrider_7:
I read somewhere that I can use another Arduino as a programmer (have a spare Uno lying around), but how do I go about doing the whole thing?
If you are going to use a programmer regularly, just buy a USBasp off ebay for $5 or so. The "Uno as a programmer" is a good party trick, but a bit Rube Goldberg-ish for regular use. The USBasp will also have useful features like a slow clock generator.
sTrider_7:
The Arduino language & IDE has a bunch of annoying bugs and I'd like to just code it in plain old C. I have some experience with PIC mcus, but they're just rubbish :d
Lots of people program Arduinos without using the Arduino IDE. I myself use Emacs + makefiles, others use things like Eclipse + one of the plugins for Arduino. There are also several projects current where people are having their own crack at writing a better IDE. The thing is, it's the gnu compiler + avrdude sitting under the IDE that's really doing all the work -- the IDE just provides a simple editor and a certain amount of preprocessing of your "sketch" code into something that (hopefully) will be acceptable to the gcc compiler. What the IDE preprocessor really does isn't really that much (and it doesn't do it very well anyway, IMHO), so it's no great loss to work without it. Many (like me) see it a definite advantage, in fact.