I saw a 5M strip of RGB LEDS (SMD5050) on amazon that were "used" for 2/5 the original asking price, so I decided it was a pretty good idea to snag it. Upon arrival I inspected that product and noted that the built-in connector with fragile pins was busted. It didn't really matter as
Treading onward, I soldered a female header onto the end of the strip and attached it to my stripboard prototype platform. (see last post) A floppy drive connector from an ATX PSU became actually useful because it plugged into the pin headers on the stripboard happily.
I compiled the fantastic pi-blaster library and powered the contraption up. After debugging a few connections I was able to change the light colors successfully but I may be dealing with some odd capacitance or such along the way that messes with the MOSFETs and PWM unpredictably. But it's a good start.