I built sometime ago both Bus Blaster and XC9572 boards and successfully used Bus Blaster to program the XC9572 and my own Kemani clone based on Altera EPM3064.
I faced with couple of problems with these builds. Bus Blaster using resistor arrays makes it pretty complicated to fix soldering defects - I use frying on the griddle method (to lazy to solder all these small pitch chips), but some amount of solder bridges is inevitable. While finding and removing these bridges is pretty easy on TQFPs, surprisingly it is not so with small resistor network - it is sometimes easier to desolder it altogether than to remove bridges.
Another problem was with XC9572 board - I have an older version, which incorrectly routed one of the I/O pins to VCCIO. I did not mount a capacitor on this pin, and fortunately was able to cut the trace on the back so I can use the pin (which is still marked as VCCIO) and use another, real VCCIO to power IO bank.
Bus Blaster, still without connector
XC9572 being programmed
Probably you can see the cut trace on the back in the middle of "Fullfillment by: Seeed Studio"
I designed small 2-layer PCB for a version of Ladyada Game of Life (gentle forum filter complains about URLs, so use Google). The board is two-side, front has 16 0603 LEDs on it, back has ATTiny861, 4 resistors, 4 FETs, 2 capacitors and one button.
The board was prototyped through Laen's PCB group order (no URL for you here either ;-).
One side with TQFP processor was soldered on a hot plate, 16 LEDs on the other side soldered manually.
The board's firmware is not ready yet - the processor is quite different from the original ATMega 168 - less pins, less memory, fewer timers etc.
The LED activation is implemented as 4 x 4 matrix with columns connected through FETs and rows connected through limiting resistor directly to ATTiny. The idea is to activate one column at a time - thus FETs, and light up to 4 rows for every column - so we can get away with direct connection of row to processor pin.
The board is alive - first test lights the LEDs and senses the button.
Next step is a full port of original firmware with communication protocol - the boards can be connected to form large Game of Life field.
I'd appreciate suggestions on cheap 4-wire side connector.
