There are other (better) more practical tutorials out there.....
That one is mostly suited for confounding young EE students. When you search, just look for 555.
CMOS means Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor which is a low power use implementation
of transistors.
I'll post my schematic when I find it and get it uploaded. Maybe I can get a page tacked on to my album
explaning how to build, where to get the parts and so forth.