Well, I finally managed to slog my way through all the installs, code revisions, errors, updates, missing puzzle pieces, unclear or nonexistent documentation, and just plain stuff that didn't work, and came out at the other end with a working implementation of neural style transfer that's fast enough to do low-end video with a decent card in almost real-time. And this is the version I finally hammered into place.
https://github.com/lengstrom/fast-style-transfer
Left in the dust are at least seven other implementations from virtual machine images that didn't have virtual drive space to load all the virtual dependencies to the root version of this version written in Lua. No, I didn't learn any Lua. Yes, I learned (some) Python... which has empty lines that mean things... and indentations that aren't just for style... how many languages... and that was a new one on me. joy. (Kliban Cat Calendar pic used for style)