Thanks for all that - along with justpi, it's a tremendous help - some changes in effect - more to come

currently working on trying to fix the footer i've inadvertently messed-up

Try it without the top and bottom borders:

#access,
#colophon {
	border: none;
}
.hentry {
	margin-bottom: 0;
}

To target that rule so it just affects the home page, add a ".home" class to the front of each selector like this:

.home #access,
.home #colophon {
	border: none;
}

When working with absolute positioning in such a precise manner like you are (i.e. text needs to be placed exactly in a certain spot relative to the background image), it might be best to set position with pixels not ems. Also, it will probably help to do the positioning inside a relatively positioned element.

Check out this page:
http://css-tricks.com/absolute-positioning-inside-relative-positioning/

And then try this example to see what I mean:

.entry-content {
	position: relative;
}
#navigation2 h2 {
	margin: 0;
}
#navigation2 ul {
	margin-left: 1em;
}
#navigation2 {
	position: absolute;
	top: 280px;
	right: 30px;
	height: 130px;
	width: 90px;
	overflow: hidden;
}

Note, it's possible you'll want to prefix all of those selectors with ".home" if that main graphic you're using will just be displayed on the home page.

Another trick I use to visualize things is to temporarily set a border so I can see things a little better. Here is an example you can preview:

#navigation2 {
	border: 2px dashed red;
}

Try Inconsolata or Anonymous Pro for the site title on the Appearance → Custom Design → Fonts page to see if you like them. They both have a very technology-esque feel to them.

Great work so far!

Thanks again -

c) that works perfectly!

b) (as a separate issue, unrelated to above) I'm still interested in finding out how to identify a particular page - ie how and where to find the page identifier. I'd really like to know what sacredpath is referring to and where it can be found.

b) The thread you linked to is irrelevant: it refers to the header image, and it refers to removing it selectively.

c) You can easily hide the top menu by adding this:

#access ul {
    display: none;
}

d) The top menu can be removed even if you don't have the CD upgrade. See this post of mine, at the very bottom:
http://wpbtips.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/custom-menus/

tried various methods to get rid of it, no luck. I don't really need header on any of my pages, so I'd be happy to have CSS code that eliminates the header block entirely.

thesacredpath posted on a similar issue last year, but I'm not sure I fully understand.

If you look in the opening body tag on individual pages, you will see a list of CSS classes that are declared, and one of those is the individual page ID which looks something like this: page-id-257 .

I can't seem to find the above. Where can these be found?