Fire Truck

If your home page is set to ‘Your latest posts`, use
get_query_var('paged')

If your home page is set to ‘A static page’, use
get_query_var('page')

😉

How do I modify the html title element to include ‘notes’ rather than the default of just site plus post title?

if(is_home()){
        single_post_title();
    }

with subpages, how do I include the name of the parent in the title?

if($post->post_parent){
        echo get_post($post->post_parent)->post_title;
    }

Yes.

You might want to read this thread -> http://wordpress.org/support/topic/limit-categories-by-owen-winkler?replies=16

You can indeed use a filter to do the job, this may be simpler. Add this to functions.php

add_filter('wp_nav_menu','do_filter_wp_nav_menu');
function do_filter_wp_nav_menu($html) {
    $needle = '<span class="option-separator">~</span>';
    $pos = strpos($html, $needle );
    if ($pos !== false) {
        $html = substr_replace( $html, '', $pos, strlen($needle));
    }
    return $html;
}

Use this script as a base. http://pastebin.com/8dpbHmxC

^^ Works for me. 🙂
Backup the wordpress database.

Add the lines

echo '<pre>';
print_r($_POST);
echo '<hr>';
print_r($post);

to the end of my function do_edit_post, change is_awarded to yes, press Update button and post the content that will appear on the screen in the Pastebin.

Note: this will temporarily break the edit function. 😉

Create a function that hooks into edit_post hook, read the values form the $_POST array, if is_awarded set to yes update values in the database. 🙂
http://pastebin.com/3g2xNMjk