As for everyone else, if you're still having issues with my extension, email me at support@btcgear.com and I'll see what I can do. I can make a test site and/or test bitcoind server available to one user at a time which can make troubleshooting much easier.
Thanks for the email. I have replied, hopefully this can be made to work with the blockchain.info JSON RPC API
Yes, it is my intention to be independent of the middle men. I haven't been as brave as you to try and install the payment module, and I'm not skilled enough to help you sorry. As my shop is just starting I'm thinking about just providing a fixed bitcoin address. I don't think that's any different from providing details about a bank account. for business it is cheaper though. Before I do that I want to be able to charge the customer for the transaction costs - to make it clear what the difference is between say paypal and bitcoin. I just learned paypal forbids you to separately add the transaction costs, and I'm curious if they're going to cut me off 
I think the problem of providing just one address is that you will not know who has sent you the BTC :-/
As said above though just do a discount for BTC, many sites do this (10% off or similar) if you pay by bank transfer rather than CC