Module development and code questions

I am developing a module with a page that I want to display without blocks (it's a Google Maps mashup). Is there simple way to hide all blocks without creating a custom page.tpl.php for the module? Also, I noticed that in 5.0 theme('page', $output, FALSE) can be used to hide the "left" and "right" blocks. How about the "header" and "footer"?
Thanks!

Okay where to start. Basically I'm fairly new at everything so I mainly want to see about the possiblities and maybe a nudge in the right direction.

Basically I was thinking of an image board archive sorta thing that would sorta work like a typical imageboard posting like futaba japanese style imageboards. I want it more in line like this though http://e-shuushuu.net where you can enter in source information and what's contained in the image if applicable. It would post pretty much the same way except there would be a section that would put all those sources into a listing alaphbetic and clicking on those it could also have a filter that could seperate what's listed as contained in the image. Like if I posted a scene of a car racing an airplane as it takes off then I could have the source as maybe Machines and then under contained I could put "car" "airplane" so when I got to the list I'll see a text link to Machines . .clicking on that will have thumbnails of the images and there will be a filter list that contains car and airplane in it. so if I have a listing of airplanes all "airplane" listings will show up along with this one since it's writtin in there.

I was wondering how possible this was since I was looking through avalible modules and not seeing anything that was exactly like I wanted then I thought isn't this sorta like how users are made? a name is created they can upload an image to associate with that name and profile fields can be added to associate with all of it.

I development a custom page for the user profile which is gd for starters but now I am trying to add the following to the uer profile page and seem to be lost for a bit...

I would have liked to:
1. Display a list of all of the events for the specific user while he is viewing his profile.. not sure how to do this...
2. Display a list of my buddies pictures from my buddy list which would send whoever clicks on the images to that
3. Display the contents of my blog
4. Display a link to my forum

I've got a custom filter that I use to process nodes written in a special purpose XML language. This all works nice and now I want to take control over the syndication.

As far as I can understand, drupal automatically uses the function node_teaser() to decide wath to include from a node during syndication.

I've set the teaser lengt to unlimited, otherwise the XML will break. This causes the RSS feed(s) to show the whole filtered node.

I regularly check for module updates on the site but find this very time consuming and tedious. I was thinking about ways to simplify this process. I have come up with two solutions:

1. Account tracking

When you login to drupal.org and download a module, its details should be added to your profile. This would allow notifications to be emailed to you when a module is updated.

2. An update module

Greetings. Until yesterday, I had a good thing going with Taxonomy. It was simple, effective, and I didn't have to worry about it coming home drunk one night and putting it's fist through the wall.

Then out of the blue, someone introduces me to Category. Of course it seemed like a good idea at the time, as these things go. Category was impressive from the start, nearly brimming with confidence and heartfelt promises. In fact, I really dig its complexity; almost admire its daunting nature.