Just a quick question that I couldn't find the answer to in any documentation:

It seems to me to be necessary to send a lcd_clear_and_home() command after declaring a custom character. It is done in all the examples I could find and on the NK site and it is the only way I have managed to get it to work. If I try to declare a custom chr and immediately print it, nothing happens.

Now, this is not really possible for the project I had in mind (long story). Is there away around this?

use a delay?

Use this liNk http://www.nerdkits.com/library/customlcd/

it gives you code to make a custom LCD character