So just a few useful links I've found that I figured I would post, a) for my own sake, as I'm sure these are things I'll need again at some point, and b) for the benefit of anyone else who stumbles across this post.
- If you use filter_horizontal in your admin, you get a nice clean javascript based tool that greatly improves multiple select usability. This post points out the necessary jquery snippet, plus the relevant CSS and js files to do so in your own forms outside of the admin.
- http://blog.roseman.org.uk/ has some wonderfully useful posts on optimising django queries, along with some other stuff besides. Definately one blog I'll be keeping an eye on in the future.