Wow, you've put a lot of thought into that.
Second this. Nice design man. I bet you have a few of those drawings sitting on your computer.
I thought about different configurations like that but it calls for a great deal of customization and said customization becomes rather expensive quickly. I really had something similar in mind for my space while i was toying around with the idea of a customized flouro tube set up. My idea though was four bound together as a central column and then 4 in each corner much like yours. I ended up only making half of it because of funds.
I saw an extremely productive set up where a guy lined the interior of a large plastic trash can with VHO's and gave it 360 degrees of light. In the end he had a plant that completely filled the trash can, i think it was somewhere around 30-50 gallons. So i think you're "prime growing" locations are correct. Now if you really wanted to go full out with your design you'd put a fluoro tube at each corner of the squares of the grid. That'd be another 8 more and it would make each grid space a "prime growing" location right?
All that said for my space fluoros were not the right choice and i'll explain why:
First my grow room needs to be stealth, i have a lot of people over on a regular basis and no one can know, well because they're all stoners, and it gets pretty dry here and they all start fiending. Last thing i need is my friends turning into my customers, bad deal right there. Money + Friends = Bad always. Plus i have no desire to sell and they'll definitely try to weasel it out of me.
This means that i have had to suffer on power with a few items of the grow. As a whole my ventilation is a little under powered, I'm venting a thin but tall linen closet with just pc fans i mean what do you expect. Being under powered though i still run a 78-83*F grow room temp during the day and then ambient room temp at night (70*F). I did that by making the vent holes adequately sized.
With under powered ventilation i absolutely had to cool tube my lights to remove that heat completely from the grow room as i am not able to exchange the air in my grow room enough to remove the heat. I am only able to exchange it enough to suffice as a fresh air source, and again not as a means to control heat. This is the first problem that arose from using fluoros, i had to rely on my ventilation to remove their heat and not a cool tube. When i added the metal halide and cool tube i was able to switch out the fluoros that were adding overall heat to the grow room and replace it with a light that barely gives off a trace of heat. I think my room might actually be running slightly cooler with the new light. Thats why i have the range of 78*-83*F because today my room was showing a temp 78*F when it had been constant at 83*F for the duration of the fluoro set-up. It needs more of a time trial before i can say the grow room is running cooler.
To continue with why they we're not a good choice for me was that for their wattage they heated my room too much for my ventilation to handle. This means that i was stuck to being able to use a low overall wattage of light in my veg area. This threw off the timing i was trying to maintain to have a relatively productive perpetual cycle of 1 plant every month. Because the fluoros were not giving off enough light for the plant to veg to the proper size to be moved into the flowering chamber in time to maintain the schedule, everything got all out of whack. I'm hoping with the (9000 MH - 2800 FLOS = 6200 Difference) 6,200 lumen jump in lighting will allow my plant to veg to the right size in time to maintain the perpetual cycle.
Haha that answers your early flower question from earlier Jig, The wife informed me that i was trying to maintain my cycle and thats why it went into flower.
Ok Kali here's the short version:
For my space and equipment, the fluorescent tubes gave off too much heat for me to put enough of them in there to veg my plants in the proper amount of time for me to maintain the cycle that i want to.
I felt i had to give the response to your post as much effort as you put into it.
Jig: Hmm yea i see your point. I think the buckets will be arriving within the week or early next week. Also my plant is sort of small as it was a small clone so giving it a little bit of time to grow is a good idea i think. It will show slightly better. So i guess my answer is i will wait another week to start the journal, this will give me time to work on my revolving detachable scrog prototype for the buckets. Hey i'll be able to start the journal with a good set of build pics which is always appetizing and should draw in some viewers. Thanks for the input. It's always appreciated.
... daddy's little girl and everything. 
