I think it's extremely important to learn how B + N coordinate so I believe everybody should really spend as much time on it as necessary to master it 100%.

It really helps your general chess imo.

I even tried to learn the much more complicated Q vs R ending, but eventually I gave up because there's not really recognizable patterns and I felt I was wasting too much energy.

Yeah, I've looked a lot at rook endings, but never run into the book positions in my games, but the concepts are still helpful to know. Any idea how I could have played this better? http://tinyurl.com/ao2cbm2

Andyeah Q vs R is a really tough endgame. I even find Q vs N harder than BN. BN I found pretty simple, from the corner it's a forced series of moves and getting to the corner is a lot more tricky but not massively complicated.

I have been playing chess 25 years. It has happenend to me exactly once. In a live game. And I had just been studying them, too. Unfortunatly, I only had a few seconds on my clock, and had to settle for a draw.

Yeah but will you remember it several yrs later? I've had to take several "refresher" lessons over the years even though I know all the basics (you can only mate in or next to the corner the Bishop controls, the King and Kt cover the squares the Bishop can't, etc etc)

Now I think I finally have it down and maybe Estragon was right after all, but not in your case if you can really do the Mate In 34 in 5-10 minutes OTB no matter how long ago you studied this. 

AND, K+Q vs K+R is way harder IMHO than this ending I've studied it several times and still don't think I "get it" and it's also rare, which is fortunate because the one time (eons ago) I had the K+Q vs K+R I couldn't win!

Well I can certainly do the technique corner to corner, I imagine I could still get to a corner, but may struggle under time pressure.

Once you reach the Philidor position (there's a Philidor in Q vs R) it's an easy win. The problem if getting through the "third rank defence". Apparently it was invented by a computer.

In 1978 GM Walter Browne was unpleasantly surprised to discover he couldn't beat a PC (Belle, the "Deep Blue" of chess back then) playing K+Q vs K+R "off the top of his head" with no preparation. He had to study the ending prior to his victorious rematch. I dunno who invented the "third rank defense" but  I figure if a decent GM like Browne had trouble here trying to win this ending "cold turkey" so will a lot of patzers - like me for instance.