It's not a bug, it's a feature

Mystery solved!

Here is a quote from the avrlibc documentation (which I probably should have looked at earlier):

In order for these functions to work as intended, compiler optimizations must be enabled, and the delay time must be an expression that is a known constant at compile-time. If these requirements are not met, the resulting delay will be much longer (and basically unpredictable), and applications that otherwise do not use floating-point calculations will experience severe code bloat by the floating-point library routines linked into the application.

This describes exactly the symptoms I was experiencing - if the function was passed a constant, it worked flawlessly. If I was using a value fetched from program memory, then the compiler was unable to determine how many NOPs should be performed and the delay was unpredictable.

I don't really know why the library function requires prior knowledge of how long a delay should last. All a spin loop does is keep the processor busy for a set number of cycles. If you need longer, you can simply put another loop around the first loop to multiply it's effects. Sure, without careful calculations you can lose your nanosecond accuracy, but when you are working in the millisecond range it is usually unimportant if you are off by a few clock cycles.

If you want the best accuracy, you should be using a timer or counter interrupt anyway...

..but that's a story for another night. I don't intend to be using spin loops for future versions anyway.

Thanks to the people who emailed me and suggested that I might be accidentally passing the value of the pointer to the function, instead of the dereferenced value. That would also explain the strange behaviour, but it would also have shown up in the compiler output.

In other news - what's up with the horrible popup?

If you don't live in Australia (or perhaps even if you do) you might be unaware that the Australian government is considering introducing mandatory filtering of internet sites.

Much like draconian airport security, national identity cards and racial profiling, this filter is supposed to be being put in place for our "protection". Because apparently Australians can't be trusted with unregulated free speech and freedom of information.

I understand that some people are willing to sacrifice their personal liberties for the comforting feeling of saftey, but the problem is not with the filter as it exists now, but what it could become.

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.