Hey Neill,
I haven't tried your 4 bit library yet. The newer init code I posted above works fine for either a 2 or 4 line display. A quick glance at the excellent links you have on the LCD's processor's internal init functions leads me to believe that it probably isn't necessary to do a hard init of an LCD unless you want it to do a mode other than its native format (ie getting a 2 line display to only do 1 line). I don't have a 1 line display so I can't check that configuration. Thanks for the tip on the integer to string function. One thing I do enjoy about the Arduino is actually having to worry about keeping code lean and mean! Reminds me of the "good" old days with my Timex Sinclair 
I could see people either using the "clear screen" or "reset to home" commands depending on what they want to do. "reset to home" sometimes looks nicer because it doesn't have the slight flicker that the "clear screen" function has.
Another interesting thing I found this weekend, after writing a little mac app to talk to the Arduino and set stuff on the LCD (if anyone's interested I'd be happy to post it) is that the serial(USB) port only seems to take in 65 bytes max at any one time? Is this a limitation of the hardware or the serial library?
At this rate, I might not get a chance to mess around with this until the weekend, but I've got plenty of stuff to read and try, thanks to you. Good show.
Dave