balduro, what are your thoughts on the erratic block times? I've been watching closely today and I think it's more complicated than just "diff is too high for a few blocks". Just over the last few we had a ~1 minute block, ~15min block and we're passed 1 hr trying to find 2787 - all with roughly the same total network hash rate. KGW isn't going to magically fix this I don't think, since it won't adjust diff mid-block. It seems like having a high diff (to target 10 minutes) with a fairly low network hash rate (about 1 gh/s) magnifies the randomness.
FWIW I'm calculating the network hash rate from totaling the 3 big pools pages reported Pool Hashrate. They are pretty consistent with cryptoculture around 500, aur.pool-a ~300, easy mine ~200. I don't see any evidence of a private pool like middlecoin jumping in and out since all the blocks from 2770 on are showing up on one of those three pools.
EDIT: just saw two blocks get mined within a minute of each other. pulled from the block explorer to show what I'm talking about
2783 - Time: 1393006158 (2014-02-21 18:09:18) @ DIFF 364.999
2784 - Time: 1393008017 (2014-02-21 18:40:17) @ DIFF 243.334 * 31 min
2785 - Time: 1393008109 (2014-02-21 18:41:49) @ DIFF 243.334 * 32 seconds
2786 - Time: 1393008936 (2014-02-21 18:55:36) @ DIFF 243.334 * 14 minutes
2787 - Time: 1393015166 (2014-02-21 20:39:26) @ DIFF 243.334 * over an hour
2788 - Time: 1393015170 (2014-02-21 20:39:30) @ DIFF 243.334 * only 4 seconds!
EDIT 2: It looks like there might be a multipool jumping into AUR periodically.
http://blockexplorer.auroracoin.eu/a/apx5e this APx5E26TGu4vbvvGencXAFcHC3HjPSgWRX
address has grabbed the last 6 blocks in about 30 minutes and none of those block # appear on any of the AUR pools I'm aware of. Interestingly the reported networkhashps is under what the 3 big pools total so that appears to be calculated using an average of more than those 6 blocks. I'll stop adding to this now, I promise :-)