I couldn't connect [in the morning 6 GMT] on one machine via api-slush, but it worked just fine with stratum.bitcoin.cz:3333 on 2 machines (one at home and one at work) for whole day. Lately I had many issues with api while stratum appears to be working nicely. Always falling back to Eligius if slush is dead, but today passed without incidents (except small issue in the morning).