Bah. I'm not going to quibble about the change as: a) it's not my pool b) you're not charging me to use it and c) I support anything that provides competition to the big pools.

but..

I liked the completely random payouts. The main reason I switched was (well OK, that was for the block bounties, but the other main reason was) just for a bit of a gamble. Days after day of nothing and then days where it came pouring in. Being a small pool the randomness was even more wonderful.

I can understand the change, and my love of variance isn't quite enough to drive me to mine solo..

How about bolting on something interesting to separate yourself from the other pools (I'm sure you're just twiddling your thumbs with nothing better to do). Opt in a lottery - say donate 10% of profits to a pool and then randomly give the pool (less admin costs naturally) to somebody in the round (each share gets one ticket).