Wednesday, 17 August 2005

Martin and Mikal jumped the gun slightly and have mentioned that the papers from the conference are available. I'm actually in the final stages of extracting the last remaining ones from a few speakers who haven't coughed up yet (you know who you are).

I was suggesting Steven hold off announcing to lca-announce until such time as the majority of the papers were up, so people wouldn't have to keep checking back for the one paper that wasn't there yet, but was wanted.

Oh, and while you can browse at http://lca2005.linux.org.au/Papers, the papers are also linked in from the conference program pages, which may make finding a specific paper easier.

Sarah and I went to see Rove McManus Stands Up this evening. It's been a while since I've seen some stand up comedy.

I think the first thing that took both of us back a bit was his gratuitous use of the word "fuck". It's not like I've never seen a comedy act that didn't rely on massive amounts of cursing and swearing to get a laugh, it was just a bit of a surprise to hear it coming out of Rove's mouth, compared to what you see from him on TV. I'm personally don't think it's all that necessary either.

The thing I was most impressed about was his ability to ad-lib and adapt his act to what was going on in the audience. That and the fact that he localised things a bit. He made reference to catching a bus to Woden for example. Little things like that showed that he took the time to research where he was performing.

Overall, good value for money. Good night out.

Oh, and why shouldn't you get on the wrong side of him? Well he spent a sizable chunk of the evening paying out on Australian Idol's Anthony Callea, which apparently stemmed back to a rehearsal for the Logies, where one of Callea's minders asked him not to make a short joke about him.