The Actual Reason I'm Not Attending Starfury: Elementary

If my title caught your attention, you are likely to belong to one of two groups. Either you're a disgruntled Sherlock-fan looking more reasons to be outraged about this event. Maybe you read this article in the Birmingham mail, or maybe you helped fuel it, who knows? Or I caught your attention, because you're a Starfury regular, who cannot believe I'm about to throw more kindling into the fire. If you're in the first group, it's you I'm looking to address. If you're in the second, then guys, you really ought to know me better by now.

Why Amazon just lost a customer (and should lose more)

I'll have to admit, the first time I ever heard about the issue of pirated books, I scratched my head in confusion. I didn't understand how that was even a thing, because the way I saw it books have always been a non-restricted medium (no shipping restrictions, no customs charge), and I saw no reason why e-books should be any different - if any, they should only improve the situation as you could read the book instantly after purchase. The only restriction I could foresee was that not all books would make it to the e-book format, but then again, those books wouldn't be available to pirate either - so I saw no issue. Until I had a lovely chat with Kindle Customer Support about why a recently published book was not appearing in my Kindle store...

When the verification process just gets ridiculous

I get the idea behind account verification, and the idea is good, but can quickly get annoying if you're not being given a choice. Lately, I've been feeling that with Microsoft. Not too long ago they were pestering me to up the security on my e-mail account, which was irritating enough, but I got through it. But the process I had to go through today is nothing short of plain ridiculous...

Why I HATE region-locking!

It's all around us, this artificial blockage of entertainment. We have region-specific releases. There's region-locking on game discs and cartridges, DVD's and blu-rays. While friends of mine in other countries may purchase episodes of television shows through their iTunes, mine only allows me to purchase apps and music. I pay around twice as much for my Netflix account than my American friends, yet I only receive a fraction of the shows and movies that they do. I actually consider myself lucky if a television show I follow is only four months behind the American schedule. It's an out-dated, artificially created system, and it's downright pissing me off.

I'm not modest or self-deprecating, alright?

One of my main hobbies, both within fandom and out is writing fan fiction and making fan videos. And a natural process of this is to share it with friends and other fans. A part of this hobby is to receive and respond to feedback, and I'm not going to lie, like any other self-respecting writer and vidder, I love getting feedback, especially praise (although I do also appreciate criticism as it really does help me learn to get better at my craft). However, some people just take it that one step further.

People I do not get

So, the one thing all geeks can relate to, regardless our passion or fandom of choice, is how often we have to hear from non-geeks just much they simply don't 'get us'. We hear it from family members, to classmates, to colleagues, to random strangers... we simply cannot get away from it. We're told how we 'have no life', how our interests are 'just a phase’, we have to defend and/or explain all kinds of aspects of our interests pretty much on a regular basis. Yet, we are always expected to see the non-geeks' point of view. I think pretty much every geek in the world is aware that not everyone shares or understand their passion and interests, but it doesn't seem like non-geeks realize that their interests can be just as baffling to us as ours are to them. So, with that in mind, I'm going to make a list of people/interests that I simply do not get...