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Great content. No business model.

This site has always been a hobby. A “labor of love” as the cliche goes. It’s not a business, even though I have to report what meager earnings I make to the IRS, paid in the form of self-employment taxes. If this were a business, it would be a failing one. There’d be no way I could pay myself for my time. But that’s not why I’m doing this.

But that also doesn’t mean I’m against making money. Not at all.

My attempts to monetize Jammer’s Reviews have been minimal, to the point that I wonder if I’m stupidly leaving money on the table. (Probably not that much; my audience isn’t actually that big.) But my revenue-generation efforts have existed in their minimal form for a long time. I’ve had Google AdSense on the site for many years, and back in the day I used to be in the Amazon affiliate program — before it was discontinued years ago in my state because of Amazon’s then-refusal to collect state sales taxes. (It has since been restored, which was itself a number of years ago, but I never bothered to take up the program again. Earnings there also had always been meager.) (Read more…)

Sobering and trivial reflections on a 25th anniversary

Every five years in March, I seem to write this same article reflecting on the history of Jammer’s Reviews and/or the unstoppable passage of time. This marks the fifth of those five-year articles. That I’ve done this website for 25 years and am still doing it is something worth noting. I will continue to take note every five years (as long as I and my website are still here), because they provide markers for myself even if no one else cares. I looked back at some of those previous anniversary articles and grinned while taking the trip down memory lane.

But it feels different this time, because as I check in today, the COVID-19 crisis continues to escalate in the United States and across the world. Had I written this even three weeks ago as I’d originally planned, I might not have mentioned the coronavirus at all. Yes, it was definitely already happening and was a serious concern, but it was still a slow march seemingly far away, something to keep an eye on but not all-consuming. Things have escalated quickly. (Read more…)

My review as ‘Doom’ gets a reboot

doomA screen shot from the 2016 reboot of Doom.

I have to admit the headline above is intentionally misleading, because it makes this missive look like a review of something new rather than a look at something old. But although Doom has indeed been rebooted, this is not a review of that reboot. Rather, it’s using the reboot as an excuse to offer up my retro reminiscence through the Doom mania of the mid-1990s through my own personal lens, the only period of time which I could be considered anything close to a “gamer.”

Although I have a deep affection for the classic video games of the 1980s and ’90s, I can probably not be called a “gamer” — even though I’ve probably played hundreds of hours of video games. (I won a trip to Florida in 1993 by absolutely crushing my competition in a high-scoring contest of the original Super Mario Bros., although that’s a whole other tale for another time.) In my mind, “gamer” represents a more modern definition that implies multiplayer shooters, RPGs, or at the very least sports. Wii Bowling — probably not so much.

Yes, I own three versions of Nintendo, going from the 8-bit original to the second-generation 16-bit Super, and then skipping several generations to the original Wii, the latter for which I own perhaps three games and would break out usually only for (mostly drinking-based) parties back before my kids (and my friends’ kids) were born and we had time for such things. But I don’t consider those platforms ones that would make me a “gamer,” and besides, my game-playing days were left behind with those early-generation Nintendo games in my teenage years. (Read more…)

Reflections upon 20 years and the elasticity of time

clockI’ve always tried not to take time for granted. Even in my mid-20s I was keenly aware of how old I was, how much older I was getting and how quickly, and was always questioning whether I was older than the guy in the beer commercial, who represented some sort of ideal youthful adult age within the ultimate demographic. I knew even then that it was a silly notion to care about, but I also knew that one day I would wake up and not be young anymore. That somehow didn’t stop me from wasting a lot of time. Maybe I do take time for granted.

My years as a 20-something single guy disappeared long ago (the “20-something” longer ago than the “single guy”), but in retrospect that period in my life lasted for a long time, and it’s strange to think how long I was locked into that routine. I spent the better part of a decade living in the same cheap apartment and going to the same job. (Even if the job title changed a few times, it was still essentially the same deal.) Without a doubt not coincidentally, these were days that marked the most active period of my online reviewing activities. (Read more…)

Checking in for 2014, Part 2

I’ll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen: I didn’t think October, which is almost over, could possibly have gotten here as fast as it did. My last post was in January, days after my little girl took her first steps. Now she’s running around at full speed, getting into everything, speaking in phrase fragments, making pretend animal noises on demand, eating with a fork, and all kinds of fun stuff. Yesterday we took her to the zoo with her cousins. So times flies, etc., etc. (Read more…)

Checking in for 2014

Hello, everyone. Jammer here. Still alive. Just to let everyone know, this site is not abandoned. Not at all. I continue to read all comments every day posted on the website, via the comment browser, which might be one of the best features I ever put on the site. (Read more…)

Why write reviews when I could be applying for a new mortgage?

Will I ever review Star Trek Into Darkness? Yes. It’s just been a hectic and busy past few months. My adorable baby daughter is almost eight months old now and we spend a lot of time playing with her. Also, we just bought a new house, moved, and we’re in the process of selling our old house. (If I had time, I would blog about how much I hate the hassle and time/money drain of real estate.) So life is good, but also very busy. (Read more…)

Eventually I will write again

Hey, there. How’s it going?

I’ve been silent for quite a while on this site that used to be mine. Right now, it seems like it belongs more to the people who comment on the site, because I’ve been MIA so long that I’ve become more like the host emeritus. Hopefully that won’t last forever. (Read more…)

Farewell, Roger Ebert (1942-2013)

Photo by Eileen Ryan

It’s probably pretty safe to say that Roger Ebert, by a wide margin, has been the most influential figure on my writing. It’s possible, although far from certain, that had I not read Ebert as a teen, I might never have thought to write one review, let alone nearly 1,000. (Of course, that’s pure conjecture. If you pull a thread on one’s life, there’s no telling to what degree it might unravel, but maybe I’d have found another way in the same direction.)

But that’s the thing about Ebert: He was so prolific, so observant and wise, so widely read and well respected — so utterly the gold standard of all critics — that probably every writer in the genre of criticism saw him as the model to aspire to. (Read more…)

It’s a wrap: TNG’s ‘All Good Things…’


Jammer completes his website’s mission with the posting of the review for TNG’s series finale, “All Good Things.”

The first review I wrote for a general audience was a movie review for my high school newspaper, The Inkspot, in 1993. I was co-editor of the paper that year, and that was the beginning of a long relationship with newspapers (which only ended just last year). I joined the staff of The Daily Illini in the fall of 1994 during my freshman year of college, where I discovered the Internet, which had just started to become graphical and mainstream (although I would get my online reviewing start in the text-based Usenet).

As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I actually reviewed the seventh season of TNG previously, in printed booklets that I never posted on the Internet (and never will). Jammer’s Reviews as you know them didn’t start until the fall of 1994 with DS9‘s third season. The official launch of my website came in March 1995, some 18 years ago. On the Internet, that’s an eternity for a niche hobby publication. Just ask the hundreds of other hobbyist website authors from the 1990s who have long since hung it up. That was before “blogger” was a word. I guess I’ve been a blogger since before the term for it existed. (Read more…)