Al Gritzmacher’s Blogosphere

In amongst all the self-congratulatory baloney at the Oscars last night, an award was given for Best Short Film. They showed clips of past winners and the films their makers went on to do after they had won this endorsement. It seem that the short film Oscar is the touch of gold for a budding director. Let’s hope so, because I’d like to see more of this…

Logorama

Well, I picked up a new vehicle today. New to me, 2005 model. It cost me just about what the insurance is paying for the poor Envoy that was totaled.

The vehicle I bought is an Isuzu Ascender, which almost nobody has even heard of. I hadn’t. Isuzu doesn’t even sell vehicles in the U.S. anymore. So why would I take a chance on a lame-duck used vehicle?

Simple. It’s just a rebranded Chevy Trailblazer/GMC Envoy. If you don’t look at the badging on the truck, you’d swear it was an Envoy. Inside, it’s almost identical to the 2003 Envoy I had and the trim details on the outside, that I think are “different,” I’m not so sure they’re not just due to the 2005 model year as much as the different name. Continue Reading…

I mentioned Ninite a few posts ago as a useful site for setting up a newly installed operating system.

Google has a similar offering in it’s Google Pack. I was aware of it, but had never really looked at it. For some reason, I did today.

It’s similar in a lot of ways to Ninite, and offers a number of Google applications. But, since many of my favorite free applications do come from Google, it’s not a bad starting point. Continue Reading…