Hanks' Thumb Shot

All Joking Aside (AJA), That's What Makes Twitter Worthwhile (TWMTW)! I Didn't Know (IDK) Movie Stars even had Thumbnails (TNs)!
Seriously, folks, a day never goes by that Twitter doesn't give me at least a small chuckle. Between TrollFoot, Hanx, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, Allysa Milano, Conan, Dave Winer, Rolloff, Shandling, et al, someone always delivers. Cheers to all, because these days, with the passings, troubles at NetFlix, and the Phillies losing, we all need a laugh!
The Baseball Observer

My Favorite Booth at CES 2011

The South Hall Lower Level at the Las Vegas Convention Center was filled with sounds like I imagine it would be like if everyone carried boom boxes instead of iPods. Every imaginable musical noise, and some not so musical, emanated from aptly named booths such as Earthquake Sound Corporation, Zound Industries, Sonic Emotion, and Skull Candy. But one booth usually only produced a faint scratching and jingling din. That would be the Gibson guitar booth, where there would always be a dozen or so smiling guitar players wearing clunky headphones emanating from black boxes attached to electric guitars. "Picking and grinning" may be a trite expression, but it was happening continually at booth 20949. I joined them a few times (maybe more) myself, not being able to resist the re-creations of the legendary Les Pauls and the amazing self-tuning, bluetooth-enabled Firebird. Gibson bought a lot of other products, aside from the demos, and shared the booth with corporate stable mates Wurlitzer, Dobro, Epiphone, and others, but I could never get past the those guitars. Maybe next year.

CES 2011

Freshbaked and the Baseball Observer will be at CES starting January 4th. Watch this space for a running commentary along with tweets and re-tweets to the left on this page. What will the electronics industry come up with after the introduction of 3D HDTV at last year's show? Maybe a bigger question will be what can all of Apple's competitors do to counter the iPad? Will Microsoft finally come up with something to make them relevant again? These and other questions may be answered, but maybe not.