If you haven't had a chance to check out Google's brand new Street View option of Google Maps... you need to check it out, it is amazing.

With Google Maps Street View, you have the ability to 'fly' an orange avatar around the Mapscape and drop it on any street or location that is highlighted with blue. Once you've selected an area, you get to view an actual photograph taken at that location -- with the ability to move the camera a full 360 degrees! In addition, you virtually move up and down the streets using helpful on-screen arrows and street names (overlapped on the image by Google Maps).

Luckily for those of us living in the San Francisco Bay Area, many areas are already photographed and available to view. What this technology will eventually provide for Real Estate is incredible ... the ability to view a home's neighborhood online, basically "driving" up and down the streets nearby your home of interest.

Click on the Google icon to the right of this post and then use Street View to check out a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge I saw while I was on Marine Drive.

Rich Barton, Chairman & CEO over at Zillow.com, has had his own home for sale using the Zillow platform for around four months now and it has finally gone into "Pending" status (soon to be sold, escrow almost closed).

As of this post, the home as received over 5,085 pageviews! An amazing accomplishment. Rich and his Realtor, Gordon, really used every feature of the site to increase interest and the number of pageviews (including placing a link to the home's Zillow page at the end of every e-mail Rob has sent out, very smart tactic).

Hopefully they will be able to change the status to SOLD very soon! Congrats.

Costco.com is now carrying the 4.0 mega-pixel EX-Z4U Casio Exilim for around $340, a good price from a great semi-wholesaler. Costco doesn't usually carry items for very long, so I am not sure how long that little link is going to work.

I said Casio might be the answer, but that doesn't mean this exact model is the answer! Though a decent deal, the new EX-Z40 is set to be released by the end of April 2004 for around $400 MSRP. Boasting 2.5x longer battery life and a faster "boot-up" process, this new model looks like it will be the one to get. I'd keep my eye on Costco.com over the coming months. If this current model sells well, I am sure the new model will be on the site soon enough.

There is a DJ known as Dangermouse and he sure knows how to live up to his name. He has put himself in a lot of danger by playing a cat and mouse game with a few big record companies and their artists. Namely, Jay-Z and the Beatles. Big enough.

Dangermouse mixed and combined Jay-Z's "The Black Album" with the Beatles' "The White Album", creating a hybrid album he has dubbed "The Grey Album". He only got about 3,000 promo copies out before getting the smack laid down upon him by EMI, etc. Fortunately for you, there are many people who are trying to get this music out. You can download it directly from the folks at Illegal-Art.org or use your file sharing program of choice (use Bittorrent if you have it).

I'm concurrently downloading the album to my mobile phone and my laptop from the Illegal-Art.org site. Yep, it is just that good. Wanted some good music to walk with this morning.

It is 6:16AM and I am already busy typing away and transferring files, yay. In other news, I have stumbled across two very good (in my humble opnion) articles regarding health.

One was about a study done on how drinking around three to six cups of regular coffee a day can decrease your chances of a heart attack by 50%, plus the benefit of the normal effects of caffiene in your daily routine. Nothing like waking up with a ... etc.

The second was an article I read just this morning at CNN.com (link to article), although I think I have seen it posted there before (perhaps they just recycle news every few months... wouldn't suprise me), regarding a study with mice on a calorie-restricted diet of sorts. Basically, if the mice are any indication, humans may be able to extend their lifespan by eating less. Eat less food, live longer. Fair trade-off. Eating less doesn't mean eating crap. I think it turns out to be just the reverse. When you deliberately eat less, you start to realize that the majority of food you may be eating is complete crap and not worthy of being consumed anyway.

Happy Tuesday morning to you. Time to brew some coffee. It is good for you.

I just caught wind of this Japanese film, titled Casshern, that is about to be released in Japan's theaters. After watching the trailer, in Japanese - with no subtitles, I am already convinced this will be an absolute buy for DVD.

Check out the trailer at Apple's site, in Quicktime.

For the last several months I have not posted anything. There are a lot of good and bad reasons why. No point going into them, I'll just try to start posting more often.

I started to post reviews of movies we have seen in the last year, around thirty in total, in the Movies section. A few interesting insights: one, I am amazed how many films I saw during 2003, two, I am astonished how difficult it is to review so many films at one time (as opposed to reviewing as soon as I saw 'em) and three, I will no longer attend theater releases of films as it almost costs just as much to own the actual DVD. Dan Shea and I have agreed to pool "skipped movie" funds in order to buy the DVD versions we find worthy of watching.

President Bush is speaking on television at the moment. He realizes that the majority of jobs in the United States are provided by small businesses. We lost 1,000,000 jobs because of "the enemy" and that, to me, means more than a bunch of small businesses shuttered their doors. He also just stated that Death Tax is unfair and we should "be able to pass assests to whoever we want" -- whoops, I doubt that's what his teleprompter said. It yielded a nice laugh from the audience, though.

As of a day or two ago, the weather here in Marin and Sonoma counties has improved by leaps and bounds. Springtime (well, almost Summer-like) skies and temperature makes you want to head straight to the beach. Hopefully this weather will continue for at least a few weeks. It will mean more photos for the Gallery section of the site, including images from my new-found Pronto! Polaroid camera. More info on that later.

"With McDonald's Corp. stock taking so many bad hits lately, the company has taken to drastic measures in hopes of alleviating the pressures of health-conscious consumers who are steadily veering away from their sub-standard menu offerings.

In McD's latest attempt to revitalize the ailing restaurant chain, executive chefs at McDonald's Corporate have retained the services of the one man who might be able to bring new life to their next hamburger product. Well, at the very least, this single man will be able to beat several hamburglars senseless in the process. He is Mike Tyson.

Many undercover agents have given their very lives to obtain this exclusive photograph of the mad science occurring behind McDonald's doors at their Food Science Development Center. The photograph below reveals the very core of the McDonald's empire, Ronald McDonald, (wearing a standard-issue Insane Clown Scientist yellow lab coat) looking on as former heavyweight champion "Iron" Mike Tyson erects what he acknowledges as the future of the McDonald's Corporation. Massive golden arches made entirely of McDonald meat.

Behold the power of Food Science! Introducing McDonald's new Beefcake Arches! As Eric Cartman would proclaim... "Beefcake! ... beefcake!" Who better to create arches made of McD beef patties than the infamous "Iron" Mike Tyson. And hey, if you don't like how this new product tastes? Well, let's just say I hope you don't meet up with Iron Mike in a dark alley with his insane clown posse accomplice, Ronald."

(* for those who believe anything they read, this post is merely poking a bit of fun at good ol' mega-goliath corporation known as McDonald's. They are not really releasing a Beefcake Arches menu product. Well, at least not yet. Faces of the innocent have been blurred to protect their identity, because I can understand why no one would want to be in that photograph in the first place.)

Caught the Year of the Rabbit show at the Pound in San Francisco. It was a few nights ago, but I am going back in time with the magic of web posting to give a quick review of what I thought of the show and the band.

First off, the Pound is an interesting venue -- to say the least. It is off the beaten path in SF, near what seems to be an industrial section near water. The setup is alright, although, to be safe, I'd stay far away from the kitchen and/or consumption of the food offered for sale there. Paul's previous band, The Poison Apples, played the same venue a few years back. Place hasn't changed at all.

The opening bands, who I cannot name off hand (and it isn't worth my time to even bother looking up their names), were just not worth seeing. I hear a lot of the people just waited outside, but I sat it out though and listened through every set. Year of the Rabbit (YOTR) finally came on stage and definitely showed their higher level of skill. Ken Andrews, of Failure fame, was really great -- even though Paul mentioned to me later that Ken had a really bad cold and was really low on energy the whole night. Speaking of Paul, he spent about 99% of our time there backstage and we hardly ever saw him. Nothing wrong with getting some quality time in with Ken Andrews and the gang, I say.

I can't wait for Analogue to start hitting tour dates, so I can catch some shows like this one. YOTR is great and all... but I'd much rather see Analogue live, personally. The new Analogue website should be up and running within the next couple weeks; I have the pleasure of working on part of it and am looking forward to seeing it in action when the new Analogue EP is released.

Excellent announcement regarding Mario's Italian Subs, soon! On an entirely different note, ever dealt with the U.S. Trademark/Patent office? Avoid it, if you can. Actually, the government's trademark attorneys aren't bad at all -- as helpful as they can be. It is just dealing with all the legalese and endless forms involved in getting a trademark registered and getting that nice little ®!

I think the temperature soared to around 95 degrees in SF, earlier today. It was just too hot to stay in Marin County today, though. Around 4PM it was decided that a quick trip to the Marin Headlands was in order to enjoy the cool air in the vicinity of Baker Beach. The coastal air was more than comfortable -- it was near perfect. A few annoyed surfers spotted the blue ocean; annoyed since the waves were not very large and the surf was calm.

I basically spent an hour or two doing nothing, just enjoying the cool air while I could. Getting some relaxation, here and there, is probably the best way to recover from burn out and negative stress. During the twilight hour, just before departing, I took a few snapshots and uploaded them for viewing in the photo gallery (http://gallery.bubbo.com) under the title: Baker Beach. I also took a few MPEG videos of the surf and a small child getting served a face of sand by the waves; which, unfortunately, are not online.

Dan Shea and I have been attending some Wado Ki Kai workouts at CoM Kentfield over the last few weeks. It is an interesting style, and different than what I can recall from attending Ito's, which was like Koshu Ryu Kenpo.

In the summer & the overwhelming heat though, you sweat like mad doing the Wado Ki Kai excercises -- even the stretching. Earlier today, I was checking out wadokikai.com. I noticed they have some QuickTime videos of each Kata (movement excercises, varying by belt ranking) which might be of some interest to view.

At my personal Blog page, I've placed an indicator on the sidebar that keeps updated with what I am currently reading, listening to, and supporting, etc. All of these features are updated via the same layout I am using for daily log entries -- so expect updates on a semi-regular basis.

Also of interest, is the "Upcoming" area -- featuring events and any travel I might be undertaking this year. There is a great interactive map, named IndyJunior, that I picked up from Bryan Boyer indicating Upcoming items. It is definately well worth making the donation of $5 via the Amazon Honor System that Bryan is requesting. Go Indy!

I am thinking about moving over some older logs I was keeping at LiveJournal, sometime in the near future. Nice overview of my time spent at Agilent Technologies.

The entirety of bubbo.com is broken into several sub-sites, denoted by subdomains. For example, as you may have already gathered, michael.bubbo.com leads here, to my blog.

I feel sorry for anyone who wants to copy or attempt to replicate what I have developed here via my code. Let me tell you, it is a mess. But a customized-mess! I can always seem to easily recognize my html layout, no matter what condition it may be in. I went all out on this site and I am positive it will serve me well.