BarCampLA-4 is here! LAist has been a friend, attendee and proponent of BarCamp since the beginning and this time is no different. What is BarCamp? Here is their definition (it's really the best): BarCamp ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees. If you like, it can be overnight, like camp! BarCamps - and......

If hitting a 95-mile and hour fastball is a monstrous feat of athletic ability, then competing in the Tour de France is an almost incomprehensible feat of brainpower. When your brain says no, when your muscles ache, and when your body begins to shut down from the pain of riding 100 miles every day for a month, how do you continue to ride up the face of some of the tallest mountains in the world?...

Solving the age-old problem of "how do I properly get the perfect amount of mud on my balls", 17-year-old Cameron Kruse has gotten the attention of Science Fairs, Major League Baseball, and a local beach-side university. Little known fact: brand new baseballs straight out of the box need to be rubbed with a certain amount of special mud to prevent the balls from slipping out of pitchers' hands. Using a brilliant combo of lasers,......

As happens every year, the wattage from the collective star-power gathered for the Oscars turns the universe into a dim bulb. But just before the big day, local braniacs at Cal-Tech have managed up another amazing astronomical feat. Using the Spitzer infrared Space Telescope, scientists peered at two planets, (360 and 904 trillion miles away) and for the first time, were able to identify molecules in an extra-solar atmosphere. The problem observing planets orbiting......

Today is Groundhog Day, and in keeping with the arbitrary tradition of letting overgrown rodents dictate our seasons, George Bush and his Energy Policy Act of 2005 have decided to give us a large order of Spring, with four extra sides of Daylight Savings. Yes, for real. The bill amends the Uniform Time Act of 1966 by changing the start and end dates of daylight saving time starting in 2007. Clocks will be set......

Photo by Melyviz Submitted for your viewing pleasure, some webcams from in and around our fair burg. Venice, Pacific Palisades, LAX, Avalon Downtown, Long Beach, Burbank and others are over here.......

Can't decide which side to bet on in the DVD format war? Love being an early adopter of technology? Want to pay way too much for a DVD player? Here's your chance. South Korea's LG Electronics just unveiled the "Super Multi Blue," a dual-format high-definition DVD player that supports the HD DVD and the rival Blu-ray Disc formats. LG model BH100 will be available in the U.S. beginning in early February with a suggested......

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is latest in a line of billionaires who thinks we should all be able to space travel. This week, one of his side projects, Blue Origin, announced the launch of their rocket. he says, "We're working, patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system. Accomplishing this mission......

Happy Birthday Create:Fixate! You are 5 years old! And TONIGHT, in honor of this momentous anniversary, KCRW and The Onion are presenting a massive, one-night-only, art exhibition extravaganza called “Alive in Los Angeles.” In true Create:Fixate style, this event will include unique, live painting, musical happenings, experimental sculpture, interactive photography, multi-medium displays, t-shirt screen printing, and video installations. Come early with the fam. Come late with a date. All humans welcome. SATURDAY, December 9......

Attention LAXers, BURbankinos, ONTarioids, John Wayne SNAholes and LGBeachettes… !! Six airlines announced yesterday that they will be adding iPod connections to their fleet of big Tylenols. For those flying the friendly skies on United, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and Air France you will soon have the power to run and charge your iPod while in flight, as well as watch videos on the seat-back display of the fidgety, sweaty guy in front of......

- Yes there is a marching band called The Santa Ana Winds - Yes, Raymond Chandler wrote this about the winds in "Red Wind": "those hot dry [winds] that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks.......

Loma Linda gears up to build a $41 million citywide fiber optics network. Residental and business buildings will be required to obey a new building code law that will require fiber. - Gigaom "Every bathroom stall on the (Google) company campus holds a Japanese high-tech commode with a heated seat. If a flush is not enough, a wireless button on the door activates a bidet and drying." - Washington Post For the man who......

Welcome to the latest edition of “Ask the MACist”. The column where I answer your Mac and Mac-related questions with hopefully more clarity and insight than you could ever need. You may have noticed that today is Monday and not Saturday. Well, as of this week "Ask the MACist" will now be appearing every Monday here at LAist instead of Saturday. So, mark your calendars! Plus, my apologies for not having a column last......

Offering low-cost clothing to slim-hipped wastrels isn't easy, and Swedish clothing chain H&M strives to stay on the cutting-edge of cutting costs. Competing in a cutthroat global marketplace, the company has found that budgetary consciousness doesn't only apply to the factory floor, it can extend to the highest reaches of the corporate machine thanks to the advances of the computer age. To that end H&M is the first major retailer to deploy the PR-Bot......

Interested in a shiny new High Def DVD player but don’t know what format to get? Confused about the quality of HD DVD versus Blu Ray DVD? Afraid to go into your local Best Buy and see what all the fuss is about and ask the twelve-year-old kid that works there a question? We don’t blame you at all. To get the scoop on at least one of the competing formats, HD DVD, you......

In what must surely be a blow to video gaming enthusiasts, scantily-clad women, fans of scantily-clad women and, of course, the City of Los Angeles, the Entertainment Software Association announced Monday that they are going to scale back the size and scope of E3 convention next year. In fact, the convention, the video gaming industry's largest, most-likely won't be at the LA Convention Center either. Instead, it will take place at various hotels around......

Blake Gottesman, not Karl Rove, is the most influential man in the United States, as he truly has the President's ear. The 26-year-old college dropout (he attended Claremont McKenna College for one year in 1999) has been President Bush's special assistant and personal aide for the last four years. How powerful is Mr. Gottesman? This May he became one of the very few (if not only) applicants who was admitted into Harvard's Business School......

It seems perversely fitting that a group committed to poking holes in our most cherished beliefs would set up shop here in la-la land, spiritual home of New Age America and breeding ground for some of the nation's creepiest cults. But that's exactly what the Pasadena, California-based Skeptic Society sets out to do every quarter in its magazine and through the writings and lectures of director Dr. Michael Shermer. Recent subjects have included artificial......

Do you think President Bush took some time out of his busy schedule this morning at UC Irvine getting protested by demonstrators on both sides of the immigration debate (neither side seems to like to the guest worker program...or each other much for that matter) to check out the HIPer Wall at UCI's Center of GRAVITY? Outside of showcasing how much UC Irvine loves acronyms, the HIPer Wall is the subject of an Apple......