I remember when I was a kid being mystified by girls who wanted those ultra-realistic dolls that would wet their diapers, so you then had to change them. You’d think simulated urination would be harder to sell.

I think the ”I Crapped My Pants” doll is trying to cash in on the same idea. As you can see, though, it’s a doll with a hilarious brown stain on its jeans. And yeah, that’s about it.

The picture on the shop’s site is accompanied by possibly the most useless blurb ever:

“This funny Crapped My Pants Doll litterally looks like a doll that crapped it’s pants! Great for the office.”

Huh? Great for the office? Which office? Unless you work in a plastic vomit factory, I’m thinking no.

I guess there’s only so much you can say about a doll with crap on its pants before you look like an idiot. And no, the typo isn’t mine.

Although having said all that, I think an I Crapped My Pants Barbie would be hilarious.

And any ideas what the guy in the pic is holding?

I’ll come right out and say it - you should buy this gadget. Because if there’s anything everyone needs, it’s applause. Constantly. Just to make them feel special.

The Applause Machine claps at the push of a button. And…that’s pretty much it. You push the button and it claps.

It’d actually be useful if you could lug it into plays and concerts and stuff like that. I hate that never-ending clapping at the end. Especially when the play sucks and you’re only doing it to be polite. 

Of course, it’d be cheaper and smaller to buy a digital voice recorder and record the sound of clapping, then play it back at will. But something like this isn’t supposed to be practical. It’s supposed to be, uh…I’m not really sure. Maybe a conversation starter? I don’t care, I still want one. I’m pretty special already but this may just raise me to the hallowed ranks of super-specialdom, along with the likes of dramatic chipmunk.

It’s about half a metre tall in case you were wondering.

The best nerd rap video I’ve ever seen. Full of terabytes and all the proper OG protocols, and even a low-riding office chair.

If you want measure how much of an IT geek you are, how much of this video you understand would do it.

Thanks heaps to Patrick for sending it in.

A few weeks back (can’t remember exactly, I’ve lost all sense of time lately) I blogged on a gadget that let you make religious icons on toast.

Unfortunately it was still in the concept stage, even though it’d sell like hot, well, toast on a cold day.

The lovely Alice just sent me this link and I’m so excited I have to share. Because it’s a toaster that burns an image of Darth Vader into your bread.

(Of course, it should be pointed out that if you’re cooking crumpets Mr Vader is going to look a bit malformed.)

All this begs the question, what will George Lucas slap a Star Wars logo on next? I mean, take a look around that site. Some of those collectibles should not exist.

If you’re looking for the perfect gift for the Trekkie in your life, look no further than this Star Trek Phaser and Communicator set.

Seriously, stop looking now, because nothing is going to make a hard-core Trekkie wet their pants faster than being able to pretend to shoot strange monsters or attractive alien women, then call for backup from Spock and actually get Spock to answer.

Because that’s what you can do with this. It has 20 sound effects and phrases from the likes of the Enterprise crew, though it only tells you about three, and they’re not that good (”Spock here, Captain”, “Scotty here, Captain,” and “Transporter room ready to beam up”).

No “I’m not a miracle worker!” or “He’s dead, Jim” or “Khannnnnn!”

You can say “Beam me up, Scotty”, although if you don’t know a Scotty who can beam you, you won’t get very far with it.

I’m just going to throw this one out there: everyone should be made to wear hats that show how they’re feeling about something with a little emoticon.

World treating you well today? You’d show a :)

Grumpy? You’d have >:-[

Bad hair day? &:(

Sound a bit silly? Just another stupid Reuben idea?

Not so, says I, not so. Emoticons were created because in the text-only world of chat rooms and comment threads you often can’t tell how people are actually feeling. In the real world we have hints in the sound of their voice or expression on their face. Not so online, so people started using emoticons. And then it just sort of snowballed into the glut we have today.

But why stop there? What if you can’t really tell in the real world either? All the time I talk to people without any idea what they’re actually thinking. That girl in the coffee room could be plotting my downfall or thinking about her cat or wanting to jump my bones (as the kids say, though I always thought it should be singular). I don’t really have a clue.

And that puts me at a disadvantage. And as with any other disadvantage, whether it be blindness or erectile dysfunction, I deserve some help. It’s only fair that everyone else wears an emoticon hat to make up for my shortcomings.

I was thinking today, you know what the internet needs? More emoticons. 8-|

See, now doesn’t that just make that last sentence complete? If you’re not hip to the lingo 2.0, that’s a rolling eyes symbol, implying sarcasm. It also, apparently, means nerd (see the glasses?), so I guess it’s an emoticon homonym.

So obviously emoticons make everything better. Think how Shakespeare would just jump off the page with a few of them.

Lady MacBeth: Out damn’d spot! >:( Out I say! >>:(

Hamlet: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy :-O ;-(

See?

I’m not quite sure (:-\) who this Bajca emoticon keyboard is meant for: people who use them a lot and want to save time, or people who don’t and so can’t remember what the keystrokes are. 

I’m actually shocked (:-O) it exists at all. I’d be a bit worried (:-S) that there are people out there who use emoticons enough to justify buying a keyboard just to save a few seconds. Maybe it’s a test to see if you need to get out more.

Either way, I’m skeptical (:-T). No, I don’t get that one either.

We all know couples that, well, shouldn’t be. Where one member is good looking, funny, charming or whatever, and the other is just an ugly lump of nothing. Often, for some mysterious reason, one member of the couple is a girl I quite like, and the other is her useless boyfriend. Funny that.

Well take a good long look at your partner, because you may be in one of those couples right now. The problem is, few of us have friends willing to say “Your girlfriend’s pretty ugly, eh?”, so you’ll probably never know. You may go through life thinking how you snagged yourself a hottie, when everyone else is wondering just how many branches of the ugly tree they hit on the way down.

And we all know it’s other people’s opinion that counts. No one cares what you think.

The question, then, is whether you can do better. And the internet, as always, has come up with the answer.

CanIDoBetter.com lets you post pics of yourself and your partner so the anonymous hordes of the internet can judge who’s more attractive. After you pick who’s hotter, you get to see what other people thought. Think Hotornot.com, but with more potential to be brought up in divorce proceedings.

So I had a good night’s sleep. Not sure why, but I just started thinking about work and managed to bore myself to sleep. I should have thought of that before.

But thanks so much for your suggestions, I’ll give them a try this weekend and let you know how I go. For some of them, at least. Some of your suggestions are just a bit too illegal, unethical, impossible or, um, indelicate for a single man who lives in a one-room shoebox apartment and thinks about prime numbers too much.

(Actually nowadays I’m more into complex numbers, and if you know what those are then you may just be as ubercool as me. My condolences.)

Sorry Beki, if that’s too much math for a Friday.

Anyway, enough of maths and sleep. It’s time for USB drives. Can I get a ‘yay!’ please? Thank you.

I’ve been writing about the weirder side of gadgets for nigh-on 4 years now, and I’ve seen more strange USB Flash drives than I’ve had, well, good nights’ sleep. I’ve seen ones shaped like sushi and C3PO and overly amorous dogs. You name it, someone, somewhere had made a USB drive shaped like it.

Yawn.

So I’m having trouble sleeping. Maybe it’s jet lag from European time, I don’t know. I just know I’m tired all day until I get into bed, and then zilch, zippo, nothing happens. I’m still staring at the ceiling two hours later.

If I could get by on four hours of sleep, even six, I’d be cool with that, but I’m one of those eight-hour-a-night people. Anything less and I get crabby. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m crabby.

I’ve tried all the usual remedies. Warm milk, counting sheep, whatever. It’s no use. I just can’t fall over the edge to SleepyTown, or whatever metaphor you want to use.

Excuse me a sec, another yawn coming on.

Last night I used an old routine, working out which numbers are prime numbers, which usually puts me out in a few minutes. Last night I got to about 250 before giving up. So if you ever want to know all the prime numbers up to 250, I’m your man.