Recently in Toys Category

This plastic pad comes with a refillable felt tip pen that holds plain water. When you draw on the pas with a pen (or a brush loaded with water), it produces a pleasingly solid blue line. When the water dries, the line disappears completely. My 3-year-daughter plays with it almost every day. $18.99 on Amazon

Is it worth paying $130 to get the newest version of the Nintendo DS, called the Lite? I say yes, for one reason -- the screen is so much clearer and brighter than the first generation DS that when you compare them side-by-side you will never want to use the old one again. The screen alone is worth shelling out the money, but you also get a much smaller, sleeker device and a chunkier stylus. $128.99 on Amazon

Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS is my 8-year-old daughter's current favorite obsession. It's not a game. I would describe it as a music synthesizer with cool animation. It will record your voice or accept input from your stylus to produce wonderfully weird music.

Even though it's hard to explain exactly what Electroplankton is, the interface is so easy to use, and the results so immediate and pleasing, everyone I show it to becomes instantly charmed by it.

The one sad thing is that you can't save your favorite creations. That's too bad, because I think this could become a legitimate musical instrument. $34.99 on Amazon

I looked at the sales reports for 2005 and compiled this list of the top 14 best selling items reviewed on Mad Professor (and Boing Boing). Here they are:

1. MAKE: Technology on Your Time Volume 04

2. The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

3. Gonzo Gizmos: Projects & Devices to Channel Your Inner Geek

4. Worlds Worst: A Guide To The Most Disgusting, Hideous, Inept, And Dangerous People, Places, And Things On Earth

5. Life's Little Annoyances : True Tales of People Who Just Can't Take It Anymore

6. Strange Angel : The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons

7. Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV (33 1/3)

8. Personal, Portable, Pedestrian : Mobile Phones in Japanese Life

9. The Apprentice : A Novel

10. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture

11. The Week

12. One Two Three . . . Infinity : Facts and Speculations of Science

13. The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight : Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution

14. They Have a Word for It : A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases (The Writer's Studio)

Thanks for visiting Mad Professor. BB has over 300,000 daily visitors, and MP has about 3,000, so I consider you all the cream of the crop. *:)

About five years ago, Carla bought me a cheap ukulele for my birthday, and I hated it. I couldn't get it to tune properly, so it sounded awful. I was about to give up when I heard about a funny-looking plastic/wood hybrid uke called the Fluke. It just so happened that the co-inventor live near me in Studio City, CA.

I sent him an email message, and he kindly invited me to come to his house. his name is Jim Beloff and his wife is Liz Beloff. together, they run a ukulele music business called Flea Market Music. I bought a Fluke from Jim and Liz and instantly saw the light. The sound was bright, clear, and cheerful.

Now I love playing ukuleles. They are very portable and really easy to learn. A few years ago, Flea Market Music started selling an even smaller ukulele, called The Flea. Jim and Liz kindly asked me to design the logo for it, which was an honor.

I had lunch with Jim and Liz today and they awarded me with a special edition of the Flea, with a faceplate design by Tiki King. The tiki looks like he is chanting a sacred song about ancient island life. Like the Fluke, the Flea stays in tune and has a cheerfully plangent tone.

If you buy a Flea, I recommend that you buy some of Flea Market Music's excellent ukulele songbooks. Then you can throw your iPod away and start making your own music. Link