Forget about owning a Van Gogh. Unless you have millions to spare on art pieces, there’s no likely way you’ll ever get your hands on a real thing. You can, of course, settle for quality prints and this line of watches featuring reproductions of some of his most memorable works.

This luscious green backdrop of morning fields with butterflies aflutter is representative of the artist’s predilection to occasionally portray the most simple beauties in his work. This is a limited edition watch with 8888 hand-numbered pieces distributed worldwide. The watch is handmade in Austria with swiss mechanics. Water proof, shock reistant and hand brushed. This watch weighs 0.6 lbs.

The painting reproduced in this watch demonstrated Van Gogh’s legendary application of paint, choice in colors and swirling brush strokes. This style is a clear representation of his desire for unimpeded expression in art. This Unisex watch features the painting’s title “Bedroom in Arles” prominently printed on the band. It has a silver rim with the face measuring 1.25 inches in diameter. On sale for $89.

The face and leather band of this watch features Van Gogh’s famous self-portrait. It features a gold rim and solid mineral glass with the face measuring 1.25 inches in diameter. On sale for $89.

Looking for the perfect gift for your cooking-enamored friend? Why, look no further.

The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook is a compelling and, surprisingly, readable guide to cooking insects. Subtitled “33 ways to cook grasshoppers, ants, water bugs, spiders, centipedes, and their kin” with a kooky-looking chef on its cover, it may look like it belongs in the jokes section. The book, however, is deathly serious.

In fact, author David George Gordon contends that eating bugs (which are made up of mostly proteins) is both a healthy food choice and gentle on the earth. A naturalist, Gordon takes advantage of people’s innate aversion to the subject by pulling the reader into a knowledgeable discussion of history, anthropology, science, pop culture and culinary arts.

The recipes are presented in a clear and easy to follow manner with educational tidbits about the history and life of the insects included in the dish. Recipes you are likely to never forget (even if you do decide not to try it) include the Three Bee Salad (bees, what else?), Really Hoppin’ John (grasshoppers) and Fried Green Hornworm. Full-color photos of the delicious-looking dishes adorn each recipe. Additionally, he makes note of insects you want to avoid in your cooking.

To help you out in your newfound culinary specialty, the author compiles a three-page list of suppliers selling edible bugs and insects (both live and ready to cook), tips to catching your own insects for personal consumption and organizations that sponsor events related to eating bugs.

Is Incrudo the Russian name for excess? Not long ago, the same company that brought you the luxury Phantom phone took the insanity one step further with what is possibly the most expensive 8GB flash drive in the planet.

Similar to the Phantom, Incrudo’s flash drive is a luxury device - intended more to be a symbol of affluence than serve any sensible purpose. You know what a real luxury flash drive that’s functional should have? A RAID5 implementation so that none of my precious portable data ends up deleted or destroyed. After all, I keep a lot of my work on USB disks to facilitate easy transfer from one PC to another so I might consider actually getting one.

Instead, Incrudo treats us to the sexiest looking flash drive enclosure of all time, not to mention the most physically durable ever. The 8 GB luxury accessory is covered with titanium alloy, rendering it 100% corrosion free and crush proof. The marvelously devised casing is also water-resistant and designed to last a lifetime.

To rub in the luxury argument, Incrudo fitted the unit with a single wide-oriented red ruby on the body. The indestructible USB even comes in an equally indestructible case that makes it look like a designer perfume instead of a PC accessory. The price for this exercise in conspicuous manufacturing? An uncompromising $831 dollars. Take that, Gossip Girl!

Not anymore. A few game manufacturers are now beginning to harness the power of the PC and the USB port to create their own computer-based movement-sensitive titles. The early generation seem intended more for novelty play than serious gaming but success of such early efforts usually indicate how far the genre will go.

Last October, Actiga released their series of Mini-Motion controllers for use with several games on the PC. The earliest of these units were a baseball controller (designed for use with their baseball title Homerun), a hoverboard unit which you can play with the index and middle fingers similar to fingerboards (for use with a Hoverboard racing game), a car controller (for use with Cars Of Fury) and a skateboard control which plays similar to the hoverboard (for use with a freestyle skateboarding title). All controllers connect to the PC via USB and are small enough to fit in most pockets or bag.

The fingerboard adaptation is easily the most ingenious and will likely attract a good number of titles as well as players. If you’ve ever seen fingerboard competitions, they’re almost as fun as the real thing, and there’s no reason to doubt that it will do just as well with a PC implementation. A few controllers I’d like to see that are likely to see the light of day are planes (for in-flight shooters), swords (for swordfights, what else) and boxing gloves (should be fun).

With all the games already available on so many platforms, companies do have to come up with something exceptional in order to make this work, though. Who knows, more unlikely things have happened.

If you’re gonna get a Swiss knife just for the sake of having tons of instruments available then you may as well get the biggest one: Wenger’s Giant Swiss Army Knife.

Packing over 85 implements with hundreds of potential uses, this is as big - not to mention as ridiculous - as it gets. There’s probably a tool here for every need - it’s just not guaranteed that it will actually get the job done. Swiss knives, after all, offer mini-versions of tools. What the heck do you expect from a mini universal wrench? Able to perform all wrenching jobs? Or a 3-inch metal saw for that matter?

At any rate, Wenger’s Giant Swiss Army Knife weighs a mere 2 lbs and 11 ounces and comes with a lifetime warranty. It measures 3 cm in height, 8.5 cm in width and 24 cm depth. Yes, 24 centimeters. It’s not a pocket tool, unless you’re wearing oversized jumpers. Could be great for a decorative tool but it looks too cumbersome for any practical use. At a £500 price tag, this is one you will need to discuss with the wife before buying.

By the way, why don’t we have a USB disk somewhere in that monstrosity?

Pets are cool. But you know what? They litter up the house, they eat like animals and they can be noisy right when you need some rest. Why not opt for a robot pet instead?

Pleo is a one-week old robot baby dinosaur. His lineage is that of the Camarasaurus from the Jurassic era. One of the most advanced robot toys to come out in the last two years, Pleo is an interactive pet that can do more than walk and look cute.

Just like a real pet, Pleo will interact with his masters and respond autonomously to inputs from his environment. He is designed to feel emotions as well as enjoy an active sensory system - he can see, hear, touch and eventually comprehend the world around him. He learns how to walk properly, how to avoid falling over, where to turn when obstacles are in place and many other things simple robots aren’t supposed to be capable of doing.

Consequently, he develops feelings including curiosity, confusion, fear, surprise, sadness and joy. Pleo will respond and attempt to communicate via honks, toots and other sounds. Each Pleo will begin as an infant and grow into his own personality right before your very eyes.

Outfitted with numerous sensors that allow him a remarkable cognitive awareness of his world, Pleo is a marvel in robot design. It will be like having a real pet around, without all the mess. Plus, you can turn him off when he gets a little too hard-headed.

Pleo measures 52.5 cm long, 15 cm wide and 19 cm tall. He weighs a light 4 kilograms.

Everyone deserves a spa at home. Seriously.

Listening to some soft music while lounging around in warm temperatures with jets of water streaming at you - it’s an experience that can wipe the hassle of the daily grind away.

Installing a full-size hot tub is expensive though. Not to mention all the maintenance cost it entails. For the poverty-stricken among us, however, a solution has been handed down from the graces of God - the Lay-Z-Spa. A fully-functional hot tub that easily seats three people, it is 100% portable and can be set up in as little as 10 minutes. Why spend thousands to install a grandiose unit when you can enjoy the same for cheap - once you’re in the water, it all feels the same anyway.

The Lay-Z-Spa simultaneously heats, filters and circulates the water and can hold up to 230 gallons of it. The unit is very sturdy once inflated - no bending, falling or moving around even when there’s three of you creating a ruckus inside it. It includes an advanced control system to monitor the tub’s vital processes, including temperature and water pressure.

The pump-inflated Lay-Z-Spa measures at 70 cm tall, 200 cm wide and 200 cm diameter. It weighs a mere 40 kilos when deflated and up to 1 metric tonne when filled with water. It comes with its own pump and a soft-locking cover so you can keep it inflated without leaving it a prey for dirt just like a real hot tub. Temperature is adjustable up to 40 degrees celsius.

Borat has pretty much immortalized the mankini as the premiere standard in “courageous” men’s swimwear. How else would you describe a man who has the guts to don something this inane? Unlikely to hit the runways of Milan, London and Paris anytime soon, the mankini might prove one of those threads you buy but never wear - unless you’re alone and it’s late at night.

I’ve actually seen mankinis before Borat but they were never called that. In fact, I’ve seen them worn on some artistic photos of Japanese models. Yes, artistic. For real.

Either way, much of the fanfare for mankinis is for its novelty not its actual fashion sense so there’s little chance I’ll head down the beach and see a bunch of muscled guys wearing them, thank God. Borat’s mankini scenes in the movie were just, for lack of a more exultant term, too memorable.

There is an official line of mankinis licensed by 20th Century Fox as cinematic merchandise so you may want to check that out to make sure you’re buying something that’s at least moderately durable if you ever decide to wear this during a weak moment or a drunken stupor. The official ones should have a Borat label emblazoned somewhere with adequate packaging.

On another note, I’d love to see the mankini strapped on some girls’ bodies. I’m sure they’d look really good. Perhaps it’s a new adult niche I can go into. Knowing the adult market, however, there’s probably already a website offering that right now!

Buckle City offers some of the finest belt buckles available online, not to mention an adequate selection of straps too. I recently mined their goldmine of a gallery and discovered some interesting finds: PacMan belt buckles. They don’t come in sets so the designs are pretty disparate but it should be cool to have them all nonetheless.

Pac Man Full Screen Buckle

This is one of the best, most attractive belt buckles I’ve ever seen - a full screen rendering of an active PacMan game. It depicts PacMan chomping away with all four ghosts after him. I’m actually amazed they’re selling it at their standard price - this is seriously one of the finest removable belt buckle designs in their entire inventory. It measures 3 inches across and costs only $14.99, a definite steal. If I were you, I’d also get one now!

Pac Man Belt Buckle

Priced at $17.99, this is more expensive than the more detailed and better designed Full Screen buckle. I’m sorry, I just don’t get the pricing. This is an extremely simple PacMan rendition - didn’t even outfit him with arms and legs. You may still want to get it though to complete the collection.

Pac Man Ghost Belt Buckle

Way cooler than the PacMan belt buckle is this rendering of the Ghost antagonists. Metal-finished and edgy, it also measures 3 inches across and retails for $16.99.

Nintendo Controller Belt Buckle

Now, how else are you gonna play all that goodness without a controller in tow? This replica of a Nintendo controller measures 5 inches across and sells for $14.99.

The only problem for many people is tasks like recording videos from TV and converting movies from one format to another can feel like it requires more work and technical know-how than most of them can handle. Do you really expect your mom to wade through 200 pages of manual to find that two-page instruction on how to rip DVDs into her iPod?

For those not technically inclined, you can simplify your digital life even further with the iPod Recorder.

Providing the simplest way to record video directly on your iPod, all you have to do is plug it to your TV and turn it on. It will record the show, compress it and output it to your device in the ultra-portable MPEG4 format. No need to turn on the computer, install all that confusing software and perform steps A to Z. It’s all covered in three easy actions: plug the iPod Recorder to the TV, let it record then download it to your media player gadget. Additionally, you can use the iPod recorder to download and convert media from other gadgets such as video camera recordings from your cell phone and movies on your kids’ PSP into your iPod using the same simple steps.

The iRecorder can compress up to 3 hours of video into 1 GB of storage. It works with all iPod units except the iPod Touch. It has an AV-IN and AV-OUT for TV connectivity and a USB port. The package also comes with a remote control.