For programming/interactivity...
What about [link|http://mindstorms.lego.com/|LEGO Mindstorms]? IIRC, Malraux's said some good things about it. That provides both away-from-computer building as well as the hacker-type of stuff required to get the stuff he creates to do what he wants it to do.
-YendorMike
"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by the skeptics or the cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who dream of things that never were." - John F. Kennedy
