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The very definition of frustration: You and your significant other or roommate arrive home after work and discover you each remembered to stop for milk—but neither of you bought cat food. ZipList puts an end to uncoordinated shopping trips.

UPDATE:Actually, the iPhone app is in the works and will be released “in the coming weeks.”

This free web-based service lets multiple people access your a shopping list so you don’t end up with four heads of lettuce and no toilet paper. Family members can add items to the list and check off things they’ve bought to avoid duplication. You can even assign importance to an item so if you have a limited amount of time or cash in your pocket when you’re at the store, you can grab only the important stuff and be on your way.

One of the slickest things about this service is how many ways there are to add or remove groceries to a list—email, SMS, IM, right at the site, take your pick. There’s even an app for the iPhone and iPod touch that replicates most of the features found on the website.

ZipList has a bulging database of store sorted by location that you can add to your profile. Tell ZipList which store you want to buy your groceries from and it will sort the list according to that store’s layout. Then you can sort your grocery list by aisle or store to get your shopping done fast.

Of course, you can’t make a grocery list if you don’t know what you’re planning to eat, so consult ZipList’s recipe database for ideas. It’s got more than 300,000 recipes from MarthaStewart.com and Everyday Food and when you find something you like, one click adds the entire ingredient list to your shopping list.

Got a favorite meal planning and shopping tool that makes your life easier? Let us know in the comments.

Ed. note: Senior Editor of MAKE magazine Phil Torrone joins us to celebrate more modern-day MacGyvers as we continue DIY week at Lifehacker. Today’s maker: entrepreneur and self-taught computer chip designer Jeri Ellsworth.

Pictured above, MacGyver of the Day: Jeri Ellsworth – Electronics hacker, chip maker, race car builder, pin ball machine maker, blowing-stuff-up’er…

Hi Lifehackers! MAKE is best known for sharing all the goodness of making things for yourself, learning new skills and many times, voiding warranties… Marcus Chan of the San Francisco Chronicle said we’re the “The kind of magazine that would impress MacGyver” – and that’s what this week is about. It’s a little known fact, but MAKE even has the creator of MacGyver writing at MAKE: Lee D. Zlotoff! Lee is a writer/producer/director among whose numerous credits is creator of MacGyver (you can see his articles here). Let’s dive in and meet today’s MacGyver – Jeri!

Jeri was hacking, modding, and running her own computer store in the late 1990s—and more.. Quick, to the Wikipedia!

Jeri Ellsworth is an American entrepreneur and self-taught computer chip designer. She is best known for, in 2004, creating a Commodore 64 emulator within a joystick, called Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV. The “computer in a joystick” could run 30 video games from the early 1980s, and was very popular during the 2004 Christmas season, at peak selling over 70,000 units in a single day via the QVC shopping channel. She is a pinball machine aficionado and owns over 60 full-sized pinball arcade games.

Before we continue…

I live in an actual electronics factory and let me tell you, what Jeri made was really, really incredible. She reverse engineered and designed the entire Commodore 64 audio and video system on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and then managed to get it made cheap enough so it could sold on QVC. A FPGA allows you to design circuits after a chip was made—”an integrated circuit designed to be configured by the customer or designer after manufacturing.” She went from prototype to a top-selling product, 70k in one day!

Just to be clear for the super-geeks out there, here’s the photo she *looked at* to reverse engineer the chip; then in her head, she visualized the transistor layout and converted it to a FPGA. Thousands of transistors, weird tricks, dealing with skew timing and delays, process variability, sneaky chip stuff, NTSC video generation— this was an amazing feat. We could probably wrap up this article now, but this volume dial goes to 11. Let’s roll.

The chassis picture to the left is from Jeri’s late teens and early 20’s when she hand-built a race car chassis from a piles of tubular steel.

Jeri recently put up photos of her “chip fab”. She writes, “It took me 2 years to achieve my dream of making transistors and simple IC’s at home.”

Jeri recently said in an email: “Of course I love fire and blowing stuff up. Then, there’s my addiction to pinball”. I’ve included some more photos, videos from her show and other odds and ends. Jeri inspires me to be more Macgyver-ish every day, and I’m sure she’ll inspire you too! Take a look at the many videos and projects she has online and make something!

The 52-Inch Etch A Sketch

Jeri builds a 52-inch Etch A Sketch from a HD projection TV, tent poles, golf tee, and gear reduced motors.

Nintendo Purse

Pictured above: Jeri Ellsworth showing her homemade (working) Nintendo purse at a semiconductor show the same day as a roller derby event she skated in.

And here’s the video about the Nintendo on a chip and C64 that Jeri installed into a purse. It used a LCD from a portable DVD player and an 8 amp hour battery, which lasts for 9 hours.

DIY Pinball Machine

Homemade pinball machine she is working on…

Fire-Breathing Furby

And last, the fire-breathing Furby she made!

Phil Torrone is Senior Editor of MAKE magazine, contributing editor to Popular Science, and creative director of Adafruit Industries, where they make educational electronics and kits like the TV-B-Gone and some “other” hacky projects that sometimes make the rounds in these parts of the web. You may have seen MAKE in bookstores, public television, online, or been to one of their Maker Faires (there will be 3 this year, they are expecting over 100k attendees!). His personal site is http://www.braincraft.com.

At the kick-off of our week-long celebration of DIY, we asked you to share your proudest DIY moment. You did not disappoint. Read on for tales of rescued Rock Band sessions, one-cent car repairs, toilet-hardware-assisted lock-picking, and much more.

Reader Phil emailed in to direct us to this extensive Flickr set, detailing his efforts to repair a Denon DCD-825 CD player—one that was 14 years old, but no less loved by audiophiles. In keeping with the week’s theme, Phil didn’t just take fate’s suggestion that he upgrade laying down, but reached for around $30 in parts and patched in a new lens unit.

Reader Chirag submitted a simple but problem-solving fix he uses for semi-securing luggage in a way that deters would-be thieves with a lazy streak, but doesn’t require the TSA to bust open a $10 lock on every flight:

I use key rings to lock the zip of my check-in baggage and also to secure my carry on baggage.

Advantage of using key ring is that it can be opened without a key! But at the same time it takes a small amount of time to get the ring out, this small amount of time is good enough to discourage anyone with malicious intent to try open the bag.

Dave submitted a tale that saved him around $40, restored his tried and tested car, and cost him literally one cent, along with some elbow grease:

Some years ago the starter on my ‘79 Honda failed. It didn’t go all it once – it clicked once when you turned the key, then worked on the next turn. Then it was 2, 3, 10, and finally wouldn’t engage at all, just click. I pulled the starter out. It turned out there was a metal “plunger” which pulled in when the key was turned and made contact between two thick copper pieces to power the motor. Due to not making good contact, the connection had arced, eventually burning away enough of one piece of copper that no contact was made. I took a penny (most of them were solid copper then) and hammered it into roughly the shape of the burned away area, soldered it into place, then filed it down until it was flush. I reassembled and reinstalled the starter. The car worked for some years afterward, and when it died, the starter was not the cause. To this day I am proud of my one-cent repair!

Reader Timothy wrote in with a tale of both geeky necessity and on-the-spot electro-engineering:

My proudest DIY moment just happened to come out of necessity. A friend of mine would bring up Rock Band from his place roughly an hour away. While unpacking and setting up we discovered he forgot the pedal. I wasn’t about to let that ruin my need to slam on those rubber discs all into the morning, so I came up with this makeshift pedal, using things I had around the house. I saved the day with a audio adapter, a metal plate, duct tape and a sandal. Hope you like it.

Be sure to hit that link for a full explanation of how the (original) Rock Band drums could be wired up with RCA plugs and a simple contact point to accept all the foot stomping you want to put on them.

Edward wrote us to point out a DIY crib-top changing table that’s an elegant solution to a, well, less than elegant everyday need.

We’re sharing our office space with the baby so we are limited on the space we have for furniture; additionally … accessory crib furniture is expensive. We liked the over-the-crib changing station but the only ones we could find cost $350, so I decided to build one myself. It cost less than $30 for supplies plus an investment in a drill and drill bit set.

Commenter wjglenn dropped this harrowing tale of late-night office lock-out, along with its not-so-obvious solution. He was renting doctor’s office space, with a door that locked on its own when shut. And so, late one night …

… Aound 2:00am, I went out that door to go to the bathroom and the door fell shut behind me. I knew as I hear the click that I didn’t have my keys in my pocket. So, I was stuck in the entryway behind three locked doors. No keys, no cell phone. I thought I might have to break one of the glass doors. But then I decided to see what I had at my disposal.

I ended up taking apart the toilet. I used the clip that held the chain to the flush valve as a makeshift screwdriver to take apart the refill tube. Attached to that was a flat piece of metal – not sure of the name. I was able to get that piece of metal behind the doorknob to my office, using the top of the toilet tank as a hammer. I got the knob away from the door enough that I could reach in with the lift rod from the tank and push the latch inside and open the door.

And the best part? I was able to put the toilet back together afterward.

Finally, commenter jetRink was lured into sharing this tale of last-minute paper clip electrical engineering:

Mine actually involved a paper clip. My passenger side window got stuck down due to an electrical failure. I was away from home and parking in a bad neighborhood, so I couldn’t fix it properly right then. I took the control panel off with a multi-tool and routed electricity from the power locks to the window motor using a paper clip and was able to put the windows up for the night.

Photo by bbaunach.

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Thanks to everyone who left their tales in the comments, or sent them in by email! If you’ve got one we missed, or you missed our initial call for submissions, feel free to drop it in the comments below.

Firefox: If you hate having to search through your folders every time you change the type of file or directory you’re saving to—and we certainly do!—Save File To helps you make custom context menus for file saving bliss.

The problem arises with the way Firefox retains the previous folder you’ve used to save something. That’s great for when you’re saving a bunch of the same thing in a row—who would want to navigate from the default directory every time you opened up the save as dialogue?—but if you’re frequently saving a variety of files you want a faster way to move between directories.

Save File To is a Firefox add-on that enables editing of the right-click “Save As” context menu. Immediately after installation it adds in your Desktop and My Documents folders as available entries—and you can navigate down through those folders—but you can also specify custom folders and reorganize the menu. It’s easy to add in a folder for a specific project you’re working on or create custom links to save to your wallpaper collection, music collection, or any other system you want to set up. Although we used an image as our example in the screenshot above you can customize all the Save As menus in Firefox including how you save pages, links, images, and other files.

Visit the link below to install Save File To into Firefox or check out the via link to see a step by step tutorial at How-To Geek on setting up Save File To. Save File To is free and works wherever Firefox does. Have a favorite add-on for customizing the menus in Firefox or a similar tool for another browser? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

If you’re good at something and your friends know it, it can get boring—and time consuming—to answer the same question over and over again. Blogger Brett Kelly suggests creating a web page that answers the questions you get asked most.

Photo by wanderingone.

Kelly’s got a great idea here. If you’re a great baker or known for your mad IT skills, chances are you get asked the same things over and over again. You probably also end up fielding distress calls from frantic friends struggling with a pie gone awry or a blue screen of death. Instead of typing out the same email responses repeatedly or talking yet another person through a troubleshooting process, slap up a web page with your own personal Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) and answers.

Next time you’re tapping out 2 single-spaced pages to Aunt Gertrude describing photosynthesis in all its glory and splendor, consider emailing it to something like Posterous instead; then, fire Aunt Gertrude a link to the page. Now, not only will Trudy have all the chlorophyll-related knowledge [she] can tolerate, but Google will probably stop by and maybe send some other interested parties your way. And the next time somebody hits you up about it, you need only send them a link to that thing you already wrote instead of rehashing the same crap all over again!

We think that’s a pretty ingenious approach to helping people out with a minimum of impact on your valuable time. Of course, there will always be times when you’ll want to help someone directly instead of pushing them off to a web site, but building a personal FAQ is still a smart idea. Your friends and family will probably appreciate it to, since they might feel weird about bothering you during the dinner hour to help them solve a problem. This way, they don’t have to.

How do you handle it when people come to you for advice? Do you have a personal FAQ, or some other clever way to help them out efficiently? Share your ideas and tips in the comments.

Windows only: Portable application NirLauncher bundles 100+ of the best NirSoft utilities into a single launcher window, and even allows you to add your own utilities to make a killer flash drive toolkit.

Once you’ve downloaded the zip file, you can extract the contents into a new folder on your desktop or flash drive, and then launch the NirLauncher.exe application from that folder, which will give you quick access to the 100+ NirSoft utilities included in the package.

It’s important to note that because of the system-tweaking, hacking nature of the NirSoft utilities, they sometimes come through as a false positive on your anti-malware utility—but that doesn’t mean that they are infected with a virus. Depending on the type of system protection that you have installed, you might have to remove the files from the quarantine folder in order to use all of the utilities.

Tweaking the Launcher

You can edit the included NirSoft.nlp file in a text editor to add or remove the utilities that you prefer—or you can even create a new .NLP file with your own customized settings. Just make sure to use relative paths to the executable files to make sure that they will be portable when you put it onto your flash drive.

The NirSoft blog even provides a launcher file for the suite of awesome, portable, system-tweaking tools from SysInternals—simply download the launcher file and extract all of the SysInternals applications into a folder, and then use the Launcher -> Add Software Package menu to add the entire group into the application. Once you’ve got them there, you can switch between the NirSoft and SysInternals groups with the F3 key, or through the Launcher menu.

NirLauncher is a free download for Windows only. What applications would you include in your own portable flash drive toolkit? Tell us in the comments. Thanks, Scott!

Originally posted 2009-10-05 18:25:25. Republished by Old Post Promoter

If you don’t have a knife sharpening kit and you’re in between taking knives down to the cutlery store to get sharpened, you can put a little bite back into your knife with a coffee mug.

Photo by Rhett Maxwell.

Over a the site DIYLife they highlight a way to sharpen the edge of a knife using a coffee mug:

It’s true, the bottom of most ceramic coffee mugs have a flat, unglazed ring that is the perfect surface for giving that dull knife a quick sharpening. Just run the blade across the bottom of the mug at a 45-degree angle, working from the butt up near the knife’s handle to the tip. Slide the blade downward in one direction, keeping your fingers out of the way as you work.

We’d definitely stress that this isn’t a perfect solution for continually sharpening your knives—if you want to sharpen your own knives the Spyderco Sharpmaker is an awesome at-home solution—but if you need to clean up the edge and buy yourself some more time before a proper sharpening, it’ll do in a pinch.

Check out the full article at the link below for additional information and tips on sharpening other kitchen implements. If you have a knife sharpening tip or trick to share, let’s hear about it in the comments.

Most of us are more than happy to forget a screw up at work, a project that didn’t pan out, or even a bad experience at a restaurant. Remembering your mistakes, screwups, and bad experiences, however, can keep future ones at bay.

Over at the organization blog Unclutterer, they found these “I’ll Never [ ] This Again” filing folders. While they didn’t think it was worth spending a premium for such a folder—although it would certainly be fun as a goofy gift—they did see the utility of creating a “Never Again” folder.

The actual paper folders are unnecessary, but the fundamental idea behind them are brilliant. After seeing them, I created a folder on my computer called “Never Again.” Then, inside that folder, I made a series of plain text documents: Restaurants, Books, Websites, Ideas, Hotels, Vacations, Wines, and Gifts. In these documents I recorded important notes to myself about mistakes I’ve made in the past.

In the folder, or master text document, you can record anything you want to remember. I could have, as an example, recorded “Never use XYZ cellular provider.” after a friend had warned me about the absolutely horrible experiences he had with them. I completely forgot about his very animated warning and ended up using that provider years later, resulting in me having the exact same experience he had. Even when things work out, it’s worth recording what didn’t work so that you don’t end up using a flaky vendor for a future project, reusing a similar line of argumentation with your boss, or buying a gift for a friend that was terribly received.

Would you keep a standing record of past mistakes and failures to help ward off the future ones? Sound off about it in the comments.

If the DIY community had a universal symbol, it most certainly would be a roll of duct tape. Inexpensive, abundant, strong, and ready to stick to nearly anything, this versatile DIY companion is a must in your DIY toolkit.

Photo by Ben Seidelman.

In honor of DIY Week at Lifehacker and the prominent role duct tape has played in many a DIY projects over the last 60-odd years, we’ve rounded up some of the most popular duct tape-related stories we’ve featured here at Lifehacker and brought a few new ones into the mix. If you’re ready to jump into the projects, check out the list below. Otherwise scroll down for some duct tape history and additional information.

• Heal Warts with Duct Tape
• Clear a clogged drain with Duct Tape
• Weekend Project: Duct tape a tandem bike
• How-To Make an iPod Shuffle Case out of Duct Tape
• Duct Tape Tether Your Remotes
• Keep Diapers on with Duct Tape
• How-To Make an RFID-blocking Duct Tape Wallet
• Make a DIY Car Console
• DIY duct tape crutch pockets
• Silence velcro with duct tape
• Hang a Hammock with Duct Tape
• Make Your Own Pocket Duct Tape Dispenser
• Turn Duct Tape into Roses
• Craft a Duct Tape Handbag
• Improve Your Posture with Duct Tape
• Make a Duct Tape Book Cover

Duct Tape: Every Soldier’s Friend

Duct tape became a staple of American DIY projects and repairs after World War II. During the war duck tape—as it was initially known—was distributed to soldier’s to use in sealing ammo cans. Industrious soldiers quickly started using it for all manner of repairs thanks to its strong adhesive and sturdy construction. When millions of soldiers returned home from the war, they brought their respect for duct tape with them, rapidly introducing the now ubiquitous tape into popular culture. If you want to read more about the history of duct tape you can check out the Wikipedia entry here. Photo by Jason Gulledge.

How popular has duct tape become? When Forbes magazine put together a list of the top 20 tools in all of history including such items llike the knife and compass, they forgot to include duct tape. They received enough reader questions on their exclusion of duct tape to prompt them to write an entirely separate article singing its praises. Not a bad place to hold in public opinion after less than a century on the scene.

Duct tape is manufactured by a variety of companies and available in everything from generic Dollar Store rolls to premium nuclear regulatory agency-approved rolls. The 3M company even introduced clear duct tape for those times when you really want to repair something with duct tape but the DIY-vibe of good ol’ silver tape just doesn’t fit.

Duct Tape for the Sake of Duct Tape

Proof positive of the popularity of duct tape is the vast number of things people make out of duct tape. Not content to simply repair something that is broken with duct tape, many DIYers use duct tape as the building blocks of their projects. Duct tape wallets are a popular project, the one featured in the photo above is the swankiest one we’ve featured.

If you’re a true duct tape aficionado however, hiding the duct tape in your pocket won’t do. Jacket your books in a duct tape cover to show the world how much you love the silvery-goodness of it. This iPod case is made with clear duct tape for practical purposes, but you could easily mix in some traditional duct tape to make a statement.

Why limit your duct-tape antics to things only you can enjoy? Clever duct tape lovers have made duct tape roses, hand bags, and neck ties. Some duct tape creations might not seem extremely practical and can cruise dangerously close to being extremely tacky, but they do showcase the devotion people have to the sturdy little tape.

Practically Speaking

Love for the quirky things people make with duct tape aside it was born as a practical tool and it remains a practical tool. When assessing the usefulness of duct tape the proper question is not “What can duct tape fix?” but “What can duct tape not fix?”. Sure there are many a situation where duct tape isn’t the perfect solution, but the very fact that it’s a plausible if perhaps temporary solution is a testament to the versatility of duct tape. Case in point:

Ten years ago I was on a road trip. My friend Dave and I had stopped to get the oil in his car changed—much to Dave’s grumbling because he preferred to change his oil himself, but we were short on time. The guy who changed the oil at the service station neglected to put the cap back on the oil tank and somehow we managed to drive over a hundred miles before the oil light came on and alerted us to the situation. In an empty gravel lot next to a McDonald’s we assessed the situation. It was a Sunday, we were in the middle of relatively no where, and we needed to solve the problem. Our solution? Dump a quart of oil from Dave’s trunk into the oil reservoir, take a nice round stone about the size of the oil cap into the McDonald’s bathroom and wash all the dirt and crud off, wrap the stone in several layers of duct tape, and duct tape that lucky stone right down to the engine block. It worked so well we never ended up buying a replacement cap.

So if duct tape wallets aren’t your thing, what can you do with duct tape? Plugging holes in engines aside you can use it to clear out a clogged drain, cover an outlet to keep curious fingers and pets out, and even get rid of warts on the cheap. If you’re a bit of a masochist you can even use it to improve your posture.

The important thing about duct tape is to always keep it handy because you’re more likely to be limited by a lack of duct tape than by what you can’t use duct tape for. To that end you’ll definitely want to check out these two DIY pocket duct tape dispensers here and here. Photo by madmolecule.

We could never exhaustively cover the awesomeness that is duct tape and its many uses, so we leave it to you to share your favorite duct tape uses, creations, and pictures—we love pictures!—in the comments below.

Ed. note: Authors Gever Tulley and Julie Spiegler’s Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do) builds on the premise that “dangerous” things we avoid are often eye-opening and educational. One such dangerous thing: Cooking food in your dishwasher.

We’ve examined using the dishwasher to poach salmon and clean potatoes in the past; here’s another take on the unusual oven.

An oven is an insulated box with a heating element inside. Looked at that way, is the dishwasher that much different? Sure it has spray arms for water and uses soap, but it is also insulated and has a heating element. That makes it an oven—with a few extra features thrown in.

Cooking in the dishwasher is not much different than baking; you just need to keep the food from getting soapy. Here’s how to make dishwasher chicken, hot dogs, or vegetables:

Requires:

…

• Aluminum Foil
• Raw Chicken, Hot Dogs, or Vegetables
• Butter
• Salt or Spices (optional)
• Meat Thermometer (or Adult)

How to:

1. Prepare food. Cut chicken into strips about 1⁄2 inch wide. If you don’t like chicken, hot dogs, vegetables, or apples work just as well. Place food in center of a sheet of foil. Dab with butter and add salt or spices if you like.
2. Seal it up. Fold up, then carefully roll the edges of the foil to create a watertight packet. You can add another layer of foil if your foil is thin. Place packet in top rack of dishwasher (middle if you have three racks) and finish loading the dish- washer with dirty dishes. Do not let packet get punctured by the rack or any dishes.
3. Cook it. Run the dishwasher on the hottest setting (at or above 160 degrees F). After the wash cycle finishes, make sure the dry cycle completes before opening.
4. Check it. Carefully remove the foil packet from the dishwasher and examine for punctures. Discard and try again with the next load of dishes if any holes are found. Open the packet and check to make sure your chicken is thoroughly cooked.
5. Enjoy. Toast goes particularly well with dishwasher chicken.

Note: Undercooked chicken can be unsafe to eat. Check your food carefully before consuming. Use a meat thermometer

Now, if only there was a way to make toast without using the toaster….

Fifty Dangerous Things explores the idea that many “dangerous” things that are interesting, eye-opening, enlightening or just plain fun! And while there are aspects of danger in virtually everything we do, the trick is to learn how mastery actually minimizes danger. Walking is dangerous when we start as babies, but we persevere and it becomes safe. Next we learn to negotiate stairs. Why stop there? Why not practice and become proficient at walking on the roof or walking on a tightrope? These are just a few of the Fifty Dangerous Things the book invites you to try.