I think that everyone in New York City read last week's article by David Leite on the Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie. One of the main tricks from the article is to rest your dough for 36 hours before baking the cookies in order to improve the flavor. In my work as a chef I have often made cookie dough in advance and baked to order. I knew that refrigeration had beneficial effects although I had never tested the theory to the extent that David Leite did for the article.

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Playing the harp isn’t the most high-tech pastime—unless, like Stephen Hobley, you use lasers in place of the strings. Though not the first home-built laser harp, Hobley’s creation is unquestionably the coolest. Played by disrupting the laser beams with his hands, it can produce just about any sound. Better yet, it’s also a fully functioning controller for a version of Guitar Hero.

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Here’s the scenario: You have a thousand MP3 music files sitting on your home computer—which is great when you’re actually sitting at your computer but a lot less useful when you’re in the kitchen or living room. What you need is a dedicated device in another room that can pull songs wirelessly from your PC’s music library and play them through its own speakers. Several off-the-shelf products can handle this task, such as Logitech’s Squeezebox; unfortunately, they start at around $300.

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Pectin is probably most recognizable to home cooks as the ingredient that thickens jellies and jams and gives them that smooth, sticky texture. Pectin is an indigestible soluble fiber which, when combined with water, forms a colloidal system and gels. It has a wide range of uses. It can be found as a gelling, thickening or stabilizing additive in food, an ingredient in laxatives, a demulcent in throat lozenges, and vegetable glue for cigars.

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Pain at the pump continues to reach new levels of misery every day. While most of us can’t afford to trade our current gas guzzler for a more fuel economical model, it would be nice to adopt some new driving skills that will translate into greater fuel economy. But where do you start? How do you know if your current jitney is a fuel sipper or a gas guzzler?

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Sometimes, when you’re trying to immerse yourself in a movie or television show on an iPod’s diminutive screen, you just need to go bigger. Here’s how: Turn your Classic or Nano into a home theater with a simple, unpowered DIY projector.

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If you want a scientific display of the dangers of pent-up stress, Prince Rupert’s drops are it. After the trauma of being dropped molten-hot into a bucket of cold water, these glass balls, named for a 17th-century amateur scientist, turn into bundles of high tension. They’re impervious to even the strongest blows, until you find their hot button: Flick the tail, and they explode.

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Not necessarily. It’s hard to ignore MS Office, but you don’t need to blow 400 bucks to get your work done. In fact, you don’t need to install any programs at all. Sign up for the free Google Docs (documents.google.com) or Zoho (zoho.com), and you can do everything in a Web browser. The programs look similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint and offer all the same features (save for a few lesser-used ones like certain spreadsheet formulas). Zoho even kicks in a few extra applets like a Wiki-building tool. Best of all, these applications let you access your files from any computer that’s online.

If you don’t have reliable Internet access or are more comfortable installing programs on your computer, there’s no shortage of competition, either.

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If you ever see a large industrial metal fire (yes, they happen) on the news, you may be surprised at what the firefighters do to extinguish it: nothing. Several metals, including lithium, sodium and magnesium, can burn easily, and from time to time large amounts catch fire in factories. But even heaps of burning metal need not cause immediate panic. They don’t blow up; instead they tend to build up ash that chokes off their oxygen supply, so they slowly burn out.

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It's all about flexibility on this week's Top Tools. A reciprocating saw that bends any way you could need, a screwdriver that gives you another hand and a work station you can take anywhere. Our friends at toolmonger.com round up the whole collection here.

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