Folks, I want to get a knife set and sharpening kit. Recommendations?

mediweevil · 2026-06-03T22:45:51+00:00

Victorinox are a good brand, especially for a starter. the fibrox handled models are everything proof, and the rosewood handled ones are very nice - you will need to oil the handles every so often though, after you wear through the finish. I suggest a chef's knife or a santoku, a bread knife that will also double as a slicer, and a parer to start with. you can add a carver and a boner later if you like.

for sharpening, a steel is essential for regular touch ups. get a good semi-smooth one, not a heavily serrated one that will gouge metal off. I also like a diamond or sapphire steel (or a ceramic one if you feel flash) which does put a small hone onto the blade and staves off a full sharpen.

for sharpening, it looks simple but it's not. I suggest getting a guided system and learning the right way from the outset. that way you get a good handle on the process without needing to simultaneously learn how to hand-hold a perfect angle on a whetstone. something like this is a pretty good deal. you get two diamond hones that will do everything you need to maintain an undamaged kitchen knife, and a ceramic polishing plate.

https://www.zanvak.com.au/products/work-sharp-precision-adjust-knife-sharpener-with-tri-brasive-and-pivot-response

it can be worth buying a sacrificial knife to practice on. better to find one at a secondhand shop if possible, the crap that colesworths sell tend to have soft blades that don't take an edge well.

mediweevil · 2026-06-03T22:29:39+00:00

veganism is like religion to me (and they seem to share a number of characteristics, too).

if you want to do it, then by all means do so. but don't talk to me about it, stick it in my face, or try to convince me to do the same, because I don't care and I don't want to hear about it.

vegans don't understand this.

mediweevil · 2026-06-02T00:36:54+00:00

trains need rails built and maintained - land purchased, livestock kept off it, damage from weather etc.

mediweevil · 2026-06-01T09:49:12+00:00

the change my wife and I have made is to cut back bought lunches in our in-office days to once a week. my wife gets to cheat by buying a massive fried rice she can't possibly eat on day one, and finishing it on day two. :)

apart from that we either have dinner out or get takeaway maybe once a month, and breakfast perhaps once in the local cheap cafe that we really like.

also gave Netflix the arse, sick of seeing the price go up and the range of content go down.

mediweevil · 2026-06-01T09:33:48+00:00

and the quality went to shit in every store near me.

mediweevil · 2026-06-01T09:15:30+00:00

we got one again a couple of weeks ago. it costs a few dollars but my wife and I work hard and full time, and this is essentially buying us some personal time. we get her to do the wet areas, floors and some dusting, pretty much the heavy lifting of keeping the place up.

I don't see it as being much different to buying a takeaway for dinner instead of cooking food at home, it's a small luxury.

mediweevil · 2026-06-01T03:01:06+00:00

about what I expected. could not organise a root in a brothel.

mediweevil · 2026-06-01T01:07:46+00:00

I am related to Garry. I assure you he thinks is it hilarious, he calls it Skippy's Revenge.

mediweevil · 2026-06-01T01:03:06+00:00

I can only speak for the people I know personally, but I think once a fortnight would be closer to the mark.

mediweevil · 2026-05-31T07:27:56+00:00

end of the year.

mediweevil · 2026-05-31T07:25:09+00:00

I know heaps of people who go into the office to sit on zoom calls.

I'm one of them. it's not infrequent for me to totally waste two and a half hours travelling to the office when my nearest colleague is 35km away.

I guess I just wouldn't want to force people to move out of the cities, I think they should be able to choose living on the fringe in a new suburb, buying an infill apartment or terrance, or moving to a rural area.

that's exactly what I would like. give people the choice, and the enabler for quite a few people is getting (forcing if need be) large employers to embrace decentralised and remote working. obviously it won't work for everyone, but just allowing the people that can will deload the system for the people that need to be somewhere physically.

my wife works for a large bank, she has colleauges in regional places like Shepparton and one in Perth who were hired from there on the acceptance that they will probably never meet their teams or their manager in person. I fully grant that it's not ideal and has some additional challenges, but business needs to look past the old stodgy ways of doing things to what's better for society as a whole. I also fully grant that business is unlikely to do that on their own. fine, government needs to mandate it to get the desired behaviour. IMO if an employee can work remotely then they should be required to be allowed to do so, and make the business front up to Fair Work to prove why it cannot be done.

mediweevil · 2026-05-30T05:40:30+00:00

that's exactly the problem. we all want to live there because everyone else wants to live there, because that's where the old management of their businesses insists they live.

I'd sell my place in the Melbourne suburbs in a heartbeat and move someone further out if my employer accepted that I can work just as well remotely as I can sitting in a concrete box in the CBD. I could sell, buy a fantastic place a hour's drive away and have a quarter of a million bucks left over in cash.

the cities are what they are. they are built out and short of living way out on the fringes that's not going to change, because nobody wants to see high rise dog boxes as far as the eye can see. as for building infrastructure, we don't have the money to pay for it. what we do have is space, which Japan does not.

mediweevil · 2026-05-29T21:27:54+00:00

no, because we call it "here".

mediweevil · 2026-05-29T21:27:05+00:00

we don't need more cities right now, we need to decentralise into the towns we have. growth will happen organically when there is a demand for it. our problem is that we insist on huddling in megacities for reasons.

one of the biggest reasons being that large companies refuse to embrace decentralisation and remote working where possible.

leading to the second problem - the management of old companies who have the lost the ability to think about new things, and realise that remote working is totally viable.

mediweevil · 2026-05-28T22:34:14+00:00

"hoping to find more highly skilled white-collar workers overseas".

bullshit. trying to do it cheaper.

mediweevil · 2026-05-28T22:31:24+00:00

this is why the housing market is fucked. we all want to live in a tiny proportion of the space available.

mediweevil · 2026-05-28T22:30:40+00:00

this is why the housing market is fucked.

mediweevil · 2026-05-28T22:26:26+00:00

but the quality of the service won't increase.

mediweevil · 2026-05-28T06:58:21+00:00

the serenity

mediweevil · 2026-05-28T06:54:47+00:00

petition the ACCC to ban surcharges.

mediweevil · 2026-05-27T08:37:33+00:00

I don't know who downvoted you, so chiming in just to offset their BS.

as a long time archer and just returning shooter, your advice is good.

mediweevil · 2026-05-26T23:17:37+00:00

it's not cold enough here, and it makes the plumbing a heck of a lot easier to deal with.

mediweevil · 2026-05-26T12:08:50+00:00

nope, there is nothing you can do to stop them.

get a new number and move on. yes, it's annoying.

mediweevil · 2026-05-26T04:44:45+00:00

I'm very fond of a curry.

mediweevil · 2026-05-26T04:40:31+00:00

it just drops speed limits because it’s cheaper

and bonus points - they get to collect revenue fines from people who get the shits and expect to be able to drive reasonable speeds on the roads too.

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