So, to be more specific, I was basically looking at:

www.amazon.com/Wusthof-Gourmet-4-Piece-S...Knife/dp/B0000631ZJ/
www.amazon.com/Ginsu-Japanese-Stainless-...-7104/dp/B001CLFZZG/
www.amazon.com/Ginsu-Japanese-Damascus-S...Steak/dp/B0027LQEY6/
www.amazon.com/Victorinox-Straight-Edge-...andles/dp/B000PL1A2Q

I know Wusthof makes decent knives (I prefer them to Henckels), and I know the Gourmet aren't as high a quality as the classic's, but they're also about 1/3rd the price.

And Ginsu, I know NOTHING about other than I remember them being a bit like Cutco back in the 80's. I don't know if they're decent, or crap. I picked those couple because they didn't look terrible, and they were straight edge.

Also realize the second set of Ginsu's is more than my $100 mark, but they look a decent amount like my Shun's, so I threw them in just since they "matched".

Then the Victorinox since they also seem to get decent reviews, and it's 6 of them... though, like I said, I mentioned not liking wood handles much. =/

I would love some more input. I'm not terribly crazy about the look of the Opinel, but hey, if they're good inexpensive knives, I'll take em. I don't want to shell out the money that the Shun ones cost (which would match my kitchen knives)...

Oh, not dismissing at all. I'd just never heard of them. No doubt they're good.

And serrated ones do indeed last longer, I would just like to be able to sharpen them myself. =/

Or maybe a slightly less annoying reseller than Williams-Sonoma: www.amazon.com/Opinel-Bon-Appetit-Table-Knives/dp/B004R99TGG/

I had honestly never heard of Opinel.

So you mean something along the lines of this: www.williams-sonoma.com/products/7114663/ ??

Thanks!

No idea why this ended up in welcome mat. Wanted to create it in "Off Topic". =/

Mod: feel free, obviously, to move.

All,

I'm looking to pick up some inexpensive (like, sub $100 for a set of 4) steak knives... obviously un-serrated if possible (so I can sharpen with my WEPS).

Part of me wants to go with a well known name (Wusthof or Henckels), but then I see relatively decent reviews on cheaper brands too.

Anyone have any input? Figured this would be as good a place to ask as any. =)

Thanks!

DKamp,

Wow, that makes mine look like crap. I just need to order replacement stock foam I guess. =P

Awesome.

The angle cube is cool, and does let you figure out if you need to drastically change the angle that the bar says, but a sharpie will accomplish much of the same.

it's really entirely up to you. I've heard the Harbor Freight one (www.harborfreight.com/digital-angle-gauge-95998.html) is pretty decent, and with coupons, can be picked up for less than $25.

I just have the iGaging one, which works very well, but since I only have the stock angle-bar/arms, it's utility is a bit limited. =/

Good luck!

also, use Clay's sharpie "trick". Get a wide-tip Sharpie, and basically mark the entire bevel. Then go to town. When the sharpie is completely gone from one side (or, at least, the part up to the edge), you "probably" have a burr (check with a fingernail/cottonball). Then do the other side.

www.wickededgeusa.com/index.php?option=c...ctions&Itemid=89

If you really want to make sure, you can then do it again, and confirm, but it's rarely needed. Just make sure to use some rubbing alcohol to remove the left over Sharpie before you strop (ick).

Good luck, and let us know how your second try goes. =)

Welcome Mike, and a very nice Christmas gift!

The first edge is like the first pancake... never what the rest are. =P

I think we all had similar issues. The key, and everyone says it but can't over-state it: burr burr burr. Go back to the 100/200 stones, and make sure you have a burr developed all along the blade on one side, then knock it down, and do the other side. Once you have a burr fully formed, start your normal progression. Will make a HUGE difference.

Once you get the hang of it, it's not nearly as much of an issue. And your second time will be much better than the first, just as your 10th will be WAY better than the previous, and take less time. When I first started, a pairing knife took me 30 minutes, at least. Now, a chefs knife takes me 10 minutes depending on the steel, and amount of re-profiling needed. And the result is significantly better than it used to be (some of that is practice, some is the stones breaking in (but mainly it's practice, I think). And I've only done maybe 3 dozen total knives.

ah ha, I knew I had seen it somewhere!

I was under the impression Clay said NOT to use an ultrasonic on the diamond stones... or was it the ceramics he said that about...

Okay, well, either something else got tweaked, or Google was caching bad data, or maybe the webserver was caching the previous php or output. Anyway, it's working now. =D The URL's are proper, and link to the appropriate articles. W3validator still shows the ASCII/UTF error, but I honestly don't think that's a huge issue unless you got non-english symbols in the URL (which I'm guessing won't happen anyway).

Thanks for your help on this. Now I can actually use the reader feed. =)

Let me know if you need any additional info, testing, etc. =)

Fascinating. Still doesn't work with Google Reader. But the w3c validator comes back "clean".

Only thing I can imagine is that it's the validator error saying "Your feed appears to be encoded as "utf-8", but your server is reporting "US-ASCII"

I'm not positive here, but that's all I can figure.

See here: forums.iis.net/p/1155439/1894464.aspx#1894464

Seems like we should just make .php encoding UTF-8. That's all I can figure at this point. =/

okay, got it fixed. Attached is a patch, and here's the manual way to do it.

In joomla/libraries/joomla/document/feed/renderer, there's rss.php. Open that up, and change line 123 from:



to



then just comment out the next line, 124, with two forward slashes infront of it, so it looks like:



That's all there is to it. Save and you're done.

So, the question is, why it's like this. Honestly, I don't know. The commented out part is likely because one person added some code and forgot to remove the old. All it does is fix the "duplicate GUID" validation issue. The first part of the code is to encode the url to be html safe, so replace & with &, spaces with %20, etc. Previously all they were doing was replacing spaces with %20. The other validation errors are annoying, but they're mainly cosmetic.

Obviously create a backup of rss.php before making changes, but having tested these with the same Joomla and Kunena versions, I'm fairly confident they'll work. Please let me know!

excellent. I've recreated the issue with those versions. Now I get to find the fix. =)

Though now that I look at the RSS feed raw, it says it's RSS 2.0, but obviously isn't valid.

Any chance you could tell which which specific version numbers of Kunena and Joomla are being run? I only see the major versions (Joomla 1.5, and Kunena 1.6).

Or maybe just the version of joomla/libraries/joomla/document/feed/renderer/rss.php (version should be at the top).

I'm a bit confused, as it seems like link's in general aren't being url encoded... which makes me think something is wonky.

Thanks!

Okay, found the fix.

After installing Joomla 1.5.21, and Kunena 1.6, I found the configuration option that's the issue.

In the Joomla administration area, under Components, Kunena Forum, Configuration. In there is an RSS tab. Change the RSS Specification to RSS 2.0, and save. That should fix the issue. I'm guessing right now it's set to RSS 0.91, or RSS 1.0, both of which are pretty old at this point, and setting them that way is not really needed anymore.

Give that a shot, and let me know, and I'll give it a test. Weird that RSS previous to 2.0 allowed non-encoded URLs....

Thanks!

Obviously the issue should be fixed via patching Kunena, but my code should fix a general idea of the issue. The biggest one, is not HTML encoding the url's under <link>. Once that's addressed, I'm guessing the RSS will validate, albeit messily.

If I have time tomorrow I'll look at the code for 1.6 and see if I can figure out where it's going wrong.

And Clay, this is the least I can do given the product. =)