Knife Shoppe

Hi ya’all. I haven’t been very active here lately because I had some work to do. Including that after months and months of heavy procrastination, I have finally purchased web hosting and a domain and started a small webpage for my knives.

www.kb-noze.cz

Constructive criticism is welcome.

The webshop interface does not allow me to display prices in other currencies than Czech Crowns (yet), but I do hope that anyone can convert it to USD or € or whatever should they need to. I will gladly sell anywhere in the world as long as it is financially feasible for both me and the customer, but selling outside of the Czech Republic must be done through individual arrangements and cannot be done simply via the webshop interface (not yet). The reasons are simple – additional currencies and shipping outside CZ are both available for an extra charge and I am not ready to dish out more money than is strictly necessary. Not yet, anyway.

I am thinking about adding a knife-making blog there, but I am somewhat discouraged by the amount of work that it would entail.

I will leave this post pinned to the top of the page for some time.

Just Bread

If you’re one of the three people globally who didn’t make their own sourdough bread during the first Covid lockdowns, this is for you.

Contrary to popular belief, sourdough is neither difficult or complicated, it’s just time intensive, because if you want to make it, you need to start at least a week before. Or you buy sourdough starter. Whatever. About once a year I get the strong urge to make sourdough bread. I start my sourdough, bake breads for a couple of weeks, and then at some point my starter dies. I feel zero remorse over this.

To start your sourdough, mix 50g of flour with 50 g of lukewarm water in a mason jar, and put it somewhere not too cold. Repeat every day for at least 6 days. Some recipes will tell you it’s fine after three days, but in my experience, it takes at least a week to get a really active sourdough.

Once you have a nice starter, you can make bread. Start the day before your want the bread, best around early in the afternoon. Take:

1kg of flour, 22 g of salt, 200 to 300 g of starter, 400-500ml of water. You can add nuts, grains, seeds to your liking.

I’m not telling you which flour to use, it should work with most gluten containing flours, but you’ll have to find our how much water you need.

If you want to give it a headstart, you can make a “poolish”: feed your sourdough well (at least a double amount), take off your 200-300 g, put those in a nicely warm place (30-35°C) for an hour. This step is optional, but probably wise if you only start late in the afternoon.

Back to the non optional parts: put everything into your kitchen machine and knead for about 10 minutes. You can watch internet tutorials that will tell you how to do it by hand, insisting that those very movements, turns and folding techniques are absolutely necessary, but in my opinion, that’s nonsense. Once it’s done, cover with a damp cloth. Every 1.5 to 2 hours, you wet your hands and stretch and fold it, right until you want to go to bed. Then you fold it a last time, shape it into a ball, and put it either in a special bread basket liberally coated with flour, or a bowl, cover again with a damp cloth, put it somewhere cool but not cold (I use our stairway as it is pretty much lways between 15and 20 °C)and go to bed.

In the morning, you bake it. There are several options here: you can just use your cookie sheet, a pizza stone (my preferred method) or a dutch oven (put in baking paper), but it’s very important that you preheat to 200°C, especially when using a stone or dutch oven. These need to be 200° as well, so I usuall preheat at least 30 minutes. Put the bread upside down on your stone/sheet, dutch oven and  cut the top. If you’re using a dutch oven, cover it for the first 30 minutes, if not pour some water on the bottom of your oven (or use ice cubes) to create steam. If you use the dutch oven, remove the lid after 30 minutes, bake for about 1 h. Let it cool and enjoy.

A sourdough bread with a golden brown crust, cut in half

©Giliell, all rights reserved

The Hobbits go plant based

I’ve long suffered from a bad conscience from leaving Charly to do all the work here, but I still couldn’t drag my butt in the metaphorical chair (no more real chair for me) to type something meaningful. I still don’t have the spoons to type anything politically interesting, but since I’ve been sharing more and more food on Mastodon I thought: why not write some lighthearted recipe posts? I think I can manage that.

The recipes will all be plant based. The Giliell family has significantly reduced their animal product consumption over the recent years anyway and a few weeks ago my eldest went fully vegan. Now, this is a disclaimer for all the posts here: I’m not vegan. I’m not trying to be and this is NOT and invitation to any vegans to try and convince me. You didn’t manage to do so the last 15 years and I doubt you will do so now. That’s why I’m using the label plant based as it describes my personal approach: creating delicious food while using plant based ingredients. This is about the joy of eating, not about discussing ideology or philosophy. Just yummy, no judgement.

Why Hobbits? Because during the easter week we hosted a Lotr movie marathon (actually 2 days, because eating took too much time) with mostly vegan food, mostly based on “things that fit the general middle earth theme” from an unofficial cookbook.

So, let’s get started with some hearty date and sesame bars that will give you lots of energy for walking to Orodruin or going to school

You need

150g of dried fruit: dates, apricots, raisins…, cut into small pieces. I wouldn’t use too much apples or mangos, because they’re lacking stickiness.

125g of flour

125g of oats

1 tsp baking powder

1-3 tbsp sesame seeds

Mix all dry ingredients

120-150 g margarine or vegan butter. Don’t try to reduce the fat or your mass will not stick

75 g brown sugar

1tbsp maple syrup or any other sugary syrup

Melt margarine, mix with sugar and syrup. Pour over dry ingredients and mash together. Put everything on a cookie sheet, push flat. Don’t try a dish. I did that the first time and they stayed nicely soft.

Bake at 180° C for about 20-25 minutes, cut while hot. They keep well. Or would if they weren’t gobbled up so fast. you can create your own favourite mix. Add sunflower seeds, leave out dates, your call.

rectangle bars in a plastic container and on a cookie sheet

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Moar Easter Gingerbreads

My mother made these on Sunday and only just now I got around to post them.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Knives on Snow

Winter did not want to give up yet, which suits me just fine. I wanted some pictures of my newly made knives with snow/winter backgrounds and I could not do it because the winter was insanely tepid and wet with nary a snowflake in sight. Yet tonight the weather obliged and I woke to a nice sunny day with a few cm of snow cover. Thus right after breakfast I went out and arranged all three knives and took pictures. I might never use them for the intended purpose, but I am glad I made them anyway.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I am also glad for the cold spell since it gave me reprieve from hard labor in the garden and I could spend the day indoors making knives again. I still have a lot of undressed blades to finish.

The snow melted right away and everything is soggy now.  Still more should come according to the forecast. I was just about to plant the potatoes when it started to snow and now it might take a few more days before I can do that. Hooray!

2023 Christmass Gingerbreads

Here are some of my mother’s creations she made for last Christmas. I forgot to post them at the time.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

2024 Eeaster Gingrebreads

I completely forgot to post my mother’s creations for the previous Christmas. Would you be interested in seeing them now? Before you answer, here are the gingerbreads she made for this Easter.

Her hands are shaky but they are still beautiful. And delicious. And most importantly – making them brings her joy.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Habsolutly Hamazin Dhance!

Usually, I am indifferent to looking at dancing and hate doing it. but this video captivated me completely. It is a rare case of me being amazed.

I like the original song a lot but I did not listen to it for a long time. Thus I do not know why the algorithm recommended it today, but it done did do good this time. I think the performance is simply stunning in every aspect, starting with the choice of venue, the lighting, the color scheme of the costumes, the choreography, and simply everything. It must have been a lot of work and rehearsing, but the result is simply amazing. And it really is difficult to impress me with a dance routine enough to want to share it.

The Spring Came Early…

And that means pain. Lots of it. However, first, enjoy two pretty pictures:

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Somehow, crocuses (croci?), escaped from our flower bed and now sprout occasionally in the lawn. I don’t mind, in fact, I like it. But I must watch where I step during these early spring working days. And boy, I do have lots of work. I harvested my coppice a bit late this year because February was way too windy for that to do safely. Now I am in the middle of processing all that wood because I must manage to do it before I must replant my bonsai. The winter was too warm and the spring came way too early this year. I dread the summer.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

This year I have decided to not put all the long thin willow and poplar twigs through the shredder but to bundle them and then cut the bundles into 50 cm segments. It is a lot more work (about 3x) now but I hope it will be less work in the winter. My heating stove does not work well with wood chips, when I put too much in it at once it gets choked up and smokes a lot and later it can overheat because the chips first burn too slowly and then too fast. With bundles, there’s less smoke, and overheating does not happen because they burn more evenly throughout. Thus I can put in the oven more at once and save two or three walks down the steps into the cellar each day in winter. Further, I hope that mice will be less inclined to make nests in the bundles than in the woodchips. I find at least one nest in there each year since I no longer keep cats and traps are useless – they tend to catch more shrews than mice.

But it is hard work – the first two days I was doing the bundling I overexerted myself and could not move or even think and sleep properly for two days after that. Now I have about 1 cubic meter of bundles to cut and still some hazel, maple, ash, and hornbeam twigs to either bind or put through the shredder if they are too crooked.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I also have approximately 1/2 of a cubic meter of ash, maple, and hazel rods that can be cut into 50 cm pieces without binding.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

And about 1 cubic meter of poplar logs to do the same. I will spend several more days, possibly two weeks, doing this. Altogether I estimate this to be circa 20% of my yearly firewood needs. It is more than usual, because this year I harvested all of the coppice, regardless of age. I had to do that so I could try and plant new trees instead of those that water voles destroyed – if I did not cut everything, the new plantings would be completely overshadowed.

I am glad the spring is here but as always I do wish I was more physically fit. It takes me twice the time to do something an average man of my age could do. Well, that’s life, it only will get worse.

My persimmon tree started growing this week, I want to replant it tomorrow and update ya’ll about how it is growing.

Chess, AI and Lessons About Societal Impact

Marcus has used chess several times in his articles about AI on stderr and in comments on Pharyngula and it got me thinking about whether there is something valuable we can learn from how the ascend of AI of sorts has impacted chess. And I think there is. First about the state of affairs as far as AI in the chess world goes.

The good:

The chess-playing AI’s are getting better and more accessible very quickly. What once needed a supercomputer the size of a wardrobe that probably used enough power to heat a household, can now be easily done by a pocket computer running on a battery. This accessibility of high-quality game analysis to anyone with a smartphone has led to a relative chess boom. Today’s young generation has unprecedented access to learning about chess games. Websites like chess.com and Lichess.org are thriving. As a result, new chess masters and grandmasters are getting younger and younger. AI has contributed to humans getting better at the game and has led to more people enjoying said game.

The bad:

Wide and easy access to AI that can easily beat even the best chess player of all time has its dark side too. Cheating both in online and OTB tournament chess is at an unprecedented level. I am not a bad chess player and not an excellent one either. But I am good enough to occasionally be paired with really good players online. And also with cheaters who like to pretend they are good. I do not know the exact number, but I have reported probably over a dozen people for suspiciously good play. One report was rejected at the time but said player was confirmed to be a cheater about a month later. One report was a mistake on my part. All the rest were confirmed to be cheaters, sometimes after a short delay, sometimes nearly immediately. And every year there is a talk about cheating in high-ranking OTB chess tournaments, occasionally even with physical proof  – a few years ago a chess grandmaster lost his title after being caught analyzing his current game with a phone hidden in the restrooms.

The ugly:

The rampant cheating online and some prominent cheating scandals OTB foster a culture of paranoia. Former world champion Vladimir Kramnik embodied this paranoia last year, when he publicly hinted that GM Hikaru Nakamura is cheating, without outright saying so. The only proof that Kramnik provided for his allegations proved only that a high understanding of the game of chess does not automatically translate to a high understanding of maths and statistics and how proofs work. But Kramnik is not alone. Allegedly the talk about cheating is behind the scenes all the time at the highest echelons of chess and suspicions are not uncommon. Rarely names are dropped and proofs are provided, but the suspicions are there all the time. I observed this paranoia in myself after losing a game egregiously and my high ratio of correct to false reporting of foul play is because I do my best to analyze the games afterward and look at some data before reporting someone. I also know that I have been myself probably twice reported for foul play (at least my opponents told me they were reporting me). Both of those reports would of course be mistaken. Funnily enough both of those instances I did not play particularly well and subsequent analysis found really sub-par gameplay on my part.

So, what to do with it, is there something to learn about how to deal with AI overtaking the arts? I think there is.

If anything, chess teaches us that the ascend of highly capable AI into a field does not automatically mean the death of said field. Chess tournaments still exist, and amateur chess players still enjoy the game of skill. People do not want to just see and admire good chess games, they want to see and admire good chessgames played by other people. And I think the same applies to art. Using AI as I tried (and failed) to do is equivalent to a chess player using AI to learn a new strategy or analyze their games. If done properly, it could help a lot of people to learn new skills faster and better than before and unleash an unprecedented boom of art. But people still want to see other people’s creations, not just slop churned out by algorithms.

However, chess avoided destruction by implementing and enforcing strict regulations. That is more difficult to achieve in arts than in chess because there is no overarching authority like FIDE and I do not know how to implement this in the real world. But an effort should be made. If someone uses AI to create a picture and then passes it off as their own creation, they should be dealt with the same way as if someone is caught cheating at chess. No galleries should display art by said artist, no auction houses should sell it and their reputation should be forever tarnished and the community should shun them and ridicule them (the last one appears to be happening, at least). They might not be plagiarizing in the sense the word is understood right now, but they definitively are not creating in any sense of the word.

I do not understand why some people cheat in a game of skill even when there is nothing tangible of value to be gained. But people still do it, my understanding, or lack thereof is inconsequential. Apparently, they do get the dopamine hit after a won game, even though they did not, as a matter of fact, win the game – a machine did that on their behalf. And there are people to be found online who consider themselves to be artists because they write elaborate prompts to stable diffusion. But they are no more artist than a teenager who uses Stockfish is a chess grandmaster.

In my opinion, just as it is not morally (and in a sense legally as far as online chess sites and FIDE go) OK to “commission” your game of chess to an AI and then pretend that you are the one who won, it is not OK to commission an art piece and then pretend you were the one who created it.


Addendum: One interesting thing about AI in chess is that whilst the AI does play better than humans, it is generally lousy at mimicking human play. I have won games in a lost position because my opponent resigned – the position was winning for them, but the winning move was so obscure and difficult to find that they could not find it in time. I also lost winning games because I lost my nerves. AI cannot (so far) mimick the time distribution of moves that people have etc. So far even AIs that are deliberately dumbed down to have a lower level corresponding to human players of some strength for the purpose of training or entertainment feel a bit “off” and there are signs that show that they are not human.


Addendum 2: AI is to art what ultra-processed fast food is to nutrition. And if unchecked, it will have the same consequences on our societal mental health as fast food had and continues to have on our physical health.

A Howlicool Knife

I am still undecided on whether to offer this knife for sale or not. It is a cursed knife, mistakes, and obstacles just kept popping up. I tried to use the oak extract blackening on mild steel fittings and it did not take. So I used heat and linseed oil and the results were great – but they got damaged badly at the last minute when I was sharpening the blade. That damage is irreparable now, although one might not spot it if unaware of its existence. I damaged the blackening on the blade too, but I was able to restore that to an almost new look. It turns out that some paper masking tapes have glue that is damaging to both blackening techniques used. It sticks too strongly after a while and it is nigh impossible to clean it off the metal surface.

Pictures below the fold.

[Read more…]

Still Not a Masterpiece

Strictly speaking, I can never make a masterpiece, because I do not know about any knifemaker’s guild or similar organization around here that could grant me one. And even if I knew, I could not be bothered with going through the hassle accompanied by obtaining one. There was a knifemaking vocational school in CZ, but a quick Google search failed to confirm whether it is still functional. When I found out about its existence, I already had my Master’s degree in Biology and Chemistry and it was not feasible to go back to vocational school at that stage of my life.

Nevermind. I just finished two knives and I do think I did a good job, although they both took an absolutely unholy amount of time to finish. The blades were first seen in the first Overabladeance post. Both blades are highly polished, which makes them a PITA to photograph. I am not entirely convinced my choice of background for these photos was correct but I am reluctant to go through all the hours of photographing it again with another color.

Lotsa of pictures under the fold. [Read more…]

Creativity AIn’t the issue

I tried to use generative AI in my last designs, both for the auroch and for the wild boar. First I tried the AI that is supplied with the latest version of Photoshop. Since I am paying for that, I might as well use it. Then I tried to use Stable Diffusion because it is free. And after that, there is no way in hell I will pay for Midjourney, even if I could afford it.

I won’t post the pictures I got here, the internet does not need more AI-generated crap to pollute it. Suffice it to say, that whilst some results looked at least somewhat interesting, most were total crap and none were useable for my purposes. Right from the outset, I found out that the AI does not actually contribute anything to my work at all.

I am one of those people who has some trouble visualizing things in their mind. Especially human faces. I would be completely incapable of drawing the face of even the most beloved person in my life. That might sound odd for someone who doodled all the time and who used to be sufficiently good at drawing to get into art school where part of the entrance examination was drawing a Goethe bust, but that is the way it is. I generally need some kind of template to get started. However, as I found out with the AI, my inability to form a clear visual picture in my mind does not mean that I start without a clue as to how the result shall look. And that is where I clashed with the AI and lost.

I got plenty of two-headed or six-legged animals, plenty of zebu or bison-like animals instead of aurochs, and a lot of domesticated pig lookalikes instead of wild boars. The pose of the animal was never right, no matter what prompts I used. Even after I wrote “auroch running from left to right” I got a picture of what looked like a pair of six-legged water buffaloes running from right to left. At one time the Photoshop AI even deleted one of three generated pictures because the prompt “auroch bull charging” somehow triggered its anti-porn filter or something.

After a few days of faffing around, I found out that my old process – which I described in my previous post – is actually the better way to go. Because despite my poor visualization skills, I still have a pretty good idea about what I want to achieve and what the end result should look like. The AI did not help with that in any way. I only wanted it to generate the picture to get started, and I haven’t got even that. I had zero control over what came out of it. It was a game of chance and I never enjoyed those.

No doubt that with a lot of work and a supply of carefully selected images to train the AI myself, I might get some useable results, but I also got those with a simple Google photo search and making a biro sketch in a few minutes. And once I had the sketch, once I got started, I built on that.

I do not consider generative AI to be completely useless but if it is creative, to me it was a hindrance, not a plus. Sure, I used it to generate dozens of somewhat unique pictures, but despite me being the one giving the prompts, I was in no meaningful way the one who actually created the result.

The results were pictorial ends to a game of Chinese whispers. Sometimes amusing, sometimes interesting, but always widely off the mark.

My Creative Process

Marcus’s recent posts about AI got me thinking and as a part of my thoughts on the issue, I want to start today by writing about my creative process, using my most recent art pieces. Those pieces being knives, because why not.

For me, the idea of how to create something usually pops into my mind without any conscious effort. I can be sleeping, eating my lunch, or driving my car, mulling over this and that and I get the starting of an idea about how to create something. And then it grows from there organically during the process itself.

Of course, all my knives are influenced by my experiences with using and making knives, as well as the designs I saw, whether conscious of that influence or not. But with these two knives, I can be a bit more specific. One of them started nearly thirty years ago and it is inspired by another knifemaker’s blade that I saw in one of my books. I changed both the outline and the grind profile, but the inspiration from someone else’s work was the starting point. For the other knife though, it started with my first failed attempt at a machete (-click-), thus the inspiration for this specific design was an accident.

When I started to make the two blades, I had no concrete plans for them and I had originally intended to make them with ordinary wooden scales. But as the works progressed, I started to think more and more that they would look splendid with engraved bone scales and I left them lying for a year with that idea at the back of my mind. During that year, I worked on other things, as the ideas for what to do with these two slowly matured in my mind. The bigger one got me on a line of thinking that ended up with the idea of engraving a picture of an auroch on the scale, but I still had no idea about the smaller one.

Then in the fall of last year, I successfully sold a knife with a picture of a roe deer on the sheath and when talking with my mother about what animal to use next, she suggested a wild boar. And whilst I have declined the idea for a sheath decoration (for now), I did think that it would look well on a bone scale, thus I finally got the idea for the second knife. Again, inspiration for one came out of some murky associations in my subconscious, the other one came from a nudge by another person’s ideas.

So with a rough idea in my head about what I wanted to accomplish, I started outfitting the knives. And as I wrote in my previous post, during the manufacture I decided to make the handle scales with hidden pins, which gave me an even bigger area to embellish. And when the knives were finally finished, I could start on the designs for the engravings.

With animal designs, I normally start by looking through my books and the interwebs for photos and drawings for inspiration. Not to copy – not the lest because to find a picture with the exact pose that I could use would be a stroke of luck indeed – but to use it as a guideline for a picture that is not egregiously anatomically incorrect. When I find a picture that is roughly what I want the end result to be, I start sketching. Most of that process can be seen in this picture:

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Nowadays I start with biro sketches on paper that I subsequently refine on PC. In the past, I would go with pencils on paper all the way to the finished product. I wanted to use a whole pig, but I had trouble fitting that on the scale due to its shape, so I decided to use just the head.

When I fine-tuned both designs on PC to my satisfaction, I decided to test whether the boar head would look acceptable, so I made a test piece on an offcut of bone.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

As you can see I made again changes from the previous sketches. Not only because I am not a copy machine, but also because each medium imposes its own limits on the creative process and thus each medium demands some changes in attitude to get a usable result. At this stage, I thought I was finished with designing and ready to set out to work, but my mind kept working. It kept nagging me that the scales looked too empty. There were no visible pins and thus there was ample space to fill. I added a rope pattern as framing around the head, but it still was not enough. I tried to fish my mother’s mind for ideas and she delivered – I should add some spruce twigs. I initially dismissed the idea because I did not know how to implement it, but when I tried to google “spruce twig pattern”, I got an idea for how to do it, I drew it and I was finally satisfied.

Nevertheless, I still only had decorative designs for the right side of each knife. I decided to leave the left side on the auroch blade blank, but I felt somehow that the boar needed to have something on the other side too. And without prompting, an idea came to me in the evening just before sleep – to continue the rope frame around the boar head to the other side and engrave a decorative knot there. As far as which knot to use, this time I did not look for inspiration to others, I simply took two pieces of paracord and arranged them into knots for about an hour until I got a result I liked.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I have redrawn the design on the PC into a shape that fits the scale and thus my designs were finished. I printed them out on paper labels and set out to work.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The actual realization is more about craft and technique than about the creative process. If you are interested in that, tomorrow there will be a short article on my Knife Blogge about it.

Next time I would like to write about how this all connects to generative AI. I do not know when, but hopefully next weekend.