Fixed Angle Knife Sharpener

I am a total dork when it comes to knife sharpening. I always feel like the knife that I have sharpened is no better than before I started, if not worse.

In the old days, there is this knife sharpening peddler that cycles by my neighbourhood on his bicycle peddling his trade. We get him to sharpen our knives and he does quite a good job. But I don't see him any more these days. Last sighting of him was something like 15 years ago.

I think my problem all along was in keeping my sharpening angle consistent. The very old worn out concave surface of the sharpening stone just made things more difficult for me, if not impossible, I think.

So to aid me in sharpening the dull knives in my house, I got myself one of these fixed angle knife sharpening device (DISCLOSURE: this is a Lazada Malaysia affiliate link) last week. There are a lot of different fixed angle knife sharpener designs out there in the market. But I settled on one that is easy to set up where no additional tools, like an Allen key or screw drivers, is required.

Blooming Again

After something like 7 years, my cactus bloomed again. Unlike the last time where I only had a single bloom, this time I had 6. One flower came earlier by about a week. The rest of it bloomed later together, all five - picture above. Three set of flowers on two separate cactus bulb.

As far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be any correlation between the month that it bloomed. Seven years ago, it was around August. This time, it was in April. Blooming time though is the same - from night till late morning, lasting only one day.

I wonder when will it bloom again? Such beautiful flowers.

Cat Is Recovering From Hairball

After something like 4 months (beginning early November 2020), it looks like my cat is on her way to recovery. I think I have managed to unclogged her digestive system.

How do I know, you asked? Well, the proof is in the pooping. She has been at it for the last 2 weeks or so - daily.

I tried cow's milk initially. But that didn't quite work out.

So I tried coconut oil next. Daily doses is about 0.5ml - 0.75ml per day.

A severe case of hairball with my cat, I think. It took almost 2 months before things started moving. Taking her to the vet would be the best and fastest remedy. However, with Covid-19 floating around ... you know.

Hi-fi Upgrade

It has gotten to me. After all these years, I think I have gotten tired of burning MP3 compact discs (CD). I find the tasks cumbersome these days. The last CD that I burnt was something like a year ago. Besides that, the CD burners on my computers are getting old and needs to be replaced. One by one they are failing. And oh yes, there is some problems with getting my CD detected in the Phillips DVD player. That needs to be replaced too.

It would be ideal if I could have all my audio music digital files installed on flash drives and I playing them off from a media player of some kind.

That was one thought that I had not too long ago. With all the debating going on in my mind, the idea of upgrading my hi-fi system came flashing across my mind one fine day. After all, I had never ever bought a hi-fi system for myself before. All along, all I have was just a 'make-do' system. As a matter of fact, they are just hand-me-downs from my father and brother (Dad passed away while my brother bought a better system for himself and tossed the old one). Some repairs were required along the way, like my brother's Mission speakers for example. Foam for the woofer got chewed up by cockroaches some 35 years ago. Fixed that myself by making my own 'foam' using nappy liner cutouts and silicone sealant. It works, minus the aesthetics unfortunately. It's a 'make-do' system after all. Quite a fun project there.

Lots Of Data

My Internet Service Provider (ISP) Yes has gone generous recently. Instead of 15GB previously, I get 50GB worth of data now after a plan upgrade on 31st December 2020. That's an extra 35GB here. Lots of data now, all at no extra charge. I still pay RM47.40 (sales tax included) per month as before.

Now, the problem is I only use about 14GB of data per month all this while. I am wondering now on what am I going to do with all this available data. 36GB in all? It would have been better if they lower the monthly fee, I think. But beggars can't be choosers.

Cow's Milk As Cat Laxative?

The hairball control medication did work for awhile initially for my 8 year old cat.

A fews weeks later though, its effectiveness seems to have waned to the extent that my cat was going minimal on water and zero on food intake for about a week. All the signs for cat constipation (lethargy, irritable when touched, always in the crouching position, straining to defecate with nothing produce) were there, except for vomiting. I was obviously very concern. Very, very concern seeing that my cat was losing a lot of weight too.

So, as a last resort, I took the very unconventional approach, hoping to relieve my cat's agony: I gave my cat some cow's milk. Just half a tablespoon though, at about 3 cc. I was quite sure that things will turn terminal if I were to do nothing. I was desperate. It's a chance that I have to take, even though I knew beforehand that some cats may suffer from complications with lactose intolerance because of milk.

NTFS Corruption No More

Those pesky NTFS corruption that I've had regularly since 2013, they have gone they way of the Dodo now. Thank goodness. And all I've did was to upgrade from a HDD to an SSD back in August 2020. Looks like it was a hardware problem all along, and I have been wrongly blaming things on software by mistake. Symptoms of a dying hard disk. Wish I knew that earlier. Lesson learnt.

It's scary now looking back at things during these last 7 years. My hard disk could have failed at any time during those years and I could have lost everything since I do not do regular backups then.

Now of late, I have been actively monitoring the health of my SSD regularly via a freeware called CrystalDiskInfo. Any sign of trouble and off I go and do another migration to a new.

Blue Eyed Snake

One regular visitor to my backyard this Golden Tree Snake. I have taken numerous pictures of this snake species before in the past. But never have I taken one with a blue covering over its eyes.

Bought Another Camera, The Olympus Pen EPL-9

I already own two cameras: a Canon EOS 800D/T7i and a Canon Powershot SX530HS. And it all started with me searching for a Canon telephoto lens a few months ago. It ended though with something quite unexpected. I did get my telephoto lens (a 40-150mm) and, believe it or not, I actually bought myself another camera - an entry level mirrorless camera from Olympus, the PEN EPL-9. Hey! This decision made financial sense, to me at least - see below.

It actually took me some 2 months to finally own this camera. I did face some hurdles along the way. It first caught my eye (which was bundled with a 40-150mm lens) quite unexpectedly towards the end of June 2020. I did my maths and realised that the listed selling price was a great bargain. Clever me thought that since the Lazada 7.7 sale was coming up on July 7 2020, why not wait and enjoy an even greater discount.

Big mistake. On that very fateful day, the price for the camera was revised upwards by some RM500, The bargain was no more. I was obviously disappointed. The 7.7 sale did give a RM20 discount coupon though. But trading in RM500 to receive a RM20 coupon? Who would do that?

I persevered.

From Hard Disk To SSD

Maybe this is something that I should have done a few months back. But then again, Solid State Drive (SSD) were very expensive then. My WinXP partition now boots up super fast in under 10 seconds after my upgrade to a SSD. Previously, it took about 2 minutes. It has been almost a month since I upgraded my PC internal hard disk drive (HDD) to a SSD. So far everything looks good. I would have loved getting a Samsung SSD with its reputation and reliability and all. But Samsung SSDs were way beyond my budget. In the end I settled for a Crucial 500GB MX500 2.5" drive by Micron. Not too bad at a price of RM293.

I wouldn't have migrated to an SSD if not for the ever increasing bad blocks at various partitions within my HDD over the last couple of months. One file even become inaccessible just a few weeks ago because of bad blocks. The HDD is still spinning and booting up alright but experience told me that the HDD is reaching its end of life.