What's the procedure for sharpening a knife with the bottom of a mug? Do you just drag the side of the knife along it a few times?
Yeah, you basically just run the edge across the exposed ceramic. The angle the edge makes with the sharpening surface is important, though. There's no single bevel angle that works for all knives; sharper angles cut more cleanly but are less durable and can't handle as much force, so a sushi knife needs a different bevel than a machete. Whatever angle you choose should be consistent all the way through.
Unless the knife is old or very dull, you're probably best off trying to match the factory angle. An easy way of doing this is to run a Sharpie along the beveled part of the blade and then check it after a couple of strokes; you're looking for the smallest angle that'll take the ink off all the way to the edge.
What can I purchase with $100 that will be the best thing I can buy to make my life better?
I've decided to budget some regular money to improving my life each month. I'd like to start with low hanging fruit for obvious reasons - but when I sat down to think of improvements, I found myself thinking of the same old things I'd already been planning to do anyway... and I'd like out of that rut.
Constraints/more info:
Background:
This is a question I recently posed to my local Less Wrong group and we came up with a few good ideas, so I thought I'd share the discussion with the wider community and see what we can come up with. I'll add the list we came up with later on in the comments...
It'd be great to have a repository of low-hanging fruit for things that can be solved with (relatively affordable) amounts of money. I'd personally like to go through the list - look at candidates that sound like they'd be really useful to me and then make a prioritised list of what to work on first.