Techniques: Knife Skills

There's nothing like slicing about a thousand carrots (see below) to make you realize that you have absolutely no knife skills at all, and that the whole thing would have been so much quicker and easier if you knew what you were doing.

So today I've been watching a few videos. Here are the best ones I found:

http://www.chefsusa.com/chefsusa_knife_skills.htm - classic, will come back to this (and you learn to make a scallion palm tree!)
http://www.reluctantgourmet.com/chef_knife_skills_video.htm - a bit more detailed, with great explanations, but he's scarily comfortable with a paring knife, so watching it is a bit squirmy
http://simplycook.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/how-to-chop-like-a-top-chef/ - a nice, friendly bloke from Men's Health

P.S. Of course, they all say you need an 8/10/12 inch chef's knife, and we don't have one of those. So some of the above stuff may turn out to be a struggle. The New Cook has a helpful guide to buying knives (http://thenewcook.com/2008/03/chef-knives-overview/), something we'll need to tackle.