Disqus - Latest Comments for drWord

Re: How to Wash Your Jeans

drWord — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 09:13:33 -0000

Two hundred bucks for a pair of dungarees/jeans? And no length choice so the bottoms are rumpled at ankle? Avoid washing? Or hand wash in cold water?
This part of Wirecutter belongs with the anorexic women sashaying down a runway, or the Styles magazine with oh-so look-away models sporting $2000 shirts.
Get a life.

Re: The Best Men’s Button-Up Shirts

drWord — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 18:52:38 -0000

As for Charles Tyrwhitt, the one I tried was short everywhere, button holes miniscule, fabric lightweight.

Re: The Best Men’s Button-Up Shirts

drWord — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 18:46:59 -0000

Hard to believe you’d test Oxford cloth button down shirts and not include LL Bean. They’re 2/3 the cost of your first pick, well-styled and durable.

Re: The Best Digital Photo Frame

drWord — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 08:53:40 -0000

Your review misses a Wi-Fi connection problem that affects Skylight and maybe other frames. Some frames are speed-sensitive: they won’t connect reliably to a 5-ghz network, or they’ll connect momentarily, then drop the link. Their standard troubleshooting guidance to “restart the router” is about ten years out of date. If I’ve got five other items happily connected the problem’s with the frame software/firmware, not the network. And as other reviewers noted tech help is via email, which begins with blaming the router.

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Will Heated Gloves Help Me Stay Warm This Winter?

drWord — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 09:46:12 -0000

I’ve got mittens and gloves from Ororo. They offer a range of heated clothing (vests, more).

Re: Ask Wirecutter: Will Heated Gloves Help Me Stay Warm This Winter?

drWord — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 09:42:09 -0000

As earlier comments suggested, you kind of missed the boat on the issue of heated mittens/gloves. Your use standards (phones, paper) aren’t realistic in outdoor cold, where something like holding x-country ski poles is a more typical use.
In addition, Raynaud’s is not the only source of neuropathy in hands and feet: chemo-induced neuropathy deprives my fingers and toes of much sensation, occasionally and often without stimulus restricting blood flow. Heated mittens from Ororo let me enjoy skiing and just being outdoors in cold weather again. They provide three levels of warmth in the right places (backs of fingers, thumbs), batteries are well-located (in the gauntlets) and last a reasonable time, and the company ID is minimal. The materials and construction are first-rate and though not the most expensive (<$200) they do the job.

Re: The Best Sandals

drWord — Sun, 23 May 2021 12:02:01 -0000

What happened to the “closed-toe sandals that will save you from needing a pedicure” for men?

Re: How Do you Teach People about Hardware and Software? ~ Chris Pirillo

drWord — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:52:35 -0000

Your fourth bullet point is (a) 'way off base and (b) a fine example of poor instruction.
It's off base because creating an effective instructional video requires skill, talent, and understanding. Every recorded item requires editing to adjust for sequence, timing, focus, control. To be fair, Techsmith's marketing babble is equally misleading ("professional content without a ton of production time"). Rule of thumb: 300 units of editing work for each unit of finished run-time. Adobe's Captivate is a much more capable screen capture tool, but its products still need major editing.
As for (b), the fine example: any student of mine who uses "easily", "just", or "simply" in an instruction (as in: "Simply install...") earns a failing grade for the exercise. Those words imply it's easy to do whatever is at issue. That's "easy" in the opinion of the writer--which is irrelevant, and may be frustrating for first-time users, who find an exercise anything but simple. A guiding maxim for instructional writers: "Remember thy users: they are not thee.".