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new glasses, take 2
The Monday before last I took my new glasses back to the optician for two reasons: acutely, one lens had fallen out (heat + new plastic = bad; wash them in less-hot water, she says), and more seriously, the placement of the left bifocal was subtly off.
She measured the glasses, re-measured me, and then measured my old glasses. Verdict: the new ones are "right" and the old ones were incorrectly made. (Given all the trouble NeoVision gave me over the old ones, I'm not surprised.) The old ones had the wrong pupilary distance, she said, off by a total of 6mm between the two eyes. Why did my brain accept that? Dunno, but it probably got masked by the whole taking-a-week-to-adjust-to-new-glasses thing. My brain learned to cope with the error, I guess.
She asked if I thought I could get used to the new glasses. They were, in fact, ok for everything except working with my computer at work -- but that's pretty important, and I'd spent most of a week trying to get used to it. I asked if the bifocal could be moved without affecting the distance vision; nope. I asked if I could have a bigger bifocal, and she said that was possible. (Alas, the jump to the next size was 7mm, when I was hoping for about 4mm.)
This was about to lead to the uncomfortable conversation about who pays for this (it's not their fault the previous guys did something wrong, but we did use that as a partial baseline), but she called my insurance company and apparently they will pay for one "no-fault" remake. So I sent them back for a wider bifocal and no other changes. (I considered asking them to lengthen the focal distance on the bifocal, but decided that would be borrowing trouble and risk leaving me with nothing usable.)
I picked the new glasses up Friday morning. It took me a little while to adjust distance vision to work around the extra bifocal width, particularly when looking down. But I was able to read the computer at work more easily (after moving the monitor some). Reading paper (after minor adjustments) works fine. I read torah this morning with them. Ironically, I was having a little difficulty with my computer at home tonight, but it's gotten better over the last couple hours, so I guess I'm adapting. At one point I wondered if I was seeing worse with the new bifocals than the old, but three seconds with the old glasses told me otherwise. It is a crisper image; maybe the light is reflecting differently or something, and these lenses aren't yet as dark as the previous ones (plastic does that and transition lenses do that over time, apparently). It's almost certainly all really minor stuff, but I'm really sensitive to minor stuff. I'll get used to it.
But, as I said, it'll take a week, probably. It's annoying in the short term and better in the long term. Given that, I wonder what the optimal frequency of changes is. I used to keep glasses for, oh, 5-7 years before changing, because they were good enough, manual prescriptions were a crap shoot, and glasses were expensive. Now automation gets me better prescriptions and lenses have actually gotten cheaper in the last two decades (huh?), so it really just comes down to the transition period, I guess. Hmm.
It's the 21st century. Where are my high-tech adjustable glasses? :-)
She measured the glasses, re-measured me, and then measured my old glasses. Verdict: the new ones are "right" and the old ones were incorrectly made. (Given all the trouble NeoVision gave me over the old ones, I'm not surprised.) The old ones had the wrong pupilary distance, she said, off by a total of 6mm between the two eyes. Why did my brain accept that? Dunno, but it probably got masked by the whole taking-a-week-to-adjust-to-new-glasses thing. My brain learned to cope with the error, I guess.
She asked if I thought I could get used to the new glasses. They were, in fact, ok for everything except working with my computer at work -- but that's pretty important, and I'd spent most of a week trying to get used to it. I asked if the bifocal could be moved without affecting the distance vision; nope. I asked if I could have a bigger bifocal, and she said that was possible. (Alas, the jump to the next size was 7mm, when I was hoping for about 4mm.)
This was about to lead to the uncomfortable conversation about who pays for this (it's not their fault the previous guys did something wrong, but we did use that as a partial baseline), but she called my insurance company and apparently they will pay for one "no-fault" remake. So I sent them back for a wider bifocal and no other changes. (I considered asking them to lengthen the focal distance on the bifocal, but decided that would be borrowing trouble and risk leaving me with nothing usable.)
I picked the new glasses up Friday morning. It took me a little while to adjust distance vision to work around the extra bifocal width, particularly when looking down. But I was able to read the computer at work more easily (after moving the monitor some). Reading paper (after minor adjustments) works fine. I read torah this morning with them. Ironically, I was having a little difficulty with my computer at home tonight, but it's gotten better over the last couple hours, so I guess I'm adapting. At one point I wondered if I was seeing worse with the new bifocals than the old, but three seconds with the old glasses told me otherwise. It is a crisper image; maybe the light is reflecting differently or something, and these lenses aren't yet as dark as the previous ones (plastic does that and transition lenses do that over time, apparently). It's almost certainly all really minor stuff, but I'm really sensitive to minor stuff. I'll get used to it.
But, as I said, it'll take a week, probably. It's annoying in the short term and better in the long term. Given that, I wonder what the optimal frequency of changes is. I used to keep glasses for, oh, 5-7 years before changing, because they were good enough, manual prescriptions were a crap shoot, and glasses were expensive. Now automation gets me better prescriptions and lenses have actually gotten cheaper in the last two decades (huh?), so it really just comes down to the transition period, I guess. Hmm.
It's the 21st century. Where are my high-tech adjustable glasses? :-)
high tech adjustable glasses
http://www.adaptive-eyecare.com/
Re: high tech adjustable glasses
My ideal pair of glasses would start with the technology that's in the machine they use to get a starting point for your prescription. I don't know what that thing does, but it seems to somehow scan the eyeball and bring an image into focus without the patient's active involvement. So my pie-in-the-sky glasses would be able to do something like that and would then have controls for fine-tuning focus (and also for tinting, to be light-adjusting), with programmable pre-sets for fast, tuned adjustment (computer, reading, default, bright sunny day, etc). The advantage to this sort of approach over just buying new glasses every couple years is that it would allow gradual fine-tuned adjustment, avoiding the shock factor that I currently get.
Maybe the auto-adjusting part isn't necessary; that would depend on how many variables it's controlling. My prescription notes four parameters: sphere, cylinder, axis, and add. (This last is probably the bifocal.) Presumably I could be taught to intelligently vary three parameters to zoom in (so to speak) on the optimal combination. So maybe occasional visits to the machine to re-baseline would be fine. I'm thinking out loud here. I can't afford to sponsor the research, alas.
Re: high tech adjustable glasses
Re: high tech adjustable glasses
Here's an imperfect model: think of the radio-related buttons on your car stereo. You can tune in your favorite station and then use one of the half-dozen preset buttons to store that. You can also use the knob (let's posit a knob for now) to fine-tune, such as when you're driving out of range and bumping into interference, for instance. Usually you'll use the buttons, but you can use the knob too. This is kind of what I have in mind for these magical glasses, except that instead of just one tuning knob you've probably got three (based on the stuff written on my glasses prescription).
(Where do all these controls go? Obviously there are human-factors issues to work out here, but I believe that's a solvable problem. Version one would probably be a full-on appliance, somewhere between goggles and Geordie LaForge's thing in Star Trek. Better would be if the buttons/knobs/etc were on a remote (Bluetooth glasses?). That's hard, but I think not as hard as the lenses.)