Homely glasses aren’t just for hipsters anymore. These are TruFocals, which allow the user to dial in better focus using a little bar on the bridge of the frame.
I’m just about to buy bifocals but I’ll be god-damned if I can stand looking like a geriatric Harry Potter, no matter how compelling the technology.
EconWatcher
Give ’em a few years and they’ll make ’em pretty.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Those glasses look ok. What they really need is the Opti-Grab(R).
WereBear
“If I hadn’t bought the Opti-Grab, those people would be alive today!”
Currently, I have a dozen cheap readers salted around the place, three pairs of computer glasses at work, and two pairs of progressive (of course!) lenses with different ranges.
Sigh. I was one of those people who never used to wear glasses.
Linda Featheringill
Interesting technology. I have two pairs of glasses, one for the computer and the other for out-in-the-world.
I wonder if these new jobbies would eliminate the need for an extra pair? But they probably cost too much.
Ross Hershberger
Mark Frauenfelder reported on those in make magazine or on Boing Boing. IIRC, he said they worked as advertised. But they’re quite expensive (~$1K). The lenses have to be round because they rotate to change focal length. I’d wear them.
LGRooney
They don’t look bad at all but I’ll have to check with my diva wife later to confirm that opinion.
Rosalita
I wear contacts most of the time but need cheaters to see up close, so I have those in various purses and desks. My glasses are progressives, love those… it was hard enough finding frames I could live let alone something funky like that.
Steve M.
I’m 51 and, style notwithstanding, this is exactly what I’ve wanted since my mid-40s. I may be an earlier adopter of this technology, even if it makes me look even more like a dork than I already do.
Punchy
Get a monocle. They’re back in style. You can even do your best Colonel Klink impression.
shirt
Get the kind without a line, especially if you have a lazy eye. You remind me of the time I asked Mr. Arakawa to teach me to use chop sticks. He said “Objective is to get food in mouth, you use fork.” and he handed me one. Objective for you, Harry, is to see and not score dates.
geg6
I want glasses that disappear completely when I’m reading or on the computer and magically appear again for anything requiring distance. It’s one of the reasons I can’t wear contacts (there are other reasons, tho) and the reason I am forced to buy new glasses much more often than my eyesight actually changes. I am constantly taking them on and off and they break at the temples. I’m guessing these don’t do what I would need (unless the lenses disappear altogether) and cost about 10X what I pay for mine.
Kilkee
@geg6: I have the first part down perfectly. Second, not so much.
jon
I think they look like they should have attached jeweler lenses for grading gemstones and reading the inside of rings.
Or they look like something steampunky and otherwise retro-futuristical. The matching jetpack and sonic pistol make the outfit.
Or they’re just so hipster they hurt my eyes.
But they do match that Silver Fox look that guy’s sporting, so I choose to pretend the ladies would love it.
bey
Those things put the fug in fugly. And the lenses are resting right on his cheeks which means they have to be wiped constantly.
I wear progressives which are great for monitor reading, but I’ve always looked over the tops of my glasses for reading.
My coworkers think that’s a hoot, but they’re a buncha kids whose time is a-coming.
Damn whippersnappers.
Southern Beale
I had to get bifocals two years ago. Let me give you a little warning: it took me about 3 months to get used to them.
No one tells you this. I literally went nuts, trying to convince my eye doctor there was something wrong. I even got a “second” opinion … and a “third” opinion. They all told me to wait a few weeks, I’d “adjust.”
Bifocals are awful. I swear I think they made my eyes worse.
Southern Beale
And let me add, the very LAST thing I want to have to fuck with on a daily basis are my glasses.
Southern Beale
And let me add, the very LAST thing I want to have to fuck with on a daily basis are my glasses.
Ross Hershberger
I do a lot of tiny up-close electronics work. I’m nearsighted and used to have very good close vision but after age 50 it started to degrade. Bifocals just don’t cut it. I’d love to have glasses that I don’t have to take off & swap for reading glasses to make 200 micron wide solder joints. But a grand is a big investment. I wore round glasses in black frames for years. The effect was supposed to be Corbusier but because of my white hair it ended up Warhol. fail.
Comrade Mary
I’ve been nearsighted since grade school, where I learned to read upside down from the notes made by the student across the table from me because I just could not see the board.
However, the advantage of myopia is that it softens the effect of presbyopia. I can read text, even teeny medicinal label text, perfectly with my naked eyes even though I’m within screaming distance of 50. But once I put on glasses or contacts for distance vision, I’m fucked. Progressive contact lenses didn’t give me good enough vision for reading and they made my distance vision worse, and my current solution — contacts for distance correction only, plus cheap magnifying glasses when I read or am at the computer — is not terrific for someone as ADD as me. Do not ask me how many dollar store glasses I have scattered around the house, tucked into my backpack, my purse and on bathroom shelving just so I stand half a chance of having a pair available when I need them.
I’ve considered monocular correction, where you wear just one contact lens in your dominant eye to correct for distance, while leaving the other eye uncorrected. I’ve tried it for short periods and my brain seems to adjust to it nicely, but I’m concerned about what this does to my depth perception, especially when I’m on my bike.
Have any of you switched back and forth from monocular to binocular correction?
bey
@Southern Beale: Hope the second and third opinions included new eye exams. I had the lab change a plus to a minus once and thought I was losing my mind. It took them weeks to figure out what the problem was.
Try progressives. They allow you to move your eyes to change focus instead of your head. Not completely, but it helps.
Hugin & Munin
I should point out that homely glasses haven’t been just for hipsters for at least the past two or so years. All the lemm ings wear them.
Paul in KY
I wear rimless round ‘Harry Potter’ style glasses & I think I carry it off well. Those sorta look like Harry Potter 2145 style glasses.
WereBear
I got some Paul Frank in pink & gray because they were cheaper than my ultralights, and I get no end of compliments.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
Had “fighter-pilot” vision all my life; but knew presbyopia was coming for me. All I asked, I used to say, was that I could get to 50 without reading glasses.
At 53, I can’t read a damn thing without some cheaters. The other day I was looking for shampoo and brought home conditioner– and didn’t realize it ’til I tried to wash my hair in the stuff.
Getting older ain’t for sissies, but it ain’t for the humorless, neither.
Redshift
@Comrade Mary: I’ve been wearing “monovision” contacts part of the time for a few years. (That’s where one contact is optimized for near vision/reading and the other is optimized for distance, rather than just one contact, but the idea is the same.) They work pretty well for me, and I haven’t noticed any problems with depth perception.
I know they drive some people nuts. I have the advantage that my eyes aren’t too bad (20/70) and one eye has always been more nearsighted than the other, so I’ve had one eye better for distance my whole life. Reading with my left eye took a little getting used to (I think I had been using my “good” eye for almost everything.)
The only problem I have with them is that it seems really hard to get the “reading” contact right for focusing on a computer all day. The pair is great for when I have to shift between paper and distance (like in a meeting), but if I’m not doing that, I often just wear my glasses and take them off at work, because it’s more comfortable.
Ross Hershberger
My wife ordered several pairs of glasses from Zenni Optical online. They’re made in Southeast Asia somewhere & mailed to you. They were incredibly cheap, and they did a great job with her very difficult prescription. She’s a CAD designer with very bad eyesight & sits in front of a monitor 12 hours/day.
Maude
I’ve had bifocals for several years. I had no trouble getting used to them. I use dollar store glasses for the computer.
When I first wore the cheap glasses, I had to be careful of head movement.
How long would it take to break the thing that changes the focus on these expensive glasses?
Redshift
@geg6: Huh. I do the same thing, and I’ve never had a pair of glasses break at the temple. I have aviator frames that are reasonably hefty at that joint, and I can see well enough to walk around the office without them, so I don’t put them on every time I get up; maybe that’s it.
JGabriel
mistermix:
… says the intertubez blogger with bifocals.
You know, there are worse ways to look.
.
artem1s
@Ross Hershberger:
you need an opti-visor. flips up and down, has different magnification lenses depending on how much detail you want. Side lens ads magnification for extra close work. I used this for 15 years in the jewelry industry. couldn’t live without it. and the narrowness lets you peak underneath if you want to switch to your real eyes.
http://www.amazon.com/Donegan-OptiLoupe-2-5X-Magnifier-OptiVisor/dp/B0015ILDZW
Comrade Mary
@artem1s: OH MY GOD MY DAD HAD THAT! Yes, he was a jeweler and yes, I have lots of his stuff now, but not that, sadly.
Comrade Mary
@Redshift: Thanks for the feedback. Given I can read like a mofo with my naked eyes, I don’t think I need the other contact — or would I? Hmm. Too bad I didn’t bring this up in my recent eye exam.
Ross Hershberger
I use a 10X stereo microscope for the really close work. For ordinary tiny stuff like reading the 0.5mm lettering on transistors I have an old school nickel plated clip on jeweler’s lens for my glasses. This works well and looks Very Serious.
Steve M.
I tried progressives and felt I had to stare directly at anything I wanted to see in focus — there was a tiny window of clarity surrounded by bad-’60s-acid-movie hallucinogenic distortion. Horrible. And then bifocals were worse — the fuzz was at the bottom of my field of vision all the time. So I wear glasses for distance and whip them off constantly to read, and the computer is in a tolerable but slightly and annoyingly distorted middle zone. That’s why I wish these adjustables had been invented ten years ago and were now reasonably priced and designed. They’re just what I want.
MaximusNYC
Round frames are actually back in style, at least among the fashion-forward in NYC. This means they’ll be back in style everywhere else in another year or two.
FWIW, I think the TruFocals look kinda cool, in a retro-futuristic architect/mad-scientist way.
Ross Hershberger
On the popularity of retro glasses. In the ’60s – ’70s ‘granny glasses’ – metal frames with round lenses – were popular. John Lennon wore them and seems to have influenced this trend. IIRC, Lennon said that he chose them because that style is what the National Health provided free. This may or may not be true, because by that time Lennon was certainly successful enough to buy his own spectacles.
LanceThruster
You’d think they could have gone with John Lennon-style round frames.
That would be pretty cool, no? Probably would become more popular than Jesus.
shecky
Frauenfelder tends to pimp annoyingly hip and insanely expensive doodads, and it was no different when he was pimping these a few months back. However, it seems the price has come down from laughingly expensive to something more down to earth, like around $350.
Even then, in this age of zenni eyeglasses, they’re a little bit out there. And of course, the look has that one-style-fits-all has a certain kind of preciousness, though I find it at least somewhat appealing.
A year or two ago, someone announced some extremely cheap, very similar looking glasses that were user adjustable and intended for third world applications where eye docs and prescription eyeglasses were and extreme luxury or nonexistent. These seemed to me much cooler, simply because of the very inexpensive, diy aspect. Ahh, here’s some info:
http://www.vdw.ox.ac.uk/
I don’t know if these are still vaporware, but but the idea and style are somewhat similar, even if the price gap proves to be as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Tom Hilton
If they made them with my frames, I’d totally buy those glasses. Being able to dial-focus would be a huge quality of life improvement.
LanceThruster
@Ross Hershberger:
It takes a certain kind of face to pull off the round glasses look. Lennon was quite stylish in his.
Ross Hershberger
He also pimps making guitars out of cigar boxes and keeping bees, so there’s some balance there.
The problem with a one-size-fits-all adjustable eyeglass is that most people’s eyes need different corrections. Thus adjustable glasses still have to be fitted to the individual.
The nosepiece is odd looking in these because it contains a mechanical slider that rotates the lenses. This limits the shape of the frame and dictates circular lenses.
aimai
Heh. My father, 78, (of course!) was an early adopter of these. He got his about a year ago. And does he look adorable! He really likes them, by the way.
aimai
Rich Webb
Progressives are the way to go, but they do take a while for the brain to re-jigger the visual “operating system” logic.
The first pair I got, going from single-focus nearsighted lenses, took probably a couple of days to really behave correctly. When I first picked them up, they warned me not to try driving home with them. Like hell! I was having a hard time getting around just walking.
Once the optical system has had time to adjust, however, the results have been great; clear and sharp at normal reading distance, arm’s length (computer screen), and out to the horizon, without the visual artifacts of distinct focusing zones.
geg6
@Redshift:
Actually, it’s probably the glasses I am forced to buy since I have an abnormally small head and face (well, maybe not, but they are small). If I wore aviators, I’d look like ET or something. I wear glasses sort of like Tina Fey wore when she was on SNL (and may still wear, for all I know).
http://www.askmen.com/galleries/tina-fey/picture-9.html
Svensker
@Southern Beale:
If you have that much trouble with your bifocals either you have peculiar focal problems or the prescription/lenses are wrong. It usually takes about 3 days to get used to the bifocal effect and by the end of a couple of weeks you don’t even notice you’re wearing the glasses. I’d go to another eye doctor and have the prescription on the glasses checked.
Ross Hershberger
Here’s what I wear, in black. I get compliments on them. They’re very well made and the price is competitive.
Progressives just aren’t working for me. I get a very narrow window of focus for reading and have to tilt my head back, so I end up taking them off for books or computer monitor. They work fine for driving, but so do single vision lenses, so no advantage there. I may change to a larger lens and different shape for the next pair.
LanceThruster
@shecky:
Those have “Blade Runner” steam punk look to them.
HyperIon
@bey wrote:
I’m thinking that pic has been photoshopped…glasses added.
jinxtigr
Oh hell yeah. Those need to be made more steampunk. Some of the little flip-down magnifiers, perhaps?
Wiesman
@HyperIon:
I came here to post the same thing.
Holy Photoshop Disasters, Batman.
WereBear
You need a long and/or craggy face (like Lennon’s) for round glasses to work; the best styles are those which contrast with your face.
debbie
Put off getting bifocals (with or without lines) as long as you possibly. You’ll never see well again (especially up close). I’ve had them for about 10 years now, and I still regret I didn’t hold out longer.
Comrade Mary
@WereBear: Oh, yeah. I really, really wanted wee little round glasses to replace my seventies aviators, but they just don’t work on a round face.
slag
I don’t understand this post. Have I accidentally stumbled onto the AARP website?
REN
Why would anyone care about what others think about the way you look? Least of my worries. If something works it works. This is one of the advantages of getting older.
If you read or comment at political websites it’s a safe bet that you are speaking to some AARP age people.
Jon H
That’s a terrible Photoshop.
ThresherK
I’ll go beyond Photoshopped: Is that really a photo of the glasses, or CG? The lighting is off; they seem to dip into Uncanny Valley.
Bernie from NJ
Don’t buy bifocals. Investigate Varilux lenses, bifocals without the lines. And don’t forget the Transitions!
gogol's wife
@slag:
No, it’s hipper.
LiberalTarian
@Steve M.: Hm, my issues exactly. But now I can’t read fine print, so I have reading glasses and driving glasses. Makes going to the store interesting. Need the driving glasses to see what’s on the shelves and the reading glasses to read the labels (allergic to gluten and milk).
Yay. I’ve arrived @ middle age!
LiberalTarian
@Comrade Mary: They’d look cute.
LiberalTarian
Yeah, went to see what color options, etc. they have, and those are some ugly looking glasses alright. Even if they had them brass colored I’d like them better. I used to wear round glasses when I was a young woman, and they were cute. But those are not cute … they are fugly. :o( Too bad.