nifty gift

[cellio]

Some time ago a friend asked me when my birthday is because he had the "perfect" gift for me. (We don't normally send gifts to each other, but this was an exception.) I'd forgotten all about that until a package arrived recently

Comments

Re: You can see UV light?

[cellio]

Probably not very far into the UV spectrum, but definitely some. (Those dark-purple "black lights"? Bright blue.) It turns out that the lenses in your eyes block a lot of it. I have no lenses in my eyes (born with cataracts and implants hadn't been invented yet, not that they could put them in a child's eyes anyway). Glasses lenses block it too, which means I can see some pretty funky effects by looking out over the tops of mine.

While you'd think it would be a cool super-power, aside from seeing better than average by moonlight if there are no city lights in the way, it's mostly a detriment: bright sunlight hurts me more than others (I pretty much have a permanent squint outdoors, even with transition glasses lenses), and expanses of snow on a sunny day a really challenging. (Most people probably don't drive with sunglasses in the winter.)

It's funny you mention Geordi La Forge: I've sometimes commented that the technological advancement that would personally help me the most would be fully-adjustable/programmable glasses, and even if it meant I'd have to look like La Forge I'd gladly do it. I have a complicated combination of vision problems that makes it challenging to get glasses right -- and even so they can only help so much. Being able to make subtle adjustments rather than starting over with a new pair, or switching modes (reading, computer, driving, etc), would be huge.

Re: You can see UV light?

[ext_729277]

You definitely need to become a crime-fighting superhero (assuming you aren't already) at least if only in unlit towns on moonlit nights.

Have you heard of water-filled, adjustable glasses, e.g. http://www.eyejusters.com/glasses/ ? The technology was developed to make it cheaper to distribute glasses in parts of the world that lack enough optometrists to go around, but perhaps they'd partially suit your purposes. Unfortunately, they don't offer adjustment all the way from reading to distance, they don't offer distance glasses on their website at all, and they don't offer variable opacity. I think they do indicate, though, that the future you're hoping for is probably not too far away.

(Heck, now that I think of it, I'm tempted to buy a pair myself as a geeky fashion statement. The only problem is that I require distance glasses, and they won't sell them to me.)

... Digging further, I see that this retailer does sell the "negative reading glasses" version of these as "Emergent Myopic Glasses" - that is, "for emergency use only, because we'd never undermine regulations requiring distance glasses to be manufactured precisely based on a qualified optometrist's prescription ." Tempted again.
http://www.innovativereadingglasses.com/buy_adjustable_reading_glasses.html

... and through Amazon, I discovered another product that does offer adjustability from distance to reading in one pair. (I bet if you did it constantly, though, you'd wear out the moving parts.) Mixed reviews on Amazon.
http://www.adlens.com/products/emergensee/