Yesterday my glasses finally broke.

The lenses are pretty new, maybe 3 months old, but the frame must be pushing 6-7 years, and one of the surrounds holding a lens snapped while I was taking my glasses off to put my sunglasses on. In a panic I rushed around to every optical store I could find open on a Saturday but nobody has frames with the exact lens shape, so I’d have to buy new frames and lenses or get the old frame replaced.

The average time to get new lenses made is about a week. I could try to get the frame soldered but it might be titanium. Titanium won’t hold solder. Also, nobody can guarantee how long a soldering job will last; could be a day, could be a year.

Another option would have been going back to contact lenses, but I’d need to have my eyes retested even though I was tested only recently for my new prescription. Contact lenses need a different script. Naturally this would take ages as well, longer than buying another pair of glasses.

I decided to send my glasses to be laser welded, which costs $50 but takes several days. I won’t have them back until Wednesday at the earliest, which means I’m stuck with my prescription sunglasses if I want to see anything. Seeing things indoors is difficult and I obviously can’t drive at night or in tunnels. It’s difficult to use my laptop as the screen is very dark unless I tilt my head to the left - there must be some kind of filter over the screen that interferes with the polarising lenses.

Overall, I’m wishing I had a spare pair of glasses. I’ll have to buy a pair when my tax return comes in, because this really, really sucks.

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking about vision quite a lot during the last 24 hours.. and found this fascinating article about how the brain works (or fails to work) when you mess with the signals you give it. You might want to turn off Javascript in your browser to avoid annoying popups trying to trick you into downloading Windows malware, though.

Also, this Avatar machine, which lets you see yourself in third person while you walk around, giving yourself the impression that you’re watching somebody else. This would be fascinating to try… really interesting stuff from a psychological point of view.

Comments RSS