As Jimmy Cliff once said

... I can see clearly now. Not that the dark clouds that had me blind have gone, the weather is still grey, cold and steadily raining. No, it's simpler and more expensive than that.

I have new glasses, a separate pair of reading (= working, typing) glasses for the first time in my life. I hadn't realized until wearing these just how much my vision had deteriorated in the past year or two. My vision at working distance is now excellent, I can read the screen and papers on the desk with ease; in fact my vision is almost too good, at 40cm I can distinguish the tiny grey stripes between the pixels of the LCD display which really ought not to be visible at all.

What I hadn't expected, is how rapidly it falls off beyond arm's length. Sitting here at my laptop, I looked across to Alberich to see whether the compiler had finished running, and found that I can't read his screen at all. The extra 30cm distance puts it outside my focussing range. The dropoff is very abrupt, too: the keyboard (just in front of the monitor) is still in focus. Well, we shall just have to adapt. It's not as though my chair isn't on casters, I can roll over to Alberich or just lean in a bit.

But it is very odd to look up from the screen and be unable to distinguish any details of the room at large, or even clearly to see the leaves of the ficus tree that overhangs my desk. I can make out the largest print on the spine of the book on the far end of the desk (180cm away) but wouldn't be able to read the title if I didn't know it. I suppose I shall get used to carrying one pair, wearing the other, and swapping frequently between the two.

Updated on Sept. 4: it is of course not as simple as that.