How to find your eyeglass prescription without getting an exam

Want to freshen your face with a new pair of eyeglass frames? As you probably know, you can save a small fortune by ordering glasses online.

Just one wrinkle: You need to know your prescription. Sure, you can call your optometrist to get the numbers -- unless the office is closed. Or you just feel weird about asking because they'll know you're shopping elsewhere.

Thankfully, if you have a pretty basic prescription (meaning they're not bifocals, progressives or Coke-bottle lenses), there's a free tool from GlassesUSA.com that can scan your current glasses. I took it for a spin with my son's glasses and the results matched his current prescription.

And according to GlassesUSA.com, the results are "in line with the standard range of deviation as in any doctor's office" -- though this isn't meant to take the place of an eye exam. Indeed, if you haven't had your vision checked in a year or more, it might make sense to schedule an appointment. 

But if you just want a quick and easy way to find out what kind of lenses you have right now, here's how:

Step 1: Armed with your current glasses, your phone and a credit card (which is used for sizing, not payment), plunk down in front of your computer and point your browser to www.glassesusa.com/scan.

Step 2: Enter your phone number or email address to receive a link for the GlassesUSA app.

Step 3: Once you've installed the app, following the guided tutorial. You'll first need to scan an onscreen QR code, then hold the credit card up to the screen and scan that. From there you'll hold your glasses between the phone and the screen for various readings. It ends with a pupillary-distance (PD) scan, which rather amusingly requires you to hold the card up to your forehead.

It's a pretty simple process that takes all of about 10 minutes. When you're done, you'll be asked to create a GlassesUSA.com account, at which point you should immediately see your prescription.

And that's it! Armed with that data, you can order lenses and frames from anywhere. Just take note that the app doesn't store any of this information; if you want to retrieve it later, you'll have to sign back into your GlassesUSA.com account in a browser.

This Is Why You Need to Wear Sunglasses

Since I'm a borderline idiot, I went my first 28 years without wearing sunglasses. Sure, I bought fake Oakleys in the eighth grade to look cool, but I never found sunglasses entirely helpful. I could squint my way through any bright days while avoiding the dreaded sunglasses tan. That is until I started getting a headache for 30 minutes every time I saw a camera flash. To this day, four years later, I still dread an indoor, low-light photo opp. It means I need an ibuprofen, or a stiff drink or two. All because I didn't wear sunglasses for the first 28 years of my life. Or so says my eye doc.

Sunglasses look cool, or at least they should, since there are billions to choose from. But aside from all that, why do you actually need sunglasses? Isn't it enough to wear a ball cap and shield the eyes from the sun, or just put your hand over your brow anytime you look in the sun's general direction?

I called on the expertise of ophthalmologist Lisa Park, MD at Columbia University Medical Center, to get some intel on exactly why sunglasses are important for us (apart from the obvious fact that you don't squint so much when it's sunny as hell). Heed her advice. Don't be dumb like me. It's always worth the sunglasses tan, trust me.

Park says first and foremost that there are three reasons we must protect the eyes. "The first is the retina inside the eye," says Park. "With age people can develop macular degeneration (which is the light-sensitive nerve tissue in the eye), and using sunglasses may protect these photoreceptors from UV damage." This prevents vision loss. Score one for sunglasses.

"The second is the lens of the eye; everyone eventually will develop clouding of the lens which is what you know as a cataract," says Park. "Protecting the eye from sunlight may slow the progression of cataracts." The score is Sunglasses 2, No Sunglasses 0.

Creatures of the Wind x State Optical Co.’s Sunglasses Work for Day

On the March day which Shane Gabier and Christopher Peters of Creatures of the Wind planned to celebrate the launch of their sunglasses collaboration with Chicago-based eyewear brand State Optical Co., a massive snowstorm hit New York City. Undeterred, they went ahead with the party anyway. That was kind of an appropriate gesture, since the influences that informed their designs were about wearing shades indoors; that punky, new wave era of the late ’70s and early ’80s when hipsters would party, party, party in nightclubs with dark glasses firmly affixed to their faces—Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh, and queen of the kitschy cat-eye Debbie Harry of Blondie.
                                           

“When we were researching this collaboration, we looked at our heroes and icons from that period,” says Peters, “though we didn’t want the shapes to look retro. We tweaked them so they didn’t look too recognizable or so specific.” The four styles are rendered in tortoiseshell, red, black, and green acetate, and vary from the aforementioned elongated feline look to a weightier square style that does indeed refract the past through the (sorry!) lens of today. “They all have this glam component to them,” says Gabier. “I wouldn’t say they were gender neutral, but they’re playful in that regard.”

The styles are named after Chicago addresses—both Creatures and State spring from the city. (There’s the Monitor, the Tripp, the Leland, and the Neenah.) The process involved Gabier and Peters making a couple of trips to State’s ateliers, located in a northern suburb, where they could meet with the company’s technicians. Those trips back to where they first started likely only added to the ongoing reflection they’ve been experiencing on what they want their label to be, given their announcement to move to a more project-based approach. They’re happy to be (somewhat) stepping out of the fashion rat race.

The Julbo Chams Are My New Favorite Sunglasses

Flying home from a ski trip a few weeks ago, I put my keychain, wallet, and sunglasses in the dog dish, then sent them down the conveyor belt into the bowels of the TSA X-ray machine. When the dish came out the other side, the glasses were gone. I begged, cajoled, and attempted to bribe the agents to find them. I even offered my incredibly bright FourSevens Mini Mk2 to aid in the efforts. But they were gone, eaten by bureaucracy.
                                               

I was distraught. Not only were they my favorite glasses of all time—the Aether Explorers—but this was my third pair, after breaking one (well, Wiley broke them) and losing the other while paddling the Sea of Cortez. At $600 a pair, I couldn’t justify a fourth.

After a suitable period of self loathing, I set out to find a replacement. I’d fallen in love with the Aether’s glare-blocking side shields, their incredibly clear Zeiss glass lenses, and the light weight. So I knew I wanted similar features, just in a much more affordable package.

Julbo remains an independent brand based out of Chamonix, France. I liked its history, and the functionality and quality of its products, but otherwise excellent products like the Explorer 2.0 just look a little too Dame Edna for my taste. The leather shields on the Vermont had always appealed, but the round lenses gave them a mad scientist air I wasn’t sure I could pull off. They also came only with extremely dark lenses designed to cut the brightness of high-altitude snow and ice, which means they’re too dark for most mundane situations, like driving my truck.

How do glasses help you see?

You’ve asked this at a very good time because more and more people are needing to wear glasses, including young children, and we don’t really know why.
                                                 

Our eyes let us see because light enters each eye, and the eye then creates a message that goes to the brain.

The eyeball itself doesn’t actually “see” – the brain sees. The eyeballs just take pictures, like two little cameras. To see properly, each eyeball needs to send the light that enters it onto a very exact spot inside the eyeball, called the retina. If the light falls onto the wrong place, your vision will be blurry.

Many people don’t need glasses and can see just fine. This is because their eyeballs are focusing light properly onto the retina.

However, some people have eyeballs that are too long. They are called “shortsighted”. For these people, things far away, like street signs or the classroom blackboard, can look blurry.

Other people have eyeballs that are too short. They are called “farsighted” and things close to them, like a book or a mobile phone, can look blurry.

Both shortsighted and farsighted people need glasses to help them see clearly.

They work by helping the eyeball to focus light onto the correct place, the retina. Only then can the eye see clearly.

Maybe you have a grandma or grandpa who wears glasses whenever they are reading books or using their mobile phone. When people get older, they usually become a little bit farsighted because a part of their eye called the lens becomes stiff and doesn’t work properly.

More and more young people in the world are needing to wear glasses.

We’re not sure why, but some scientists think that children who spend too much time inside are more likely to need glasses. We don’t know if it’s because they aren’t getting enough sunlight or if they’re simply reading too much or playing too many video games when they get home.