Yes, I agree with both. I never was very comfortable with OEDMP at any age, but could read it in good light at a pinch till about 50 (can't remember exactly; memory going along with other virtues. Used to have senior moments. Now have junior moments Not yet in my pants, but no doubt that too is on the way.) Now, as it happens, I am (primarily) an unfrocked biologist and have discovered that the strongest "readers" I can find, (+3.5 to 4 if I am lucky) though useless for proper reading (my current prescription is +2.5) make very useful visual aids for field work and are perfect for OEDMP reading; far better than the rather good magnifier supplied with the books. BTW, in case anyone else in the forum still reads and enjoys books, paper books (a medium that needs redesign, and I am just the man to do it!) might be interested in a useful expedient that I happened across. My OEDMP came in a box/shelf with magnifier and two slots, one for each tome. As the designers of the package obviously had experience of what happened to large volumes that got manhandled by their bindings, they had a neat expedient: behind each tome a strip of tough, transparent plastic was fastened to the upper back corner of the slot, and hung down to the bottom, passing thence to the front, where it emerged as a tab below each volume. To get the volume out without brutalising it, you simply pulled at the matching tab. The volume then emerged a few inches without damage or inconvenient scrabbling, and could then be picked up in a civilised, nondestructive mode. Now, after some 40 years or so, (can't remember exactly; memory going along with other virtues. Used to have senior moments. Now have junior moments Not yet in my pants, but no doubt that too is on the way.) those strips of polyester or whatever (I omitted to burn a bit, so I am uncertain; it might have been plasticised PVC or something (can't remember exactly; memory going along with other virtues. Used to have senior moments. Now have junior moments Not yet in my pants, but no doubt that too is on the way.) ) began to go nonfunctional and their connections failed. So I removed them. Then an idea struck as my gathering senility went on strike for a while. Some idiot was lining a dam with plastic in the near neighbourhood and offcuts of 2mm-thick black HDPE were lying around as though waste were a virtue. I had liberated a square metre or two and cut two strips to fit where the transparent plastic had gone. Unlike the original, my inserts were much stiffer and I applied some brutal folding to make it turn the corner, but had no need to fasten it at the top back corner. It works amazingly, smoothly and cleanly, and it is harmless to book, cabinet and reader. Two moving parts, including the book. Its only shortcoming for general use on broad shelves is that one needs strips that roughly correspond to the widths of the matching books. One could design shelves and attachments to overcome that (very minor) problem, but I seldom have such a need, so I let it go. Old age and all that. Cheers, Jon On 2010/04/18 02:11 AM, Michael S. Hart wrote:
On Sat, 17 Apr 2010, Jim Adcock wrote:
The way people use their eyes, the ways people read, the capabilities of their eyes, and their brains to process information, vary widely, and in ways you cannot imagine unless you personally have run into problems and have noticed that you have them. In the simplest almost universal case people start experiencing eyestrain around age 40 requiring the use of compensating visual orthotics. Age 40 also seems to be about the age of greatest denial ;-)
I could read the OED Microprint edition without decent lighting until 42.
After that it was all downhill so fast I never really tried it any more-- with or without glasses, but would use the provided Bausch& Lomb reader.
Today I use $1 glasses with all my computers. . .I just buy ever grade of magnification and leave each with the computer it works best with.
I'll know I'm in trouble if/when I move to the 3x range. . .hee hee!
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