My uncle is a Nuclear Science PhD and he likes to tinker with things and come up with his own solutions.

His glasses are an example of his refusal to toss away, as he puts it, “perfectly functional elements” — so he Frankensteins some most bizarre concoctions, which in the end, you have to admit, do work and achieve the means to the end.

Pic 1: The frames of his current prescription glasses (for myopia) broke, so he popped the lens out and took another frames of a whatever reading glasses and taped them in.

moral of the story: this is a sort of interesting design problem of creating a frame that could withstand a few lens prescription updates. Normally if the lens of your glasses need to be updated you have to change the entire frame – which themselves are not super cheap. Glasses shops say that they don’t have the capability to interchange new lens. (is that really true?) perhaps this is “design” limitation that can be looked into.

Pic 2: Since he is of a certain age so he needs reading glasses, but he also can’t be bothered to go out and get a bifocal, so he takes an existing reading glasses of the strength he needs and sticks them in behind his big frames (on which are taped the lens for his myopia prescription).

moral of the story: besides the funky bug-look of 6-eyes, you gotta admit there’s a system there; he found reading glasses with frames just the size that would fit behind the larger frames of his normal-use glasses. There’s a heirarchy of scale that corresponds to frequency and importance of use. The larger, sturdier frames are for his myopia, which is a first and foremost need, and the lesser sized reading lens/frames are for as-needed.

Even though there are solutions out there that already exist, so this is actually sort of an example of reverse functionality.

But in a way it’s a sort of survivalist mentality, which is kind of interesting –