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If you are a long-time Wired subscriber, this is going to be hard for you to read — literally.

For the graying set that thinks these glasses are more Thomas Dolby than Harry Potter, reading anything is more difficult, because of presbyopia, the gradual inability of the eye to focus due to age. Even if you never wore glasses before, all of a sudden — or around age 45 — you are unable to clearly see the text on your computer screen, your iPad, Viagra prescription bottles or your Hoveround’s speedometer.

Until recently, this meant adding reading glasses or switching to bifocals, trifocals or progressive lenses — and if this all sounds foreign to you, it won’t when you get older, whippersnapper. The problem is that reading glasses only have one focal length, bifocals two, and while progressives have many focal lengths, they require you to tilt your head just so to bring things into focus.

But with Superfocus glasses (formerly Trufocals), an adjustable slider lets you set the focal length at will. So you can focus on a computer screen, then look up and adjust the length to a TV across the room or to a cellphone nearer your face. The secret to this adjustable focus is a disk of soft silicone, which can change shape just like your eye’s decrepit lens used to.

A second lens on the front of the glasses can be fitted with a prescription lens if you are doubly cursed with nearsightedness or astigmatism. The membranous lenses seem delicate, but they are protected on the front by the secondary lens, and they are at least as tough as your own squinties, and you’ve protected those pretty well for 40 or more winters.

It may seem cumbersome to have to constantly fidget with your specs, but four-eyes are always pushing up their glasses for a better view or grasping them for cinematic affectation. The central controls conjure up visions of Navin R. Johnson’s Opti-grab from The Jerk, but unlike the Opti-grab’s hordes of cockeyed litigants, Superfocuses lack the risk of cross-eyedness, and they actually have a small but growing group of glowing testimonials online, especially among middle-aged marksmen.

The obvious problem is that while these help you see well, they don’t help you look so good. The glasses come in one style: round as hell. Until everyone is wearing them, you’ll be pegged as an ardent admirer of General Tojo, Lennon, Capote, Dolby or Potter.

On the plus side, the older you get, the less you care. They might even be the single fashionable bit in your threadbare, mismatched, lumpy, geriatric get-up.

The last hurdle is price. The Superfocus glasses start at a steep $680 and go up from there, depending on how many frills like prescription lenses or tint that you want to add. The makers of Superfocus stress that is well within the ballpark of the cost of progressive lenses, when you factor in the cost of a prescription and designer frames. Well, at least you don’t have to worry about designer frames, Gandhi.

WIRED The cure for age related eye-jinx. Adjustable glasses let you adjust your focus to the task at hand, not tilt your head to see clearly. For some, they are fashion-forward.

TIRED Must be a fan of Harry Potter, or at least not mind looking like him. Sticker price may just make you swaller yer cigar. Soft silicone lenses could puncture if molested egregiously.

Photo: Roger Hibbert/Wired.com

If you’re looking for a high performance camera with great image quality, you should get a digital SLR, right?

Well yes, DSLRs are top-drawer picture-takers. But they’re bulky and they weigh a ton. They also aren’t exactly the most discreet cameras out there — put a long zoom lens on a DSLR and try to take it to a pro sporting event or a rock concert and, unless you have a press pass, you’ll be sent packing.

A far less conspicuous and more portable option is the Canon PowerShot G12, a compact, consumer-style 10-megapixel camera with the photo skills of a serious pro model.

Small cameras with advanced features are nothing new. In fact, with the advent of Micro Four Thirds models such as the recently released Olympus EPL-2, and the growing popularity of compacts with pro-style attached lenses such as the Panasonic Lumix LX5 — Wired’s 2010 camera of the year — these pocket rockets are all the rage right now.

Canon’s been making powerful, petite models in its G-series line for over a decade now, with the 3.3-megapixel PowerShot G1 premiering way back in September 2000. With the G12, we only get a handful of technical advances over its predecessor, the (duh) G11, but they’re enough to make a good camera even better.

For starters, let’s talk about what they didn’t change from the previous model and why it’s a good thing: the resolution of the imaging sensor. Nowadays, you can now get entry-level digital cameras with 16-MP sensors, but the G12 is stuck at 10 MP. This is progress? Absolutely.

Cramming too many pixels on an imaging chip the size of a fingernail means smaller pixels that absorb less light. The result is crunchy-looking photos full of ugly image “noise” when you shoot in low light without a flash. Most manufacturers think consumers are unaware of the negative effects of the Megapixel War, but Canon is ignoring the marketing grab and striving for quality instead.

Canon hasn’t messed much with the design of the G12 and that’s also a good thing. The abundance of external controls on the camera mean there’s no need to dig through menus to get creative. If you like changing the sensitivity of the imaging chip for low light shooting, a dial on top of the G12 lets you adjust the ISO setting in precise 1/3-step increments. No, you probably don’t need to go to ISO 250, but it’s cool that it’s possible with this camera. I also liked the control dial on front above the hand grip that lets you quickly change shutter speed and aperture with your forefinger.

One area where I was hoping for an upgrade with the G12 is the LCD screen. It’s still a flip-out, vari-angle display that helps you compose over-the-head or down-low shots, but it’s still only 2.8 inches in size. A bump to 3 inches would have been appreciated. The G12 also keeps its optical viewfinder, but it’s as tiny as a peephole.