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Protecting and Preserving Your Vision?
Poligraf asks: "All of slashdotters spend a lot of time in front of monitors. What are you doing to preserve your eyes? My issue seems to be not a declining vision, but fatigue after certain amount of time in front of the computer. It becomes so bad that I need occasionally to leave the room with computer and sit or lie down to relax for 5 to 10 minutes. What do you think of a full spectrum lights? Certain scientists swear that it is the best thing since sliced bread, others viciously rip their claims apart. Has anyone used these? What is your experience? What other methods can you come up with?\"
My vision varies widely over the day, especially after staring at a CRT for 12 hours. But then, I have diabetes... have you had your blood sugar checked?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
you may infact need glasses. Stimatism(sp) initially presents itself as eye-tiredness then little "grey" patches in you vision (like a spot of dust on a camera lense) when you are very tired. So do yourself a favor and have your eyes tested, I did and can once again sit at the box for long periods.
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"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
It becomes so bad that I need occasionally to leave the room with computer and sit or lie down to relax for 5 to 10 minutes.
There's a law in Brazil which allows a five minute pause every one hour so the person can leave the PC.
It's not "bad". It happens. To a lot of people.
At Ac Lensthey are selling Computer Vision Glasses.
Quote: "These glasses have a special tint that helps to reduce glare and the intensity of the light produced by the average computer monitor, and a special UV coating that blocks UV rays produced by monitors and flourescent lighting." Sounds like Just what you're looking for to me.
Also, You might want to look into getting a Glare Screen, there's a good one at
FutureShop.
Quote Again: "VisionGuard XL, Glare Filter with Radiation Barrier. Relieves eye strain for healthy vision. Reduces glare up to 99%. Fits regular and Flat screen monitors 14 " to 17"." Looks again like it will solve your problem. AndrewM
First, you need to go 100% digital. By this I
mean an LCD with a DVI or ADC plug. Forget about
anything with a traditional VGA connector.
It should go without saying that you MUST run
at the native resolution.
Pick an LCD with wide-angle viewing, such as the
excellent 20" Apple Cinema Display at 1600x1024 or
the 23" Apple Cinema Display HD at 1920x1200.
Don't cut corners on this -- I know you're tempted!
Now get rid of cheap flourescent lights. I suppose
you can keep the fancy 15 kHz ones. Avoid the
regular 60 Hz flourescents.
Adjust monitor brightness to match room lighting,
but wait... room lighting needs to be somewhat
low. At low light levels, your eye is less
sensitive to flicker. The eye does a kind of
time integration over a pulse stream to work;
the time constant varies with overall brightness.
I've got an astigmatism in both eyes and have problems with declining vision (just as a result of aging unfortunately) and eye fatigue from looking at monitors. Other than the obvious - wear my glasses when using the computer, take breaks away from the computer etc - I set up my sight lines to have various things at different focal depths.
;) - this is just off the top of my head.
I put up a number of pictures on the walls near the monitor and I make a point to look at them every few minutes (a Kandinski, a Renior and a picture of Liv Tylor in a school girl outfit... sigh... a couple of minutes pass...). Anyway, by looking up every few minutes it allows my eyes to focus on things at different depths. I also look out the window as often as possible. When I use my laptop, I arrange it so I have a view.
Its simple but I find it helps. The anthropologist in me can't help but point out that from an evolutionary standpoint, the muscles in the eye were not designed to focus on one plane of depth all the time. Complex environments (forest, savanna etc), constantly moving around and generally not looking at something three feet in front of you for 6 to 16 hours a day probably created a eye muscle that can adapt quickly, but probably didn't create one that is designed for endurance - holding a single plane of focus for hours and hours. Not that I'm siting a reference here - pun
But the differing focal depths thing works. I do it when I read too.
Previous posts have made suggestions to get your vision checked to see if you either need glasses or you need your prescription changed. I'd definitely opt for that with the suggestion that, in the meanwhile, you bump down your screen resolution and sit further away from the monitor if possible.
The reason I suggest this is that your eyes require no effort in order to focus on objects in the distance, but require the contraction of the ciliary muscles in order to focus on objects that are close up. This response, like any other muscle response, can fatigue if it's held for a long time.
A lot of Visine may help as well -- if you are spending a lot of time in front of a monitor you are probably blinking a lot less, too.
Good luck!
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
90 degree is 45 to each side, which is not enough
:-)
for a decently wide monitor. With that Dell, there
will be subtle disturbing color and brightness
variations, especially near the edges of the screen.
That is, unless you sit back very far and line
your head up perfectly.
Also, is it free of dead pixels? (both kinds?)
I got my Apple Cinema Display shipped by mail,
and it arrived with 100% perfect pixels. There
wasn't a single stuck-on or stuck-off pixel,
and not even a bad sub-pixel.
If it is resolution you want, get 1920x1200
with the 23" Apple Cinema Display HD. ("HD"!)
Damn, I sound like an Apple ad... except my
Mac is running Debian of course.
You can use a PC with an Apple Display if you
like; it requires an ADC-to-DVI adaptor that
takes away the coolness of running power and
USB down the monitor cable. (ADC is DVI plus
25-volt power and USB pass-through)
I am rather nearsighted, but I wear corrective contact lenses all the time, and I used to work at the computer just with those. One day I visited my optometrist and he told me I would feel more comfortable working at the computer wearing reading glasses. I scoffed, I told myself I felt fine, and anyway I was too proud to adopt the trappings of old fogeyhood just yet. Until one day at the drug store I tried on a pair and was amazed at how much more comfortable it made it to see at close distances. Apparently my contact lenses refocus the light so much so I can see far distances, but it creates more strain when looking at near distances. The reading glasses counteract that. So for working at the computer and for reading, I wear my contacts *and* my reading glasses. It makes it so much more comfortable. I just got a cheap +1.25 power pair at Target, and they're not unfashionable, either.
Viewing angle matters a lot if you want to avoid
eye strain, which was the whole point of this
ask-slashdot. It especially matters on a screen
that is nearly 2 feet wide. Apple gives you a
whopping 170 degrees, and it shows.
Contrast may matter a bit, but 350:1 is enough.
Remember that 8-bit per channel video limits
the output anyway. I smell marketing.
Brightness is useless unless your room lights
are too bright. Any monitor you can buy is
brighter than you should need. If your room
light is way too bright and you are stuck with
it, then yeah, maybe brightness could matter.
Fix your room lights.
Correction on the sizes:
1680x1050 $1299 20" Apple Cinema
1920x1200 $1999 23" Apple Cinema HD
A better solution than turning your resolution down, is to turn your resolution up, and increase the default sizes of all your gui stuff (display fonts, text zooming, icon sizes, menu width, etc, etc), turn on AA, and increase your refresh rate, as has already been said.
... she edits medical texts), and for years she suffered from the eye strain bit, with the whole 800x600 resolution crap, cause that made everything bigger. I helped her upgrade last year to an LCD with a proper refresh, 1280x1024, and fixed all the font sizes and layouts, etc etc. She saw immediate improvement in ease of use.
My mother is a text editor (no, really
Low resolution introducies jaggies, which just worsens the eye-strain. (in my experience)
Have you tried the various compact florescent bulbs? I recently went through a few, looking for one that was the "right" color. Incandescents are about 2750K, a good approximation of sunrise/sunset lighting. Some of the compact florescents are about 6000K, a reasonable approximation of high-noon sunlight. Those were too white for me -- seemed odd to have that color light inside the house, and made the whites on my LCD screen look a bit yellow by comparison -- but might be good if you like things more towards the blue. I ended up with a Philips bulb listed at 3000K.
I don't have the reference pages right now, but....Most people's monitors are way too bright and have the contrast cranked up way too high. How do you know?
I've been having problems w/ eye fatige since the beginning of this year, and am getting to know my opthamologist fairly well. These are just notes I'm passing along from him as we try to get my workspace corrected.
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Does your hosting company offer WAP hosting?
This is why you have scheduled 5 minutes breaks every hour during the work day when you have sitting down terminal work (like computer work).
If there isn't a law that allows you this already (worker's protection), then make sure your employer understands how much more efficient you will work with these breaks, even though he/she is paying for them. In the end, your boss will benefit from you having 5 minutes break every hour.
I have been hooked for about five years on GE Grow-n-Show bulbs. They're available as a standard light bulb form factor and as a flood-light. They're very purple when not lit, but the light they put out is a beautifully pure white approximating sunlight. Everything viewed under them just looks unnaturally crisp, and of course the plants love 'em. Also, you can stare right into the bulb and read the wattage rating printed on it without feeling like you're staring at the sun.
I think they may have dropped the Grow-n-Show name recently (probably felt that it was attracting narco-terrorists or some such) but the packaging is the same. They cost almost twice what normal 'soft white' bulbs do, and I think they only last half as long, but they're still an incredible bargain in my book.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?