Protecting and Preserving Your Vision? 123
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?\"
How presumptuous! (Score:5, Funny)
I read Slashdot on a line printer, you insensitive clod!
Sorry, (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sorry, (Score:1, Interesting)
I probably wouldn't
See a doctor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:See a doctor (Score:5, Funny)
--Its just a joke, except for the drunk part. My intention is not to belittle diabetes sufferers, or, for that matter, drunks.
Chromium helps normalise blood sugar (Score:1)
Inciden
from experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:from experience (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree. I went for years with headaches and having trouble reading things at a distance refusing to believe I still didn't have the 20/20 vision of my teenage years. I went and finally got a checkup, go my glasses and the headaches are all gone. Also ironically I went back to taking classes to finish a degree and find I can actually SEE the chalkboard now and copy down notes. It makes a hell of
Re:from experience (Score:1)
A visual defect in which the unequal curvature of one or more refractive surfaces of the eye, usually the cornea, prevents light rays from focusing clearly at one point on the retina, resulting in blurred vision.
UK: Free eye tests BY LAW for VDU users (Score:2)
> So do yourself a favor and have your eyes tested.
UK slashdoters may not know that by law they are entiteld to free eye tests (paid for by there employer) if they use a VDU regularly as part of there job. ( First google hit [davidclulow.com])
Employers wont go out of there way to give them for you, so you will need to ask. I work in a laser lab and get free eye tests for obvious reasons.
Some suggestions. (Score:5, Informative)
one more suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:one more suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
Better yet, just go to sleep.
Re:one more suggestion (Score:3, Funny)
Of course, that's because most of my programming takes more man-hours to fix than I put into it.
One more suggestion -- caffeine (Score:2)
And of course, sugared sodas and alcohol also include extra calories, so you'll have to adjust your diet to compensate for the extra intake. Yes, water works, but I'm not just a
Save your eyes, take up smoking! (Score:1)
And of course, sugared sodas and alcohol also include extra calories, so you'll have to adjust your diet to compensate for the extra intake. Yes, water works, but I'm not just all
On glasses. (Score:2, Interesting)
Great article on this subject (Score:4, Interesting)
One interesting tidbit -- he mentions a study that found that while monkeys with their eyes sewn shut and untouched monkeys (oh, to be in the control group!) did NOT develop any vision problems, monkeys with their eyes sewn partly shut -- so they could only see dimly -- became myopic.
That seems like a pretty good hint that you might want to take breaks from the monitor. As other posters have noted -- it's a good idea to refocus your eyes on objects at other distances frequently during the day, and this should help avoid the eyestrain (and the other problems you might not notice for a while...)
Re:Great article on this subject (Score:3)
Re:Great article on this subject (Score:2)
Yeah, and there are no nearsighted squirrels either.
6. green on black (Score:3, Interesting)
All good text editors and IDE's let you change the background/text colors. Same with telnet apps, etc.. I spend most of my time on win2K, and use a slightly tweaked version of the "High-Contrast Black" scheme. There are always a few apps that don't conform, but it's easy to switch back
warning (Score:2, Interesting)
It's terrible advice for a Windows-optimized CRT. These days, black-on-white is the standard. If you use white-on-black, the vertical lines will be a bit darker than the horizontal ones. The effect is especially bad with high resolution, high refresh rates, cheap analog cables, and any video card not made by Matrox.
Test your monitor now. [uml.edu]
Still missing something here (Score:2)
I *did* look at the example page, and the first one especially clearly showed me that the vertical bars were darker (I have a 19" CRT).
But when I look at a flat black field (i.e, background to text on my system), it just looks black. How is this hurting my eyes?
I know when I look at black text on a white field I feel like I'm going to go snowblind until I lower the contrast/ brightness to a point where details
Re:6. green on black (Score:2)
Re:6. green on black (Score:3)
Hear hear! Far easier on the eyes. I use a green-on-black KDE theme all the time, and KDE 3 is now much better and more consistent about its handling of non-standard foreground/background combinations than KDE 2 was.
Eclipse -- use a milestone build (Score:2)
What version are you using? If you're still on 2.x you're right -- but the version 3 milestone builds are quite stable (the current one, M7 [eclipse.org], is what I'm using now and I haven't had any problems yet... though M6 and M5 had some noticeable bugs). They have a new and vastly improved code formatter, too -- you should try it out.
Now that I think about it, I think I started trying out the version 3 builds *because* I needed more contr
Your color theme matters, but not green on black (Score:1)
snowblind if you set the contrast high enough to show detail properly), but
there are better color schemes. Amber on black looks uglier for the first five
minutes, but after your eyes get used to it you can stare at it for much longer
periods of time with zero eyestrain.
Even better, I've found, is a tertiary color scheme. Set your system foreground
color to #FFE6BC and your background to #294D4A. Set this system-wide. If you
use Gn
Re:Some suggestions. (Score:2, Interesting)
Going to 85 Hz or higher will cause horizontal
smearing due to bandwidth limits. You may be
better off at 72 or even lower. You can increase
your tolerance for low refresh rate by decreasing
the overall brightness -- that is, including the
overhead light, window, desk lamp, etc.
Any one monitor height is bad. Unfortunately,
it isn't easy to drasticly change monitor position
every few minutes. Maybe you could get one of
those movable arms, allowing you to sit, stand,
li
Re:Some suggestions. (Score:2)
Unless, of course, you have an iMac....
Re:Some suggestions. (Score:2)
4. Play with the monitor brightness/contrast as needed.
One of the more interesting comments that I read years ago, from an ergonomics expert was the question "Would you ask your customers to sit and stare at a lit flourescent tube for hours?"
The presumed answer that any sane person would give was, of course, "No."
He then pointed out that a CRT-type computer screen is in fact a flourescent tube, and a white window is a fully-lit flourescent tube. So if your scre
Re:Some suggestions. (Score:1)
Re:Some suggestions. (Score:2)
> least 85Hz. If on an LCD, make sure you're running
> at the native resolution. If your CRT monitor
> doesn't support at least 85Hz, get a new one or
> switch to an LCD.
Alas, this doesn't help those of us who don't work from home, and whose jobs won't pay for the new monitor. Until I can either move my work home or get a job, it looks like I'm stuck with a 60hz display in a room with flourescent lighting.
Re:Some suggestions. (Score:2)
Bad? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
Alex.
Computer Vision Glasses and Filters (Score:2, Informative)
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 [futureshop.ca].
Quote Again: "VisionGuard XL, Glare Filter with Radiation Barrier. Relieves eye stra
Re:Computer Vision Glasses and Filters (Score:1)
--AndrewM
I am far sighted. (Score:1)
CONFIG_FONT_6x11=y
easy but not cheap (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:easy but not cheap (Score:3, Interesting)
Another cheaper and excellent LCD is Dell's 20" UXGA LCD.
Around $1000 (it's on sale for as little as $750 sometimes) and gives you 1600x1200 resolution. Note that the more expensive Apple 20" is only 1600x1024 but it does have a wider angle view (why you need more than 90deg I don't know; can you see the monitor from behind?).
I'm not big on Apple stuff. You're paying extra for the Apple logo. Plus their Cinema display needs way too much desk space wi
Re:easy but not cheap (Score:2, Interesting)
170 degrees whips 88 degrees (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re:170 degrees whips 88 degrees (Score:1)
Remember that the 350:1 is a linear comparison, whereas the eye perceives brightness using a logarithmic-lice scale; this is the reason why gamma correction seems to enhance an image better than contrast adjustment.
Re:Contrast ratio for text???? (Score:1)
Re:Contrast ratio for text???? (Score:2)
I knew you'd be tempted. Stop it! (Score:2, Informative)
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, ge
Re:I knew you'd be tempted. Stop it! (Score:2)
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.
I have two Dell 2000FPs, one at work, one at home. Both are perfect, with no dead or stuck pixels.
I also have a 20" Apple Cinema Display at home. It's the second one, because the first one (shipped to us from Apple) had a bright green stuck pixel in the middle of the lower-left quadrant.
Re:easy but not cheap (Score:3, Informative)
As far as size goes though, I don't agree with going for monster monitors. I find that 17" is about optimal for me, as this is almost exactly the size of my eye's main focus. I used to use a 19" monitor and found that I was getting tired eyes because I couldn't see the whole screen at once - 1" of the screen on each side was outside my main focus and only visible in peripheral vision, so my eyes had to move around to see
super-wide is like dual, but better (Score:1, Insightful)
What I do (Score:3, Interesting)
Do what your mother says. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Do what your mother says. (Score:1)
Eventually, with a bit of help, he scored. Now he comes to work bright eyed and refreshed.
Focal Depth (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Focal Depth (Score:2)
When my nearsightedness and astigmatism were radpidly getting worse 12 years ago, my VMS-hacker optometrist recommended a low monitor (down and in is the natural eye direction, he said), a window placement, high resolution/high refresh/big fonts, and anti-glare coating for my glasses. My nearsightedness actually improved t
Re:Focal Depth (Score:2)
This is typical in an executive setting, but seems to be incredibly unpopular in the home office crowd (or with anyone raised in a cube).
It reduces the cost (muscular, time) of changing focal length, so it's easier to do. And since you're more likely to -actually look around you- when it's easier to do so, it means that you might actually do it enough to make a difference.
Being able to glance just off one s
Next time, try searching before you post... (Score:2)
Full Spectrum Lighting - Is it any better? [slashdot.org]
etc.
My eyes! The goggles do nothing! (Score:3, Informative)
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!
Re:My eyes! The goggles do nothing! (Score:2, Informative)
My mother is a text editor (no, really
Woo!!! Yay 4 glare!!! (Score:2)
Talk to an optometrist (Score:2)
In any case, you'll get some good advice. Mine told me a bunch of stuff to try. The most suprising was the suggestion that I lower my monitor so that it was about 25 degrees below eye level. This sounded odd to me, because computer furniture mostly seems designed to raise the monitor.
Glasses might also be an option. I have a friend who wears them only when she's onlin
Re:Talk to an optometrist (Score:2)
Grrrrr, baby! Yeah!
There's no perfect solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:There's no perfect solution. (Score:2)
Re:There's no perfect solution. (Score:1)
My Optometrist called it "Artificial Astigmatism" (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only has be myopia speed along as its typical pace, she also said I have developed astigmatism from my (apparently) near-constant computer use over the years. and i'm only 19..
They prescribed me some long distance (which i only use rarely, since I refuse to give in..) and some close-distance glasses that should the progression of the computer damage. I used them for
Re:My Optometrist called it "Artificial Astigmatis (Score:1)
Speaking specifically of the GE "Reveal" bulbs... (Score:2)
Ten years ago or so, GE came out with some pastel tinted bulbs, pink, yellow, blue pastel tints to the powercoating inside the bulb. I found the blue tint gave a much "whiter" light than regular incandescent bulbs, and I like a nice white light
Re:Speaking specifically of the GE "Reveal" bulbs. (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Speaking specifically of the GE "Reveal" bulbs. (Score:2)
Re:Speaking specifically of the GE "Reveal" bulbs. (Score:3, Informative)
I think they may have dropped the
Well... (Score:2)
I've seen a number of solutions posited. But the simple one is this: Occasionally leave the room with the computer, and just sit down and relax- for around five to ten minutes or so. Perhaps in conjunction with these other fine ideas. :)
reading glasses (seriously) (Score:3, Informative)
3D stereograms (Score:3, Interesting)
Its a sailboat! (Score:1)
Get glasses (Score:2)
He gave me a quite weak prescription. My ability to discern small details is already very good, but these glasses enhance my close vision even more. I put on my glasses, and things are just a bit bigger. As well, the lenses come with an anti-glare coating.
I've found that my eyes ARE
Watch your convergence (Score:1)
Unusual symptoms include:
Eye Strain (Score:4)
Switching to LCD if you haven't should be first. CRTs have more variance in output because LCDs are slower to darken. They flash.
Room lighting should be incandescent, rather than fluourescent, for the same reason: flash. Spectrum is, IMO, far less important than constancy.* If one thing flashing is bad, two things flashing at different rates is probably worse.
Work with room lighting and screen brightness to get it as comfortable as possible. You can't get around the problem of transmitted rather than reflected light, but you can minimize it.
The average optimal working attention time is around 25 minutes. Taking 5 minutes of every half hour off will keep you at a higher performance level as well as rest your eyes before you're forced to. Better to quit when you can find a good stopping point than when you can't see to read whether you've made mistakes.
Eye exercise to try while working: focus briefly on something far away. Outside if possible. Look at it for 30 second to stretch the muscles that had been set for close looking. Then look back and forth between something near and far, to "warm down" the eye muscles and keep them flexing. Then rest them by looking at something far again, for a few minutes.
Use paper when you can, especially for something you need to concentrate hard on. You'll lean forward and squint at the screen when trying to find a bug in code or something similar. That makes the transmitted light + flash (if applicable) problem all the worse, For reviewing something closely, print it. This especially for PDFs and such that are presented too small. If you'd have to have it wider than the screen (ie. use your bottom scroll bar to read across the page) in order to see it comfortably, print it.
Don't use WYSIWYG black-on-white skinny little letters for lots and lots of reading. I can read 4 or 5 pages of that stuff on my 15" LCD before my eyes get tired. I can read 10 times as much using light grey text on dark blue background in plain old DOS style monospace font.
I'm firmly convinced about the constancy thing. I've done experiments with incandescent vs. fluourescent lighting and found fluourescent to be worse (though I can only hypothesize why that is). About the only prior work I could find to reference was by a guy that also showed fluourescent light caused cavities, so it was kind of an iffy proposition. But my data replicated some of his other claims, so it's not completely bogus.
Re:Eye Strain (Score:3, Interesting)
I try to let natural light into the room when I'm looking at the monitor, but I'm careful to balance the contrast and avoid glare. If it's nighttime and I need light other than the monitor, I use an incandescent on a resistive dimmer (
Re:Eye Strain (Score:2)
The Worst Way To Prevent Eyestrain (Score:2)
Let's hear it for mutations.
I wear sunglasses (Score:1)
Don't get laser surgery! (Score:3, Interesting)
Bear with me.
I have a bad asygmatism (sp?). For going on a few months, my eyes started hurting pretty bad whenever I put on the glasses. I tried different glasses and still had the problem.
I figured it was time to fix my vision so I got the surgery. Good news: 20/15 vision (wuhoo!) Bad news: Now I had the 'I'm wearing glasses' hurt ALL THE TIME. It drove me freaking mad. I asked the doctor and he said "Maybe you should get glasses". That's where he lost me.
Anyhoo, my eyes are great now, here's why:
[drum roll]
I stared running. Outdoors. In the sunlight. With nothing but far away things to look at like mountains, sky, clouds, trees, OTHER PEOPLE, all illuminated by constant unflickering sunlight along with it's magnificent ultraviolet rays.
So, I say, to fix your eyes, buy some running shoes.
Re:Don't get laser surgery! (Score:2)
Darkness (Score:1)
Re:Darkness (Score:2)
Turn down the brightness (Score:2, Informative)
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?
desk vs office (Score:3, Interesting)
Well here's another argument for open floor plans. Yes, you get distracted more, when someone comes over and asks you something. This also makes you look away from the PC, look at a person, roll your eyes as a joke, look down in thought, et cetera.
I noticed this because a few times I had spent the whole day at work listening to music through headphones and noticed my eyes were getting tired. Why? I think it's because the headphones shielded me from the little distractions (like when someone walked near me or my manager wondered aloud about something.) Usually these events warrant a little turn of the head, which breaks up your tunnel vision.
Lutein (Score:2, Informative)
Making Fun Of Typo (Score:2)
5 minute breaks every hour (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:5 minute breaks every hour (Score:2)
C'mon, there's no way management's going to walk down the hallway, unlock it, wait for me to get back from my break, lock me back up, then go on with their 'business' - then rinse and repeat each hour... yeah right.
Re:5 minute breaks every hour (Score:2)
The problem? (Score:1)
Then you, my friend, are obviously not running on your optimum caffeine rating (ocr). Might I suggest some Bawls [thinkgeek.com]? Or maybe some Penguin mints? [thinkgeek.com]
Monitor Settings and color schemes (Score:4, Interesting)
This is really targetted at Computer Users who complain about how their eyes hurt, especially after a long day of staring at the computer monitor.
I have had 15/20 vision all my life, and I've also been a heavy user of computers since 1979. People ask how the heck I have maintained my eyesight. It is really simple: turn the brightness down!
Here are my tips for adjusting your computer monitor:
That's it. Note that if you are working on computer graphics, this will NOT make the colors bright and pretty, so you'll probably have to go back to the eye-killing settings. But if you're a coder who is just doing text and web browsing all day, USE THIS. Your eyes will thank you for it.
Even better: do the same thing I mentioned above, but with an LCD screen. CRT monitors are worse for your eyes than LCD.
If you're playing first person shooters like Quake, you will probably have to crank up the brightness dial. Just remember to turn it back down later!
A Quick Bit on Color Schemes
When I originally wrote this node, I was focusing only on monitor settings. The above works fine for any monitor going back to monochrome CRTs from the 1970s, but with the advent of configurable color window managers like Windows where you have a choice of color settings, I have one more piece of advice. Get off that default scheme!
Ever since Windows 1.0, there has been a default color scheme. Somewhere around Windows 2.0 you were able to change it, but most people never do it and they leave it with the default settings. These default settings are BRIGHT white backgrounds with the blue title bars. In my opinion, this color setting isn't optimial for your eyes. Of course, we're not just limited to Windows, but since the majority of people use it, I'll at least start with it for my point.
Without going into technical and difficult to apply color preferences, I suggest trying one scheme that has been in Windows since Windows 95: the 'Plum (high color)' scheme. The point of using this scheme is that the window decorations are not the typical bright grey, and the window backgrounds are off-white. You may not care for the purple accenting, but that's not the point of this scheme, in my mind. Give it a shot for an hour and see if it works for you.
What I've strived for is the perfect balance of colors on my desktop. A lot of people don't know how, and don't bother with adjusting their appearance settings. Granted after you've been using one scheme for a while, it might feel too foreign to have a different scheme. But try it, it might help even more.
LCDs? (Score:2)
Also, go get your vision checked, I was surprised how much getting glasses helped, even though I am nearsighted---it makes it more comfortable to look at far-away things, which means that when I take a break, I'm not constantly looking downward or at walls in order to keep things in focus, and I'm giving my eyes a little rest.
Glasses (Score:2)
I started with computers at 9, now 24 and it's my job. I usually spend 8-12 hours a day in front of my computer. I can see the square of the pixel on my LCD, but can't read the licence plate of the car 30 meters in front of me.
Just got some glasses and I now see the outer world differently. (no glasses vision still good to avoid seeing ugly people in town
I have messed up eyes... (Score:2)
Here are my two cents:
1. Keep at least an arms length away from the monitor. Keeps you from staring at the damn thing up close.
2. Keep some light around the room going. If its nice and dark then you kill your eyes and they tired much faster. I know it makes it harder to see but you'll see longer.
3. Get a plant. You need something oddly shaped in three demensions near the monitor. Gives you something to refocus your eyes and
Some good advice here; here's (hopefully) more: (Score:2)
1/ Eyes 2/ Brain (Score:1)
1. Eye Fatigue: assuming you've done sensible things like vary the screen contrast and whitepoint to match your surroundings, the most common problem is slow screen refresh. And different people eyes "refresh" at different rates. A good quick test: when you're at the movies and watching a panning shot move across scenery, do your eyes swim in almost-pain from the ina
Font size and viewing angle (Score:2)
1.)Turn your font size up really high so that you don't have to have your face a couple of inches from the screen.
2.) make sure your screen (or screens) are each directly facing your eyes.
At my job I'm blessed with a double monitor setup, but at first I found that I was getting major eye strain after a day of work, even though at home or school I would often spend a whole day in front of my (single) screen. After about a month I realized the problem: the two monitors had their sc