March 19th, 2008
Microsoft Spell-Check Tells Me Eyestrain Is One Word
I went to bed last night with a killer headache centered right behind my eyes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised since I had spent almost every waking hour of the past 4 days staring into my monitor as though it displayed the secret of eternal happiness and life everlasting. (It doesn’t.) The reason I’ve been going overboard is that I’m very excited about the overhaul I’m giving my facetious movie review site. I’ll post more about that in a few weeks (update: the new version of Single Sentence Movie Review is live), but now I want to talk about the research I did this morning on ways to prevent eyestrain.
Sadly I didn’t turn up any new information that I didn’t already know about. I set my monitor refresh rate as high as my system will allow. The process prompted me to update my video card driver, which is good, but I’m still only humming along at a very modest 70 Hertz. I guess it doesn’t really matter since I have an LCD monitor that doesn’t flicker anyway, but it seems like I might have some psychological comfort if I could jack the refresh rate up into the triple-digits.
Since I use Windows XP, I also went through the steps of recalibrating my ClearType settings. I honestly don’t notice any difference.
Those are the only technical configuration steps I found. I suppose the only perfect solution is to take frequent breaks to give my eyes a chance to rest. Many times this weekend, though, I would just get in a groove where hours slipped by without me even noticing.
Anyone else have any suggestions of things I should be doing to avoid eyestrain?
Mar 20th, 2008
7:52 am
Looking away from the monitor for a few minutes every quarter hour can also help. I have a window nearby that I look out every so often to make sure I focus at a distance. It’s also a good reason to get up and walk away from the computer for a bit to prevent “rearsore” as well.
Sep 24th, 2008
9:07 am
I received a comment about this post through this site’s contact form from Marcel. I thought it was worth sharing:
Eye strain:
I suppose if you use every hour awake to work behind a screen, there are several solutions to avoid eye strain:
1: Sleep as much as you can to shorten the working day
2: Don’t use the screen for everything, sometimes ordinary paper can handle some of your daily job. (like droodling)
3: Drink as much as you can, and put the source of the drink (i.e.fridge) in a walking distance, not near your desk. Go to the toiletregularly.
4. Put the telephone on the other side of the room.
5: Install a anti rsi program like the freeware workrave. It willremind you of a break (and exercise) now and then.
6: Try to remember that work is not worth your health.
Work is nice, but it’s known it costs a lot of free time