How Many Bloggers Get Eyestrain? Part 1
In the past few weeks I’ve been blogging around eight or nine hours a day on various projects. These include three blogs for b5media, five for Syntagma Media, one WordPress.com freebie, and a number of other projects I’m developing.
I’ve noticed one main problem ~ apart from brain fatigue in late afternoon ~ and that’s eyestrain.
Many of us will remember the case of Darren Rowse, Mr Problogger, who recently had a serious bout of eye trouble. Rumours shot round the blogosphere that he was in hospital close to death. Apparently, it was not as bad as that, but it must have been serious. Darren has put aside his laptop and invested in a PowerMac with a 23-inch screen.
So how bad is eyestrain for those of us who work on screens most of the day? Apart from this post, I’ve taken the weekend off to allow my eyes to refocus and rest. I’m also going for an eyetest sometime soon.
Do we bloggers take the health of our eyes for granted? Are we uncomplaining martyrs to eye strain until something even more painful and debilitating turns up, usually out of the blue?
Are there strategies we can adopt to prevent it?
I’ve decided to research this whole area and put the results in a series of posts on SYNTAGMA. Any ideas would be welcome in the comments section.
Check out Part 2 of Bloggers’ Eyestrain for tips and more info.
Having relied on computers for the past 20 years, I’ve become very accustomed to the signs of eyestrain. The first sign is blurred vision. Then my eyes physically hurt. When this happens, I’ll step away from the computer for at least an hour.
Another thing that causes eye strain is light coming from too many sources. Let’s say your desk sits in front of a window. You have the glare coming off the computer screen, followed by whatever light seeps through your curtains/blinds, followed room lighting (whether it’s a lamp or an overhead flourescent light). Your pupils are constantly trying to adjust to accomodate three sources of light with different intensities for long periods of time.
The ideal would be to cut the light sources down or position your desk to where you’ll get the least amount of glare. Another solution is to get an anti-glare filter for your monitor.
By Deborah on December 5th, 2005 at 12:02 am
Thanks, Deborah, that’s very helpful. I’ll start to adopt your suggestions right away.
By John on December 5th, 2005 at 7:04 am
Eyestrain became less of a problem for me when I got a good monitor. Since I work on computer all day long and since lots of my hobbies involve its use as well, this was an important point. I also restrained my source lights (before, I had two lamps on the wall right in front of me, now I keep one of these nifty “architect desk lamps”, the ones that can easily be oriented, on the desk behind me; it’s way less aggressive).
Two things that are killers for me is not having enough light (I can’t work on the computer nor watch TV in the dark, for instance) or too low monitor resolution. Anything under 85 Hz will be a pain (striclty said: heavy headaches incoming), to the point of me being able to tell “ah, this one runs at 65 Hz” after barely two minutes spent watching the monitor. People at work thought I was crazy at first, but they gave me a good monitor in the end, else I couldn’t work anyway
By Yzabel on December 5th, 2005 at 8:22 am
That’s also useful, Yzabel. I’ll have to check my monitor out. It’s 2-years old and 17 inch, so should be fairly up-to-date.
By John on December 5th, 2005 at 8:27 am
I suffer from eye strain quite frequently as well so I’m really looking forward to the rest of this series. I’m getting a new laptop soon and hope that will help too although I notice some people keep their screen resolutions at max which isn’t really necessary IMO and ends up making fonts way too small regardless of how you try to magnify it using browser settings.
By Hsien Lei on December 5th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
That’s true. But I note Microsoft is recommending huge resolutions for optimum performance of Windows Vista. The default font on that will be set at 9pt. Rather small, I think.
By John on December 5th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Gah! I might as well put a bullet between my eyes right now.
By Hsien Lei on December 5th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
Better ask Jeremy first
By John on December 5th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
Is that written in the contract too?!
By Hsien Lei on December 5th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
No, but it’ll sure cure eyestrain
By John on December 6th, 2005 at 9:47 am