cellio | Entries tagged with vision

I saw my opthamologist for my regular checkup today and was surprised to learn that medicine's understanding of glaucoma has changed since it was last explained to me. I guess I think of glaucoma as an old, well-understood disease that doesn't change much.

For the first time ever, while my eyes were numb anyway they applied a second gadget. After the round of "heywaitaminute, tell me what you're doing before you do it", I learned that this gadget measures the thickness of the cornea. (The technician doing it didn't know the mechanism and I haven't gone looking yet. I wonder if it's sound-based; how else would you measure the thickness of something like that?) She noted that my corneas are thicker than normal but would not pronounce that good or bad.

My opthamologist pronounced it good. Well, not good in absolute terms, but it turns out that people with thicker corneas tend to measure higher for eye pressure, which is what the glaucoma test measures. So my pressure might not be as high as they think it is. Hey, I said, my pressure has always been borderline anyway; is high pressure the sole detector for this disease and do I really have it?

She said that contrary to what I was told when I got the diagnosis (and several times since), high pressure isn't the definition of glaucoma. That's just high pressure. Glaucoma is a condition of the optic nerve usually caused by high pressure, though there exist people who have low pressure and the optic-nerve condition (and people with high pressure without effects). I do have damage to my optic nerve, though she hasn't noted it getting worse (which is both good and expected).

I should have asked her to describe what the medicines I take do, just to satisfy my own curiosity. (And, well, my co-pays just went up again...) My impression is that one is about lowering the amount of ocular fluid produced and another is about venting it, and I'm not sure what the third is. Oh well; I can ask next time. She said that she is not going to change the treatment at this time based on the cornea thing because that's speculative, which sounds right to me. There's plenty of time to ask later if I'm actually taking the right mix of drugs; it sounds like, at worst, I'm taking something ineffective. I'd rather not waste money on something known to be useless, but when in doubt, my eyes are a heck of a lot more important than saving some money.

She also suggested that it may be time to get pictures of my optic nerves taken. I gather that the philosophy is similar to that of the mammogram: at a certain point you start looking and from there on you're looking for changes. She described the process for the eyes as "sort of like a CAT scan but without radiation", which doesn't tell me directly (I don't know from CAT scans) but I can apply Google. She said it can wait until summer, when I'm next due for a visual-field test, and they can do 'em together. Ok, whatever.

I'll be interested to compare notes with my father, from whom I inherited the glaucoma, to see what his doctor has been doing lately.

Tidbit picked up in passing: my opthamologist has been practicing for 13 years. I've been seeing her for about 8; I hadn't realized she was so new when I started going to her. When choosing a doctor there's an interesting trade-off between recency (more up-to-date education) and decades of experience (seen more "in the wild"); I'm pretty happy with her, though I got her semi-randomly so that's just luck.

On Windows XP (probably up to date), does anyone know of a way to make the mouse cursor bigger? I had to set the resolution on this laptop above my preferred 1024x768 because that resolution absolutely sucked on this display, and then tell Windows to use extra-large fonts and twiddle my applications. (Mozilla's minimum font size is now 20, to give you an idea of the magnitude of the problem.) But this means that everything graphical is still down at its "normal" size (per the resolution). I can live with not being able to see images well for a week; it's not like I'm doing much browsing or graphics manipulation, after all. But the mouse cursor is also a graphic image, and that I care about.

I've already found the accessibility option for "tell me where the cursor is on demand" (it animates), but if I could make the mouse cursor itself bigger, or bright red (inverse-video would be better but hard, I imagine), or something, that'd be really helpful.

With the way technology is advancing, I'm guessing I'll never be able to reasonably buy a laptop of my own because of stuff like this. When a resolution I can actually see is considered non-native because it's "too low", I'm in trouble. (Yes I did try 800x600 too. No dice; it looked as bad as 1024x768. And there's nothing between the two..)

Update: Problem solved. Thanks everyone!

This is mostly for my own notes, but I welcome feedback. I just suspect that most people won't care. :-)

I have a new LCD monitor at work (yay!). Every monitor is a little different, so I am once again playing with settings. This monitor offers a great variety of things I can twiddle, and I don't fully understand the impact of some of them. So right now I'm tinkering, but I would welcome suggestions from those with clues here about combinations of settings that would be suitable (specific goals below). For example, I haven't been able to characterize the color impact of brightness and contrast, but there seems to be some. Some of you gave me a bunch of advice when I was experimenting with this a year or so ago, so no need to repeat anything there. (The main thing I take from the prior discussion is that color temperature is probably where the action is.)

I can set: brightness, contrast, color temperature (individual RGB values), gamma (3 pre-defined and unnamed modes), and three independent mysterious numeric parameters under an "image" menu (course, fine, sharpness). (I couldn't see any obvious impact from changing these.) There are also three pre-set color combinations (white point??), called cool (blue), normal, and warm (red); I've bypassed those for the "custom" option (RGB values). "Cool" is definitely too blue and warm seems awfully red.

My current settings are:
Brightness 30
Contrast 90
Gamma: "mode 3" (the one I parse as darkest)
R: 70
G: 70
B: 60

My main goal is to keep the bright white pixels from screaming at me quite so much as they currently do (specifically: black text on white background is harsh; it wasn't so great on the CRT monitor either), while maintaining sufficient contrast and getting colors that are as close to normal as I can achieve. It appears that the absolute RBB values, and not just the ratios among them, matter for overall brightness; I'm not sure yet how that interacts with the brightness control.

I'll try replicating the settings I use at home (also an LCD monitor) at work, but won't be back in the office to try until Tuesday.

I'd been meaning to order new glasses for a while, but did not want to get caught in another dispute between the doctor who wrote the prescription and the optical shop that made them (like last time). So I'd been looking for a place that provides both services so I could surround any mistakes with a someone-else's-problem field. Dani had a good experience at NeoVision in Shadyside, so I went there.

The exam started off with a fascinating gadget (that, alas, I did not get the name of). One eye at a time, they told me to stare into the gadget and not blink. I watched a grapheme (not text) blur into and out of focus before "snapping" into focus -- without any communication from me. That was neat! It got the right eye just fine (which is usually the one that's hard to get a reading on), but did not "snap" to focus on the left (unusual). I reported that fact and they said that's ok; they'll tune things during the exam.

Their optician then did a fairly conventional refraction, except for two things: (1) when I told him I needed more time to focus before being able to answer "is that better?" he listened and slowed down, and (2) instead of the wacky frames into which they fit physical lenses, he had a device where he just twiddled knobs or something, with the result that the transitions were smoother. (I had not previously seen such a gadget.) Within some parameters that I don't know, adjustable glasses are clearly feasible.

The final version he came up with allowed me to read text on the wall chart that I had not been able to read with the glasses I walked in with. So that's a good sign. I told him I was most concerned with the bifocal, for both reading and computer use, and he inserted something to show me what that would look like. (For reading, anyway -- no handy computer, and they are different in feel.) Bifocals are just an add-on; there's no tuning involved. So there's not a lot of flexibility there. If I ever decide to try again with the all-bifocal-all-the-time glasses (exclusively for computer use), we could presumably fine-tune it.

Of course, the danger of all of these things is judging on a few seconds' worth of exposure; the real evaluation requires longer. (That's part of why I want those adjustable glasses!)

Their guy is an opthamologist, so he started to do a glaucoma test. I wasn't expecting that but the insurance covered it, so I let him do it. Unbeknownst to me, that insurance would bite the dust two days later. Let's hear it for lucky timing. (The new corporate overlords do have vision coverage, though it's a bit weaker. More imporantly, though, even though we've been assured that insurance will be back-dated to the beginning of the month and we're not uninsured, we haven't yet been able to actually sign up for insurance. I had a doctor's appointment scheduled for this week that I've had to move already; I hope they fix this before next month's dentist appointment!)

I picked up the glasses today. They are taking some time to adjust to, both distance- and close-vision, but the drive back to the office was perfectly fine (so distance seems promising) and I haven't ripped them off my face to return to the old ones yet. So we're already well ahead of the last time I got new glasses. Focusing on the computer screen is different but possible. Reading paper seems to be fine, though I haven't tried anything challenging yet like smaller newsprint.

So a provisional thumbs-up to NeoVision. I'm hoping that by the end of tomorrow these will feel perfectly normal. Right now, about 12 hours after putting them on, I still feel like I'm wearing someone else's prescription. (I have the impression that most people adjust more quickly than I do.)

Oh, I personally think the new glasses are a little aesthetically-challenged, but appearance is so far down on the list compared to functionality that I don't really care. I asked them to recommend a shape and size for the lenses.

Update Apr 12 morning: Distance vision in the left lens is a bit off; I can't read street signs as clearly as I could with the old glasses. The right lens is spot-on, though, and better than the old one, and bifocals seem to be better overall. I'm going to have them look at that left lens, though.

The interview meme is back. If you want me to ask you questions, post and say so (and then you answer them in your journal).

1. Your four favorite blogging topics are food, gaming, Judaism, and work. Does this represent a fair division of your life? Would you change the relative proportions, if you could? ( Read more... )

2. There are lots of similarities between being a technical documentation author and being a rabbi arguing over the mishnah. Do you like this analogy? How does it make you feel? ( Read more... )

3. You get the chance to make a major manufacturer or producer of goods and services introduce one new thing that you really want. It has to be currently physically possible (i.e. no teleport booths, no fusion reactors) and it will be priced realistically. What do you want? ( Read more... )

4. What's the biggest threat to your continued happiness? ( Read more... )

5. How many fences around fences do you feel comfortable drawing? As a Reform Jew, you have a duty to interpret for yourself. For example, we separate milk and meat because we are commanded not to boil a kid in it's mother's milk. The first fence is extending that to not cooking any meat in any milk. The second fence is to prohibit eating meat and milk at the same meal. The third fence extends this to not eating chicken (considered meat) with cheese even though chickens are in no way mammals, chicken eggs can be eaten with cheese, and fish can be eaten with cheese. Feel free to go with other rules, if you'd like. ( Read more... )

Wow. This picture of the Eagle Nebula is gorgeous.

More information on the police attack on peaceful protesters in Oregon (link from dglenn). I wonder if the owners of that site could be convinced to provide an RSS feed for their "new McCarthyism" reports.

Marry an American is a web site aimed at Canadians who'd like to rescue folks from a second Bush term if it occurs. "We envision a movement where everyone wins: Freedom of expression and a politically convenient marriage with love and igloos for all." (Link from ladymondegreen.)

Top ten ways the Iraq war is not like World War II.

Someone was selling, on eBay, invitations to a wedding he didn't want to go to. The running commentary is kind of funny. Thanks to patrissimo for the link.

Gee, Enterprise did not actually hit the reset button that I thought they would. I'm impressed. (Spoiler alert:) The seven million people killed in the first Xindi attack are still dead after all the mucking with the timeline.

Speaking of Enterprise (sort of)... Having finally had a successful encounter with the insurance company of the person who hit my car last month, I took my car in to be repaired today. It takes two days to do paint, so I have a rental. It'a s Dodge Neon -- much better than the last rental car I had in most ways. I was surprised, on climbing into it, how low to the ground it is; I hadn't realized that my Golf is so much higher. (I think the Neon is comparable to my old Mazda in that respect. How quickly we acclimate to new cars. :-) ) And in the small-worlds department, the person at Enterprise who handled my rental goes to my synagogue. He recognized me first.

Last week one of my coworkers showed me that Firefox has a mouse gesture for "magnify". This does text and images, and you don't have to go to the menus to tweak settings. It also overrides hard-coded fonts, because it's magnifying the whole window. So I downloaded Firefox, but there was no magnification joy to be had. I checked the list of extensions they offer, and I didn't find it there (though I did find, separately, text zoom and image zoom). Someone else told me this works for him with the scroll wheel on his mouse, which I don't have. I couldn't find an answer via Google. My current theory is that on the original coworker's laptop, diagonal click-drag simulates a scroll wheel. Bummer. (So I've gone back to Mozilla 1.7, because on first glance I don't like the Firefox UI as much.)

My opthamologist is a very good opthamologist, but she seems to be only a so-so determiner of glasses prescriptions. I haven't been satisfied with the two pairs I've gotten through her, so I'm looking for someone I can go to for this specific task. If you've had a good experience with this in Pittsburgh, I'd like to know the details.

The best exam/prescription I've ever had (from someone who has since retired and moved away, alas) had the following characteristics: it was not fast (I think he double-checked all the "which of these two is better?" queries), it seemed very thorough, we talked about distances for reading both paper and computer monitors, he actually had me do some tests sitting in front of a computer, he tested me on lighting levels in addition to standard accuity ("read that chart"), he took detailed measurements of my face, and the resulting glasses were perfect. The bifocals were in just the right place, distance and reading visions were very clear (and not headache-inducing), and I got used to them in hours rather than days. (I waived all opinions on things like frame design, which affects lens performance; I said "make me the best pair of glasses you can".) I did not in the least begrudge the money I spent on this.

I'm looking for another perfect pair of glasses. Any recommendations?

Dani reported seeing a 19" LCD monitor (not a no-name) on sale for a good price, so I went and checked it out today. After confirming that I have 14 days to return it for a full refund even though they had to give me the display model, I brought it home and set it up. I had to do some playing with settings, of course, both monitor and OS, but it seems to be working well so far. And I have real estate! 1280x1024 is a lot bigger than 1024x768. :-) (And, of course, a 19" LCD is bigger than a 19" CRT.)

There were cascading effects. In order to accommodate the new resolution, I had to change the system from "small fonts" to "large fonts". (For some reason, this required consulting the Windows CD.) Then I had to change some application font settings, particularly (for now) SSH client and web browser. In the process of playing with Mozilla, I discovered some suboptimal things that LJ was doing that had previously been masked, so I had to fix them. (Who knew that my friends page had a style sheet with hard-coded font sizes that just happened to work ok at the lower resolution? You don't even see the style sheet unless you edit in "raw" mode, so I spent a while forcing size="+0" in various places only to have no apparent effect...)

But I've found color, brightness, and contrast settings that don't hurt my eyes, and there's no flicker, and the viewing angle is acceptable. I think this will be a keeper. And after sale price, rebate, discount for buying the floor model, and store frequent-customer credit, my final cost will be under $400, which doesn't suck. :-)

The installation guide is a thicker-than-expected book, but it turns out there are two pages of relevant text. Those two pages are then repeated in 14 (!) other languages, most of which I recognize. (There are four kanji-based ones, and there's a version in Arabic -- don't usually see that.) I also note that for all their apparent efforts to provide thorough documentation, they left out the location of the non-obvious power switch.

I get my new car tomorrow. I should remember to take a CD of dulcimer music; when the salesman asked me what the heck that instrument case was (that I insisted on putting into the car to make sure it would be happy), he said he'd never heard of the hammer dulcimer. And I'll want him to show me how to operate the CD player anyway...

An interesting entry about making choices from sui66iy.

What's 'popcorn' in Aramaic? and other helpful phrases, including "I have eyes but I cannot see the subtitles. Can we sit closer?" (Guardian, by way of vonstrassburg).

tim_ posted lots of nifty, helpful information about vision and monitors and stuff, in response to my entry about LCD monitors. Thanks! I'm still digesting it, but I did want to note it in case others are interested.

I finished assembling my application package for the sh'liach k'hilah program tonight, so off it goes tomorrow morning. I hope they accept me. (I suspect they will.) The envelope containing my rabbi's recommendation letter is thick; too bad I'm not allowed to know what's in it. (When he hadned it to me he said something like "if you were allowed to read this I think you'd be pleased". :-) )

Dang. That was quick.

This afternoon I asked if I could borrow one of the LCD monitors from a test lab for a few days. I have the impression that they're easier on the eyes, which bears investigation, but since I seem to have so many stupid finicky vision issues with monitors, I want to use one for an extended period before deciding anything.

That experiment lasted about 30 minutes, as it turned out. :-( I could not find any combination of settings that wasn't harsh, and the fonts were fuzzy besides. It looked like the fonts got better if I increased the resolution (to 1280x1024) and switched the OS to "large fonts", but I would have also had to make changes in every application, so I didn't go down that path too far. And things were still fuzzy even with those settings.

It's possible that my current machine and/or graphics card is just too old for this kind of monitor; I don't know. I believe this machine is about three years old. (The video card is an NVida Riva TNT2, according to the device manager.)

On the CRT monitor, I have maximum contrast (100) and low brightness (20). It makes some colors a little wonky (photos usually don't look good), but this is my work machine and I'm not doing graphic design. At home, where the lighting properties are a bit different, the settings are both closer to the midpoint. That might be due to lighting diffferences or different monitors (I have a 19" flat-panel CRT at home) or something about the machines; I don't know how to evaluate that without shlepping equipment. So it's possible that an LCD monitor at home would actually work out just fine even though it didn't at work, but if I try it I should buy one locally from a place that takes returns. (Returns with mail-order are way too much of a PITA.)

I guess I was hoping for a more conclusive answer, preferably in the positive direction. Oh well.

1. Why did you pick the hammer dulcimer? ( Read more... )

2. What foods, if any, do you particularly miss from your pre-kosher days? ( Read more... )

3. What's the scariest experience you're willing to talk about in this forum? ( Read more... )

4. What technological advance do you most look forward to in the next ten to twenty years? ( Read more... )

5. I'll return the question, but more broadly: what would you like to get in your next RPG experience? This might include whether you'd be a player or GM, ruleset, genre, tone, character type, whatever. ( Read more... )

I don't really think of myself as a Phillistine (culturally speaking), but I think my views on art and function are more conservative than those of some of the people around me.

When they redesigned US paper money a few years back, a lot of people thought the results were much prettier than before. But usability for me went way down, because I found the font they used for the numbers on the front to be illegible, and I could no longer tell whether I was holding a 10 or a 20 without looking at the back. This is a nuisance when digging through a wallet. And I can't believe that it wasn't at least a little harder even for people with good vision. So to me the new peach 20s are a major improvement, at least for now. We'll see what happens when they do the 10s.

I've heard some people critique the new peach bills in various ways, liking the treatment of the background or disliking some aspect of the portrait or the like. And I'm sure the government spent an amount several times my annual income on the artistic aspects of the bill (as opposed to the anti-counterfeiting aspects). But c'mon, it's just money! I'd rather have pretty money than ugly money all other things being equal, but I really don't care. Its job is to live in my wallet until I want to exchange it for goods or services. And as soon as the art gets in the way of that function, I get annoyed.

Take, for example, the new quarters. There are now 51 different versions of the quarter. If I pull a quarter out of my pocket and I'm looking at the back, I can't tell what coin I'm holding. It's probably a US quarter, but for all I know it's an SBA or a Canadian coin or something else wonky that showed up in the change from the store. I have to flip it over and look at the front to know -- all in the name of art, because having one design instead of 51 was boring or something. I want the old quarters back because the new ones introduced a bug without a corresponding feature. Some think the new art is a feature, of course, but my vision isn't good enough to appreciate that -- and even if it were, it still interferes with function.

So now they're redesinging the nickel. Fortunately there will only be two or three versions in circulation, rather than 51, but I still have to ask why. Was the old one broken? I haven't heard anyone make that argument. The old one wasn't even ugly! (At least the nickel starts out less ambiguous than the quarter does.)

Lots of software chooses art over usability, whether it's graphics, fonts, weird command sequences, inconsistent behavior, or the like. (You also see this in a lot of web sites, of course.) I've pretty much given up there; the software world seems to prefer the notion that art is allowed to prevent function. But I'm frustrated when I see that approach migrate into my world at large.

Again, I'm all for art -- in appropriate venues. But basic functionality has to come first. If I'm standing at the parking meter and can't tell effortlessly what coin I'm holding, I don't give a damn if it's pretty.

According to this article, researchers are now testing a new kind of occular lens implant, one they describe as "multi-focus". This means that people who have cataract surgery and get these new lenses don't need glasses. (Until now, lens implants have a fixed focal distance, so you still need glasses sometimes.) Nifty! I'd love to know how they're doing that!

The article mentions in passing that while most people develop cataracts as they age, some are born with congenital cataracts, and that this latter group is the researcher's area of speciality. This got my attention and queued up my hopes.

Frustratingly, they then say nothing else about this aspect. And what I really want to know is: can these new implants work for people who had cataract surgery as children? If so, once they've spent a decade or so working out the bugs (beta tester? I don't think so!), this is exactly the sort of development that could make an enormous difference for me. (The barrier until now, as I understand it, has been that they can't put implants into eyes that have been without lenses as long as mine have.)

I'll have to pump my opthamologist for information about this. It's been a while since I've pestered her anyway.

My current pair of glasses is starting to get pretty banged up (I'm hard on glasses), so I should get a new pair. But I've had bad luck with glasses. The last two times I've gotten new glasses, first getting a new prescription from a competent opthamologist, I haven't been able to adjust to the new lenses. In the first of those cases I then got them to duplicate my old pair. That's the pair I'm wearing now. In the second case, I just gave up -- I was trying at all because I was about to leave a job where the health plan would pay for a pair of glasses, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Now maybe I've just had some bad luck, with the glasses not exactly matching the prescriptions or something. But I don't think so; I've had the glasses independently checked, and they seem to be right. The problem must be in my brain.

I didn't always have trouble adjusting to new glasses; I mean, yes, there's the usual "this is a little weird" state, but it was unusual for it to last more than a couple hours. After wearing each of those last two pairs for a day I was dizzy, had headaches, and couldn't read (paper or monitor) without a great deal of difficulty. Last night I tried the last pair (I still have them) and was immediately disoriented. The experiment didn't last ten minutes.

I know that the problem is made worse by the fact that my lenses are large. This makes the lenses thick, and the curvature amplifies funky optical effects -- or so I've been told; I was bad at optics in college. But my eyes are weak enough that I don't want to give up the field of vision; I need to maximize lens coverage because without lenses I'm 20/200 or worse. So, large thick lenses.

For all practical purposes, contact lenses don't work. First, I would need to suplement them with glasses anyway (I spent a year doing that), because contacts can't correct astigmatism (nor can they supply bifocals, though I've heard someone's working on that). Second, the only kind of contact lenses I can wear (due to glaucoma) are daily-wear soft lenses, meaning I have to fuss with them nightly instead of weekly. Finally, when I tried the experiment (about ten years ago), I found that my eyes produce enough "gunk" that I had to take the lenses out and rinse them off (and flush out my eyes) around dinnertime anyway, else it impeded my vision too much.

So now I need a new pair of glasses, and I think I'm just going to have them duplicate what I'm wearing now. It's frustrating that, in theory, a better pair of glasses might be out there waiting for me, but I just don't know how to get there.

This Shabbat we had a cantorial intern; she's in her first year of school. She has a nice voice that I think will mature into a great voice with more training. More importantly, she sang with real feeling -- the kevanah (intention, spirit) was present in her singing in a way that it often is not. We'll have her for two more weeks.

Small-world syndrome strikes again: Friday night I ran into a co-worker from Transarc (now IBM). His son was bar mitzvah this Shabbat. He remembered me by name; I remembered him sans name (until I sneaked a peak at the program). Everyone I know seems to be much better with names than I am.

We got a call Friday night from a friend who wanted to organize some last-minute gaming Saturday. It ended up being at our house. Since Shabbat was already underway, that posed some hostly challenges, specifically dinner and having drinks/munchies on hand. Fortunately, we had enough drinks on hand (leftovers from another recent gathering), and the friend ended up bringing a main course that I was able to supplement. Maybe next time we can play last-minute games at his house.

Are board games getting visually more cluttered and hard to use, or is it me? We played "Kings and Things" (not a new game), and I was struck by how hard it was to see some of the counters on the board. (Compare this to, say, the first edition of "Cosmic Encounter", or "Civilization".) The board could have been perfectly functional with less "art" and different colors. I rejected "Twilight Imperium" (a newer game) as a candidate because I have trouble seeing the low-contrast chits. I also rejected "Disc Wars" (a recent game) because the important parts of the counters, the stats, are tiny, low-contrast, and buried in busy art. I stopped playing Magic primarily for visibility reasons. (I found that I was memorizing the art because I couldn't read my opponents' cards, and then they both increased the number of different cards by a factor of 4 or 5 and started producing up to four different versions of the art for each common card. That was too much to keep in the cache.) And it happens in computer games, too; the reason I never advanced beyond "Civilization" (I) was that the map and units were too darn hard to see in Civ II. (I've looked at Civ III over Dani's shoulder and it looks like they didn't improve things with that version.)

I got mail from half.com again Saturday night (time to reply: 5 days this time). They are sorry that their seller shipped my DVD nearly a month late without prior communication of any sort, but until 30 days elapse from his claimed shipping date, they can't do anything to help me, like issue a refund so I can go buy the DVD somewhere else without double-paying. So by the time they can issue me a refund, two months will have elapsed from my order. And while the amount in question is not large (about $80), they'll have had use of my money for those two months. Given this experience, I would recommend against buying anything major through half.com. It's likely to be a long time before I buy anything at all from them.

This afternoon, finish transcribing the Rossi piece and then Sunday dinner. (We've missed Sunday dinner the last few weeks, and I'm looking forward to tonight.) If there's time, catch up on some taped TV.

On the transliteration, I finally opted for using the apostrophe to mark a shva. It seems to be what most transliterators use, and there's probably a reason for that. (Last week during services I paid some attention to the transliterated passages in the siddur; that's what they do, and everyone who was obviously reading from translit seemed to be comfortable with it.)

The new monitor is really nice. But I can tell it's going to take me a little while to get used to the lack of distortion and curvature. I feel like I'm looking into the center of a concave surface, and of course I'm not -- it's just that the old one was convex. But the lack of distortion is fabulous, even if my brain currently thinks the edges of the monitor are closer to me than the center is. I'm sure it'll pass. :-)

Lately I've been trying to figure out what to replace my (home) computer monitor with. The one I have works just fine, but it's a 17" CRT (not flat-screen) and I've been having more and more eyestrain problems with it. Specifically, I need enough screen real estate for the applications I use most often that I have to have at least 1024 x 768, but in some apps that results in things being too small. (For example, many web sites still hard-code their fonts, and the ones that choose small ones are illegible to me at that resolution on a 17" monitor. But aside from that, I've had pesky problems with other apps too where it's not clearly the fault of some loser who let Microsoft write his HTML for him.)

So monitors are getting cheaper (I think I paid close to $600 for that 17" monitor, lo these many years ago), but there are also more options. I can get a 17" LCD for about $900, but before I plunk down that kind of money on a new-to-me technology I'd really like to use it for several days, at least. A quickie look in a store won't tell me what I need to know. I could get a flat-screen 21" monitor for about $450; the flat screens help with distortion (another problem I've been noticing) and definitely help with glare (more of a problem in my office now than in the previous house). But I'm not going to buy any monitor without seeing it in action first (my top concern not covered by specs is flicker). So today on the way out for groceries I decided to do a quick survey of the offerings at Office Depot. Hardly a hardware mecca, but I figured it would give me a quick overview.

While there, I decided on a different approach. Why restrict my angsting to the $900 option and the $450 option, both of which are well over the "think about this seriously" threshold? I bought a 19" flat-screen monitor for $250. (Well, $100 of that is a rebate.) This will do for at least a couple years, and by then maybe the LCDs will have come down in price and become more ubiquitous. (Hay, maybe I'll even get one at work before then.)

19" at 1152 x 864 seems to give me what I need. (Flicker rate is 85hz, which is my minimum acceptable. Higher would be better, but I think the problem might be my graphics card.)

By the way, I think there is actually an upper bound on usable monitor sizes for me. It might be 21". I've never had the opportunity to use one of the really large ones, but I have to sit close enough to the monitor due to poor vision that even a 19" monitor is never fully within my field of view. There may be a point where the neck and shoulder muscles have something to say on the subject.

Current Mood: satisfied

Monica

eye exam

random accessibility question

new monitor

glasses

interviewed by dsrtao

short takes (mostly links)

seeking an optician

monitor revisited

short takes

experiment: LCD monitor

interviewed by ralphmelton

function and artistic expression

new advances in lens implants

weird brain wiring

weekend

new monitor

hardware fun

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