Vision (was: Re: [techtalk] Changing the Console Video Mode)

[Nicole Zimmerman]

> > Braille terminal ? ;)
> 
> Heh. Actually I have near-perfect vision in my left eye - and am almost
> legally blind in the right.

Sounds like my father in law's ears: perfect hearing in one, totally
deaf in the other. For this reason, their whole house is filled with
mono (as opposed to stereo) a/v equipment. They also bought the two of
us (who have perfectly fine hearing) a mono vcr. "I don't know why
anyone would need stereo!"

My eyes aren't too great either. My right eye used to be glued to my
nose while my left was nearly okay (though somewhat leaning toward
nose-ville as well). (witness http://colby.dhs.org/pics/cheese.jpg and
http://colby.dhs.org/pics/bllrb.jpg) They were repaired when I was 18
months old (two muscles in right, one in left), however I have never
recovered from having my left eye do all of the "normal" vision
operations: it remains *very* dominant over my right, which still has
way too much trouble focusing to be incredibly useful. I have okay depth
perception but horrible peripheral vision on my right side (still "goes
in" toward my nose a tad). I am very sensitive to the sun and other
bright glowing things.

Obviously, this creates a few functional problems... the ghettobox
(linux computer) is on the right side of the couch which makes it hard
for me to be comfortable (I see nearly everything out of the left), the
monitor is smaller than the other (17 vs 19, not *too* much difference
but enough to notice), I have to be careful with bright backgrounds,
images, and other things of the like, I'm very sensitive to refresh
rates in my monitor, and I have to take my fair share of breaks from the
computer. Hubby isn't too sure of what makes me uncomfortable in the
vision department when he does the "interior design" part of things and
it's a little frustrating to find out later it's really uncomfortable.

It really sucks... and I get made fun of for needing sunglasses when the
sun is even slightly bright (I can remember when I was younger not even
being able to open my *eyes* if the sun was decently bright... thank
god(dess) I grew up in Seattle, eh?) ;o)

> Yup. It's incredible what a difference it makes. I set my browser to
> override font instructions.

This helps a lot. Using xterm -rv instead of xterm helps me from
spending all of my time squinting, along with keeping my hands on
ctrl+alt+plus/minus if I am on a website with small print (solved by
overriding as was mentioned right above).

-nicole

************
techtalk at linuxchix.org   http://www.linuxchix.org