Eye Safety & Comfort
Squish has some serious eye problems (pigment dispersion syndrome and computer vision syndrome) that interfere with his ability to write and design for Frangles, but on the upside, he's an excellent guinea pig for everyone else. Here is an extremely short list of key basic tips that we'll expand upon later:
1. Blink a lot. (Listening to Blink-182 albums helps.)
2. Take frequent breaks. (Dozing off for five minutes in your office chair often does the trick, but walking around and doing things can give your eyes another sort of "break").
3. Eat lots of vegetables (leafy greens are excellent for eyes).
Switch around what you're looking at and what you're doing. Don't stare at a bright white screen of all small black text all day long. Try minimizing a composition window to a small corner if you don't have need of looking at the full document, or changing your computer's color scheme. In windows, changing your basic modern themes doesn't do a whole lot. To be helpful on the eyes, things should be seriously changed around, for instance, using an all black scheme with white text can seriously minimize the light you're looking at.
To change your color scheme like this with very solid control over what colors you're looking at, change the scheme type to "windows basic" or "windows classic", then click advanced, and on the advanced screen, there should be a scroll list of tons of items to recolor. It's pretty long, but you can change the basic major ones by clicking on the example picture where you want to change things. Click around until you know how to change everything major. You should be able to get the screen so it's almost completely one color with a few clicks. Figure it out; spend a lot of time with this idea if you have eye problems or are in a risk group, or are just serious about not developing any in general.
5. Don't face your computer screen toward the sun (or a bright direct light source) so that it's in direct view. Nor should light be shining hard directly on your screen from behind or above. It's tricky to manage well, but you want to try for even room lighting. For instance, a couple dim lamps around you with a window or two open at dawn or dusk. At least, this significantly helps Squish and his specific syndrome; these tips largely have resulted from his experiences, and it's a little hard to tell what might be his specific syndrome and what is more important for everyone. For the most part, this advice is basic common advice, and if Squish is extra sensitive to some things, they're probably things you should be doing anyway to keep your eyesight healthy, even if they don't result in serious difficulties.
6. Get a non-lit screen if you can find one for your purposes, such as an e-ink reader like the nook, or the PixelQI netbook monitor. Or wait for something larger or more versatile to come out.
7. Consider a wall projector. While a projector definitely emits more light than your LCD monitor (hence you're staring into a whole wall of light rather than a little rectangle, which seems counter-productive, and depending how you utilize the project, sometimes is), it mixes in the room lighting if your lights are on, or if you're in the dark, can help create consistant lighting if you're sitting for a longer period of time. One problem with a lit monitor is the contrast between the bright screen and everything else around it which aren't lit. Your eyes go back and forth between light and dark every time you dart your eyes from one edge or corner of your LCD screen to another. when you're watching a large widescreen movie (i.e. at thetheatres), you're keeping your eyes more in the center rather than constnatly glancing up to the corners.
This is not professional medical advice. These are things that we've found have worked for us, relayed out of experience staring hyperfocused at screens of text for 16 hours a day, and from a good amount of research as well. Keep in mind, since nonlinear fiction is a very, very different way of storytelling, the methods of writing it are going to be different, too, so we might have a slightly different take on eye health than the norm. Remember, we deal with a medium of story telling that is best read digitally, so we stare hyperfocused at our computers if not more, then at least in different ways, as a standard writer of your basic, standard novel or saga.