| Welcome
to Frangles. A free, fun, bizarre & random mix of fractals, fiction, & philosophy. Frangles is still much under construction, so please check back now and then!
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| Important Warnings |
Please read this in full before reading Frangles material, no matter how young you are or how healthy your eyesight currently is. The most important weapon in safety maintainance is prevention. Please check back once for other warnings or helpful reading tips. This is the page for anything very important to note about Frangles. It is just a reading tip/warning page for now because currently there is nothing very important about Frangles. EPILEPSY / DIZZINESS / VERTIGO Looking at large fractals for extended periods of time may cause disorientation in a small percentage of people. If you are epileptic, prone to vertigo, get dizzy easily, or on medications that list dizziness as a side effect, you should use caution when exposing yourself to any fractal artwork, including the page backgrounds and desktop backgrounds of Frangles.com, especially if you have an extra large monitor. Eventually there will be a text option for every page, or a text-only version of the site. Until then, if you find the backgrounds make you dizzy, you can cut and paste the text into a regular text editor. If you just want to read the general info on the main page (about, updates, legal, etc), you should be able to do so without a problem. If the reading content itself gets you dizzy, keep in mind that's kiiiinda the whole point of fractal nonlinear fiction. If you find Frangles backgrounds make you dizzy, please let us know by taking a second to email the subject line "DIZZY" to   (If you want, you can include which background(s) affected you).PIGMENT DISPERSION SYNDROME One of our friters (Squish) has Pigment Dispersion Syndrome, which most often affects caucasion men in their mid-20s to 40s. If you're a white male in this age range, we recommended you have an eye exam every year or two and ask the doctor to look for it, as it has incredibly hindered Squish's ability to sit and write at a monitor (now he just bangs himself in the head in binary then uploads the file). One result of PDS is a difficult ability of the eye to adjust from bright to dark lighting and visa versa, which is a significant factor when reading off of a large light source. If you're in the danger group for PDS we recommend extremely even lighting conditions in the room (whether all dark or all bright), minimzation to UV sunlight, monitor glare, and small or difficult reading fonts; and frequent breaks. Proper foods, vitamins, and supplements (see the vitamin list below) can also help the ability of the eye to adjust to different lighting conditions. Squish finds the best conditions are sitting in an enclosed room or closet with zero sunlight, either dimly lit with a dimly lit monitor, or entirely dark with a black computer theme. GENERAL READING The following are some important tips for anyone who uses a monitor, especially when reading long passages. 1) Find fonts that are a comfortable size. You can adjust the text size on most browsers (ctrl-plus and ctrl-minus in Firefox and Chrome). Even if you think a font size is readable, you may not realize there's a more comfortable font. 2) Sit a proper distance from your monitor, about an arm's length away. 3) Have even lighting conditions in the room. 4) Control screen glare by minimizing light reflecting off your monitor (or at least, setting the monitor the same brightness as the room lighting). You can also buy an anti-glare screen or glasses, or wear sunglasses if you can still comfortably read the monitor with them on. 5) Turn on ClearType in XP! This makes your fonts much smoother and easier to read on the eyes. There's little reason not to, and you'll be surprised how much easier it is to read from your screen. Right click anywhere on the desktop and go to "Display Properties > Apperance > Effects > "Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts" > ClearType. 6) Set your Windows, Mac, OSXP, or other O/S theme (and monitor brightness) to compliment the room around you. In Windows you have a wide variety of theme options if you click "Windows classic style" (under the first drop down menu in the "Appearance" tap in "Display Properties" which you can get to by right-clicking the desktop), then choose a theme from "color scheme" in the box below. Particularly note the extremes "High Constrast White" and "High Contrast Black". We recommend the former for a room with bright, white light, and the latter in a very dim or totally dark room. [Squish finds solid, even colors across the screen help his PDS. To create a very even theme, you can adjust a theme's settings under "advanced". To make a good light theme, start from the "High Contrast White", go to Advanced, then click on the "OK" button above and select a light color, and click in the box that says "Window text" and change that to the same color. To create a dark theme, do the same, except start with "High Constrast Black".] 7) Get the proper vitamins and minerals in your diet or take supplements. Particularly, Vitamins A, C, E, zinc, antioxidants, bilberry extract, and lutein, are all good for eye health. Via foods, eat green leafy vegetables (kale, spinach), carrot juice (or lots of carrots), bilberries, blueberries, processed food products that list high amounts of the vitamins above, and plenty of skunk liver. With vitamin A and other fat-soluble vitamins, make sure to consume a proper amount of fat with them, and a good amount of vitamin C and E as well (Our friter with PDS found he was very hungry for pinapple, blueberry yogurt, and coffee ice cream when taking extra vitamin A, but he could have just been pregnant.) Be sure to take in the proper amount of the above foods and vitamins for you, which may be different for each individual. 8) Note that reading the text in front of the colorful Frangles backgrounds will be a bit harsher on the eyes than against an even background. If you find the backgrounds make you dizzy at all, try copying and pasting the text of a page to a simple editing program (like Notepad, Word, or Wordpad in Windows). |