Daily Cup of Tech

I have been noticing lately that my eyes feel like they are burning coals simmering inside my skull.  I’m sure the 18 hours a day behind a computer screen has something to do with it!  So, I started experimenting with some different tools and techniques to at least reduce, if not eliminate, the issue.

Change Your Work Area

Sometimes, the biggest problem is our work area.  Here are a few things that you can tweak in your work area to make your eyes happier:

• Set the screen at an angle that allows you to work without bending your neck
• Make sure there is as little glare on the screen as possible
• Increase the font size that you are using on the screen
• Make sure your work area is well lit
• Get a bigger screen
• Make sure the air is moist enough in your work area
• If using a laptop, use an external monitor, keyboard and mouse whenever possible
• Switch to a desktop, if possible, as they cause less eye strain than laptops
• Keep the screen dust free
• Do not put the computer in a position where the light behind the monitor or screen is brighter than the screen itself
• Turn on ClearType if your are using Windows
• Use an appropriate refresh rate.  Some refresh rates create “harmonic” waves with fluorescent lights.  Generally, the faster the refresh rate, the better
• Work in full screen mode

Give Your Eyes A Break

Here are some ideas for an “eye break”:

• Take a break every 20 minutes for 2-3 minutes
• Frequently look at something that is more than 20 feet away
• Blink!  It is amazing how often we forget to blink, especially when we are under stress, regardless of whether it is real (panicking while trying to get that crashed server back up) or created (you are so close to breaking your record on Ms. PacMan)
• Don’t use your computer for more than two hours at any sitting

Get Your Computer to Help

Here is some software that I have found which will help you to relieve eye strain and make you feel better:

F.lux

I distinctly remember once firing up my laptop on a road trip.  It was about 11 at night and we were in the middle of nowhere.  The sky was cloudy and there was no other traffic on the road.  As I flipped open my laptop in the back of the van, I felt like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark!  The screen was so bright it took nearly ten minutes for my vision to return.

Essentially, the brighter the surrounding light, the brighter and cooler your screen should.  So bright and cool at noon, darker and warm at midnight.

I found a great little program called F.lux that will do this automatically for you.  Based on the time of day and your physical location on the planet, it will slowly change the color and brightness of your monitor.  They even claim that it will help you to sleep better!

EyeDefender

When you are busy debugging that code or killing zombies, it is hard to remember to stop and give your eyes a break.  EyeDefender will gently remind you to put down the gun, give the zombies a breather, and let your eyes rest.  It can perform a number of actions including:

• Displays pictures in a predefined folder;
• Runs the visual training to relax the eyes;
• Runs a default screensaver;
• Displays a popup timed reminder in the system tray

Related articles:

• Prevent Eye Strain With Computer Breaks

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/02/27/protect-your-eyes-from-your-computer/trackback/

I recently received an e-mail from Sam J. with a question about flash drives:

Is their any way to record the user name of every person who has used your flash drive?

While there is no fool proof way of doing it, you could try a combination of autorun.inf files and batch file.

Create an autorun.inf file on the root of your flash drive with the following contents:

[autorun]
open=getusers.bat
action=Open folder to view files

Next, create a batch file called getusers.bat with the following contents:

@echo off
echo %username%>>users.txt

When a user puts your flash drive into their computer, it pop up with an autoplay option indicating that they are to click on the icon to open the folder to view files.  A small black box will pop up briefly and then disappear.  If you go into the root of the drive, you will find a new file called users.txt.  If you open this file, it wil contain the user names of all the users who have accessed your drive by clicking on the icon.

This is, of course, not a fool proof method as all someone has to do is bypass the autoplay feature and their name is not recorded or they can delete the users.txt file but this is at least a proof of concept.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/11/10/tracking-flash-drive-users/trackback/

Windows has had a search option for a very long time. The problem that I have with it is two-fold:

1. It is slow
2. The indexer is a real
3. resource hog

So, a long time ago, I learned how to index all of the files on my computer that provides me with accurate results in a fraction of the time. And, the index is completely portable so I can keep a copy of the index on my USB drive so that I can tell my wife exactly where that file is on my computer at home that I need at work.

How exactly is this done? Read on.

Create the Index

The index is really nothing more than a text file listing every single file that is on your computer’s hard drive. To create the index, simple go to a command prompt and type the following:

dir c:\ /s /b>>fileindex.txt

Wait for a couple of seconds and it will be done. If you want to add more hard drives to the index, simply retype the command and change the c: drive letter in the command to the other drive letter you want to index.

Search the Index

The next step is to search the file index for a file you are looking for. Let’s say you are looking for a file with the word “accounting” in it. You would use the following command to get a list of all the files with the work “accounting” in them:

find "accounting" fileindex.txt

You will instantly get the results. No waiting!

Updating the Index

Since it is so quick and easy to build the index, to update the index all you need to do is delete the fileindex.txt file and recreate the index just like you did earlier.

Suggestions

What you may want to do to simplify the process is create a couple of batch files to simplify the process. For example, you could create a batch file called MakeIndex.bat that would delete the fileindex.txt file and then rebuild it with information from all of your hard drives. This file may look something like this:

@echo off
del fileindex.txt
dir c:\ /s /b>>fileindex.txt
dir d:\ /s /b>>fileindex.txt

You could also create a file called WhereIs.bat that will find your files easier for you. It might look something like this:
@echo off
find %1 fileindex.txt

Now, all you would have to type is:

WhereIs "accounting"

This will give you the same results!

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/08/28/diy-file-index/trackback/

Sometimes, it can be difficult to visualize what is happening inside a computer and we need a bit of help from the real world in order to get the concepts clearly. Here is an absolutely brilliant way of visualizing how OR, AND and XOR gates work using dominoes.

I can’t imagine how long it took this guy to do this but I have to admit that I am impressed!

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/07/31/or-and-and-xor-logic-gateswith-dominoes/trackback/

With all of the fancy e-mail programs out there, it is really easy to forget that e-mail had some pretty humble beginning with a simple text interface. And, it is still possible to send e-mail this way.

Now, I’m not really certain as to why you would want to send e-mail this way other than you have no choice or you just want to do it (GEEK!) but here is the process, step by step.

For this tutorial, we will use an example. In this example, our mail server is called smtp.maildomain.com. My e-mail address is me@maildomain.com and I am sending an e-mail to my friend at geekreader@maildomain.com. I want to send him an e-mail with a subject of Telnet Mail and the message will be I am sending this e-mail with telnet. Whenever you see these in the code portion of this tutorial, please replace it with your appropriate information.

The entire conversation should look something like this:

Now, these are just the absolute basics for sending an e-mail. There are a lot of different options but this will at least get an e-mail out the door!

Now, if you are looking for some more fun with telnet, open up a telnet session to towel.blinkenlights.nl and see what Star Wars looks like in ASCII text!  (Yes, I know this has been around forever but I’ll bet that there is at least one reader who has not seen it!)

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/07/31/old-school-send-e-mail-with-telnet/trackback/