So, if you were in the lab Wednesday, you might’ve spotted me sporting some sweet, if odd-looking, new glasses. Glasses that had somewhat unnerving and stylistically-questionable yellow-tinted lenses. This is not bad fashion-sense on my part, I assure you, this is Gunnar Optiks! To make a long story short, these glasses are made to make things easier for people like me/us. AKA: People who spend a LOT of hours staring at a computer screen. Now, I’m a wimp. I’d never worked long, hard hours in front of a computer before. Like, I’ve obviously put in the time required to get a CS degree, but when I came in here for the first week of work, after 8 hours, my eyes HURT. So I got a pair of Gunnar Bit Surfers.

The ostentatious yellow lens tint is actually designed to cancel out some of the harmful spectra of light that computers emit, including the bright, bright white that we all usually have in the back of our ssh terminals, the one that had me wincing every day after my 6th hour.

The lenses are also ground to make close-range viewing easier, allowing your eye muscles to relax while still being able to read all the stuff that’s on your screen. If you don’t wear glasses normally, this causes your first hour of use to be a little disorienting. I have 20/10 vision, so the first hour I put on my glasses I definitely felt a little weird, but it’s now 5:20 PM and I’m feeling great. None of the soreness I normally experience after 7.5 hours of work. I even worked through lunch, and still haven’t felt the burn.

Just don’t use these for long-range viewing. They aren’t made for it. Other than that, this is both my first post and a glowing testimonial to Gunnar Optiks, who may very well be the reason I get to keep 20/10 vision despite 8 hours of SSH every day!