astigmatism relief
I was a lifelong colleague of myopia ever since I was in 4th grade. I hated wearing glasses as they looked like sniping scopes and the sun would give me a tan line on my face the exact same shape of the glasses. So on the 9th grade I moved on to contact lenses. It had a great deal on improving my self-esteem and bla bla bla. Fast forward to 2024, I had the opportunity to undergo corrective surgery for free due to my wife's work healthcare plan and without thinking twice, I did all the exams and got my eyes laser'd.
One thing that I did not see coming was one of the possible consequences of PRK surgery; since the PRK flattens the surface of the cornea, it can aggravate astigmatism - something that I did not even know that I had. So then suddenly, those oppressing Mitsubishi Lancers that I frequently cross paths with on the highway would look like a Supernova happening right in front of my eyes.
So I had to adapt. One of the things that I had to let go was my beloved dark mode in absolutely everything. Bright letters in dark backgrounds usually glow like they have a constant CSS effect applied to them. That's why my blog looks like the way it does. That's how I see things! But moving on past the light themes that I had to embrace, I did found some interesting resources for people in the same situation.
Fonts
For fonts, I found out that the Inter font is one of the best for visibility in an OLED screen. It's just more readable than Helvetica and those other standards that we most commonly stumble upon. The Apple default font on the Macbook is also great and way better than those shipped with Windows and Mint (which is my current Linux distro). If Inter is not for you, then the ultimate one would be Atkinson Hyperlegible (c'mon bro, it has hyperlegible on its name). When it comes to monospaced, I found comfort in Recursive and I recommend the Nerd Font flavor if you want ligatures and nice looking arrows when you type ->.
Themes
Herman was clever with the theming chosen to the standard Bear dashboard. The "astigmatism problem" was solved years ago with the advent of the Solarized theme. But if don't want that Twilight-saga blue-ish color on your stuff, I'd recommend Catpuccin and Monokai. Going further, I'd recommend that you look for fonts that have a "paper-white" color instead of the default white. Dark fonts are known for relieving the amount of line going into your retina so don't get yourself flashbang'd with the #FFFFFF trap.
Glasses?
At last, the greatest tool in your inventory will be glasses. Look how fucking ironic this is; get a surgery to not wear glasses anymore and then fallback to them so you can have at least a chance of not running somebody over while driving at night. Life's a joke, right? But yes, glasses are the ultimate weapon, specially at night. Get a custom-made one after going through your favorite eye doctor and when buying lenses get the blue light filter. It will come in handy.
If you have more tips to dealing with this always-at-a-party eye feature, let me know in the guestbook.
Cheers!