Place some small (1/2" diameter?) flourescent lights adjacent to the top, left, and right sides of a monitor, set back from the front about an inch. Attached to the extreme front corner, parallel to the screen and in between the user's eyes and these lights, would be flat, reflective (i.e. white) shielding. The effect would be a substantial amount of light being cast directly behind the monitor, with the user sitting in the shadow of the shields. Presumably, refraction from the wall behind the monitor would bounce enough light around the room to provide a comfortable level of light for reading or what have you, but without any glare.-- absterge, Feb 15 2001 Computer monitor light http://www.hammache...m/publish/66482.asplight to eliminate glare and help prevent eyestrain. [jtgd, Jun 04 2002, last modified Oct 17 2004] right. room lighting is great; that's the idea. In my experience, though, the lights are very poorly placed in relation to the screen, as though the placement of the computer were an accident or an afterthought. With a backlit screen, the more glare eliminated the better, and this doesn't detract from the light coming from the monitor (like a glare-screen *shudder* would do).-- absterge, Feb 15 2001 Why have all the fancy light fixtures? Why not just put an ordinary light directly behind your monitor, facing the wall, if that's what you want?-- egnor, Feb 15 2001 aw, egnor. Well, yeah, that's kinda what I do now, it's just kinda boring. I mean, they already make lighting kits for the inside of yer box.-- absterge, Feb 15 2001 Okay.-- egnor, Feb 16 2001 I'm with you up to the flourescent bit.... don't those things throw off significant EMF? You could shield your special montior, but wouldn't normals bulbs (or, since this _is_ halfbakery) white LED do the job better/cheaper?-- bear, Feb 16 2001 bear's got a point on that one: W have some flourescent tubes right behind our monitor (about 12" mean distance from the screen), and if they're on they cause the left side of the screen to vibrate in a slight, but very annoying manner.-- nick_n_uit, Feb 17 2001 hmm... ok, not sure about the flourescent bit. Personally, I find the warmth and reddishness of "normal" incandescent light to be off-putting. Now white LED would be REALLY neat!-- absterge, Feb 18 2001 You actually like the look of fluorescent light? I can't stand it; the lack of spectral completeness (especially combined with the typically large size of a fluorescent fixture) gives everything a flat, washed-out look. White LEDs will be even worse, spectrally...-- egnor, Feb 18 2001 LED's are <relatively> cheap, throw in a whole spectrum of them. You'd need the brightness of more than one anyway...
Flourescent lights do suck, unless you get the expensive 'daylight' ones <something like 15$ apiece here, as opposed to 1.50 for two of the normal ones>, and do wreak havoc with monitors in close proximity. <Here at work, we have lights under the upper cabinets that nobody ever turns on, because they're glare white. When customers come through to see the mushroom farm, we have to turn them all on <which is stupid anyway. Are they blind? Or do they just want a really good look at the dust bunnies beneath the monitors?> which makes my monitor flicker wildly...so they're treated to the sight of someone whose desk is covered in tigers of various sorts wearing sunglasses while squinting at the monitor...>-- StarChaser, Feb 18 2001 actually, egnor, yes, I do like the look of flourescent light. Call it an escapism thing. Sunlight is great. It reminds you that you are an infintesimally small bag of water atop the surface of a bigger, muddier ball of water with a direct line of sight to a small star, all of which is hurtling through an incomprehensibly vast space. Flourescent, OTOH, is just about as unnatural a light as you can get. It helps set the mood for doing things that are quite removed from visceral, savage survival and species propagation (i.e. programming, irc, e-loserness. heh.)-- absterge, Feb 18 2001 random, halfbakery