Ramblings of a programmer/person.
Software
Visual Studio Themes
Mar 28th
I’ve had Visual Studio ‘themed’ for quite some time now, but after recently setting up my new PC, Visual Studio and all, I only just realized how useful it is. It helps to have a dark background that is easier on your eyes so that you aren’t staring at a bright screen all day long. It is also nice to have numbers, operators, strings, etc. constrast more, especially in C++ where syntax highlighting by default is very basic.
Although I hate Ruby itself, I have always thought the syntax highlighting they use on their website is awesome. So, with the help of the Chrome (or WebKit) developer tools, I extracted the colors I needed and plugged them into Visual Studio. I ended up using the Lucida Console font because it looks nice and smooth from ClearType and differentiates characters well, such as O and 0. I have been extremely happy with the result, and if you have any interest you can download the .vssettings file here.
To use the theme, all you have to do is open Visual Studio, go to the Tools menu, click on Import and Export Settings, select the Import option and then follow the wizard.
If you search around, it’s apparent that a lot of people see the benefit of having a dark colored theme. Including Scott Hanselman who posted an article with several different themes people have created over the years. Many of these themes, including mine, are made for Visual Studio 2005. Fortunately for you, if you use Visual Studio 2008, Tomas Restrepo made an .xslt to convert the .vssettings file to be compatible.
If you’re still craving for themes and have the patience to fiddle with the settings, there is a nice set of themes for TextMate that would make great references. There is also a theme generator worth mentioning by Ryan and Joel Lanciax (brothers?), but I personally never could get desirable results.
Enjoy whatever you come up with! Just know you could spend hours and hours fiddling with different colors. 
Update: There is great site called kuler, which was made by Adobe for graphic designers to help create interesting color schemes.
f.lux – Be friendly to your eyes!
Mar 9th
For the past month or so, I have been trying out a piece of software that claims to improve your sleep. Yeah. It sounds crazy, and I almost didn’t try it. But, since a friend recommended it, I went ahead and gave it a go, and I’m glad I did. They call it f.lux, and it works by changing the color temperature (warm/cold) of your screen, rather than the brightness.
It turns out that natural light from the sun is very cold in color temperature, while indoor lights, besides most fluorescent lights, are very warm. Research has shown that these colder color temperatures negatively affect sleep patterns, and the computer screen is a major source of this kind of light.
Now, I will say it takes a bit of getting used to, and you might even want to turn it off at first. As night falls, the screen begins to “warm” in color and everything starts looking quite strange. Leave it on, though, and the benefits start to become apparent. It just feels much easier on your eyes.
Go on – give f.lux a go.
