Computer eye strain sufferers: Try "Eyezen" glasses

First off: I'm not an eye doctor; I'm just a guy who spends a lot of time in front of a computer! Double-check anything I'm telling you here with your optometrist or ophthalmologist before you do anything else with this information.

Secondly: This isn't a paid post; I'm not receiving any kind of compensation from it. I'm just a fan!

The last several years, I had been suffering from moderately severe eye strain while working in front of my computer all day. Even though I have a nice setup where my monitors are set up a a little over two feet away from me, after  working for a solid hour two, my eyes would kind of "cramp up," feeling fatigued. I'd need to either close them for a couple of minutes, or at least spend time intentionally looking at a wall or object a longer distance away (e.g. across the room), in order to let my eyes recover enough to resume looking at my monitors and continue working.

At my most recent optometrist visit several months ago, my optometrist -- shout out to Dr. Staci E.! -- prescribed "Eyezen" glasses. The glasses that I got are designed specifically for "near-distance" vision: Things that I look at far away through them are somewhat blurry; but the glasses produce really excellent clarity when looking at my two-feet-away computer monitors!

These glasses have made a very positive difference in my day-to-day job. When I sit down at my computer, I swap out my "everyday wear" glasses for the Eyezen glasses, which I just keep at my desk. Wearing the Eyezen glasses while working, my eye strain symptoms have mostly disappeared! I no longer get eye "cramps" or fatigue that forces me to stop working to "un-strain" my eyes on a frequent basis. 

When I get up from my desk, I swap my Eyezen "computer glasses" (as I think of them) back out for my daily wear glasses. This is obviously an extra step, but I haven't found it to be at all onerous. The cost has definitely been worth the benefit.

As I hadn't previously even been aware of the existence of specialized "near-distance vision" glasses, or Eyezen glasses, I figured I'd share my experience to spread the knowledge! My new glasses have really helped me; if you suffer from eye strain while working on a computer all day, consider asking your eye doctor if they might be a good option for you, too.

Vigil RPG 3.0 is now available!

Vigil RPG, my classic-style turn-based role-playing game for iPhone, has been updated to a new major version, 3.0! 

For the first time in 10 years on the App Store: Vigil RPG is now free to download! Vigil RPG has always been a "premium" title, where paying once got you the full game, with no ads, premium currencies, stamina timers, or other such impediments. Vigil RPG still has none of that, but now you can download Vigil RPG from the App Store and play the first portion of the game for free! After that, the game offers a single, one-time in-app purchase, which permanently unlocks the full game for you across all of your devices.

(And of course -- as is only right!-- I added code such that everyone who bought Vigil RPG prior to this v3.0.0 update will continue to have access to the full game (including the other major updates in the new version) without needing to buy the IAP.)

The other major feature in the Vigil RPG 3.0 update is Honor Mode! Inspired by a certain awesome hit 2023 AAA RPG -- (okay, fine, I'll just come right out and say that it's obviously Baldur's Gate 3) -- players considering themselves Vigil RPG veterans (or just hungry for maximum challenge right out of the gate?) can now optionally take on this challenging new difficulty. It features enhanced boss enemies with new move sets, and like Hardcore mode in the Diablo series before it, PERMADEATH upon defeat!

You can see all of this for yourself via a free download of Vigil RPG on the App Store.

Need an expert opinion first? Read a review of Vigil RPG at TouchArcade.com.

Learn more about Vigil RPG on the Vigil RPG website.

The Jon Schneider Game of the Year awards: 2023

 

Starting with my favorite video game that I played for the first time this year, and continuing on with the rest of the top 10, these were my personal top games of 2023 (along with the platform(s) on which I played them)!

1. Baldur’s Gate 3 (Windows / Mac)

There are so many facets to this game that, on their own, are exceedingly well done, and joined together, make for an incredible game. The adaptation of D&D 5E combat and mechanics. The overall story. The individual party members, and their stories. The smart way in which the game’s world and characters realistically respond to your actions. It speaks to BG3’s quality that it is the first long-form game in a very long time that I played through from start to finish -- and then immediately made a new character and started a second play-through.

2. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

It ALSO speaks to Baldur’s Gate 3's quality that when I played Tears of the Kingdom earlier in 2023, I felt that it was the best game I’d played in several years, and a lock for game of the year! A more-than-worthy sequel to Breath of the Wild (my personal 2017 Game of the Year). Hyrule is once again super fun to explore -- this time with the additions of caves, the sky, the underground, and more things to do. The construction system managed to successfully achieve making me feel like “I’m not just a fantasy warrior, I'm a fantasy warrior engineer!”

3. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Switch)

In my opinion, the best new 2D Super Mario game in 32 years(!!) (Super Mario World, SNES, 1991). The combination of more traditional-style Mario 2D gameplay with the “wonder” sequences in the various levels made for a great combined experience. The pseudo-multiplayer real-time “ghosts” of other players that you can see -- and to a limited extent, interact with, but very importantly, not in any toxic way -- was also a neat (optional) addition which I ended up being quite glad that I had decided to leave enabled.

4. Cobalt Core (Steam Deck / Windows)

This recently-released, spaceship-battle-themed roguelike deckbuilder came out of nowhere for me to claim this high spot on my crowded GOTY list this year. It adds to the traditional Slay-the-Spire-like ability to block incoming damage an ability to move laterally to dodge incoming fire (or to take it on more-armored parts of your ship). Battles are quick and punchy. Even though Cobalt Core is mostly not mechanically similar to FTL, it did give me some of the smartly-designed vibes of that game.

5. Infernax (Steam Deck)

A solid, 8-bit-style platforming action game in the tradition of Castlevania 2 (NES). The tight gameplay and fun progression were enough to keep me engaged straight through from start to credits.

6. Dave the Diver (Steam Deck)

A scuba-speargun-fishing main game mashed together with restaurant management sections, complete with a perfect-beer-pouring minigame? Why does this work so well? Once again, it's because all of the individual pieces are so solid! The charming character design and pixel art certainly don’t hurt, either. The first game in this year’s list that I haven’t actually finished yet: I played mostly in Early Access, decided to set it aside until the full 1.0 release -- and haven’t picked it back up quite yet due to the strength of all of the other new games on offer this year.

7. Octopath Traveler 2 (Switch)

This year’s turn-based JRPG comfort food. An interesting battle system, combined with a story that was decent enough to keep me playing straight through to the end -- albeit for only some of the characters, not all 8. As with the first series entry, my wish would be for better interaction between the 8 protagonist characters.

8. Outer Wilds (Steam Deck)

After having this game on my to-play for a few years, I finally had a good way to play it when I acquired a Steam Deck in the early part of 2023. As I had heard about Outer Wilds prior to playing, this is a game worth playing without being spoiled on what it is all about! I will say to give it a try if a first-person, solo exploration game where you board and fly your own spaceship (while still in the first-person perspective) and explore a small solar system sounds appealing. I did admittedly eventually get stuck on how to progress further (and didn’t want to consult a guide) -- but not until after quite a few hours of really interesting exploration and discovery.

9. Tunic (Steam Deck)

For me, Tunic created a vibe of being a kid back in the pre-Internet days, and having a new Nintendo cartridge to play -- but there's no real in-game help, and the instruction booklet that came with the cartridge (which in Tunic's case is discoverable in pieces within the game itself) is mostly in Japanese (a language I can't read) -- but the booklet's bits of English text, plus illustrations, allow for puzzling out the less obvious parts of game's mechanics and objectives. Add that to some overhead-view Zelda-like combat -- except tricky, with some Souls-like aspects -- and Tunic ends up being pretty cool and unique experience.

10. Alina of the Arena (Mac / Windows)

A last-minute list addition! Another roguelike deckbuilder hybrid -- this time with Into-The-Breach-like tactical positioning, with a solo character you control facing off with one or more enemies on a small hex grid.

Honorable Mentions

A few of the other games I played which were good, but didn’t make this year’s Top 10, in approximate descending order of where they would have appeared on the list, had there been room: Retro Bowl College (iPhone), Diablo 4 (Windows), Pinball FX (Windows), 30XX (Steam Deck), Tinykin (Steam Deck).

How to fix timestamps on Mac Photos exported files

This is a "Remind my future self how to do this, but hopefully it'll be helpful for the rest of y'all too" post!

To change the timestamps on files exported from the Mac's Photos app to match the dates that the photos and/or videos were actually taken:

1. Install exiftool if it isn't already installed:

brew install exiftool

2. One a a time, run these two commands from the terminal, from the directory where the files are located:

for file in *.jpeg; do touch -t "$(exiftool -p '$CreateDate' -d '%Y%m%d%H%M' "$file")" "$file"; done

for file in *.mov; do touch -t "$(exiftool -p '$CreationDate' -d '%Y%m%d%H%M' "$file")" "$file"; done

When those are done, each file's timestamp should match the actual date that the photo or video was taken.

Any The ExtractEmbedded option may find more tags in the media data warnings can be ignored.

Background

When copying photos and/or videos from an iPhone to a Mac, the copied photos don't end up as individual files in the Mac's filesystem. Instead, they become part of the "Photos Library" on the Mac, in which all photos and movies are stored in a single "blob" file.

Fortunately -- for the purpose of copying and/or backing up photos elsewhere, on non-Apple computers or cloud storage -- the Mac's Photos app provides a capability to "export" photos and videos from the library as individual files. (This is accessed via File menu > Export.)

Two export options are provided: "Unmodified Originals" (which tend to have large file sizes); or as JPG, TIFF, or PNG files (for photos), and .mov files for videos (which produces smaller file sizes).

Unfortunately, the exported photo and image files have a timestamp (shown as "Date Modified" in Finder) of the time the export was performed -- not the time that each individual photo or video was actually taken.

For me, having the date shown for each file in Finder match the date that the photo/video was originally taken is a lot more useful. Hence, the procedure described earlier in this post to make that change.

"CreateDate" versus "CreationDate"

You may have noticed that in the two terminal commands above, the former uses the EXIF tag "CreateDate", and the latter, "CreationDate".

For some reason -- for photos and videos exported using the Photos app on macOS Ventura 13.4, and originally taken on an iPhone running iOS 16.5 -- exported .jpeg and .mov files, respectively, have inconsistent sets of EXIF tags.

The EXIF tags on a paritcular file can be inspected using exiftool via a terminal command like:

exiftool -s my_photo.jpeg

For my exported .jpeg files, this produces output like (with irrelevant tags excluded):

CreateDate: 2023:07:04 09:51:12

There's no "CreationDate" tag present.

For my exported .mov files,  the output is like:

CreateDate: 2023:07:22 14:04:56
CreationDate: 2023:07:04 13:39:20+02:00

So both CreateDate and CreationDate values are present; however, here, "CreateDate" is the timestamp of the Mac Photos app export, and CreationDate is the actual time the video was recorded.

I'm sure there are excellent reasons behind this seemingly-inconsistent state of affairs; I am not aware of what those might be. 😅 In any event, it was easy enough, one I investigated and figured out what was going on, to split the exiftool command into two separate parts, for the EXIF tags that are actually present and correct in the .jpeg and .mov files, respectively.

Credit for the original exiftool command that I adapted here goes to Daniel Schofield on the Ask Different Stack Exchange site.

Recommended for international travel in Switzerland: "Traverlers Wifi"

(Note: I have no affiliation with "Travelers Wifi," nor is this a paid post. I'm just a fan!)

My family and I were fortunate enough to be able to spent the past sixteen days traveling abroad in Switzerland. To cover us while there, our current cell provider, AT&T, wanted US $10 per person per day. For just one person, that of course would work out to $160; for the four of us with cell phones, we'd have gotten hit for $640. Eek!

My wife Melissa, an excellent hobbyist travel planner, researched, and landed on Travelers Wifi as the solution. It's a cell-phone-sized device that provides cellular connectivity in Switzerland (specifically that one country), and allows up to 5 client devices at a time to connect via Wi-Fi to access the Internet.

The device cost €5.90 (a little over US $6) per day. Quite the cost savings over the up-to-$40-daily that we would have been spending!

Bottom line: It worked great! 

The device connected with no issues and had good Internet speeds everywhere we went (Zurich, Lucerne, Lauterbrunnen and the Berner Oberland region, Vevey and environs, and Geneva). 

Our device was good for about eight hours of battery life on a full (overnight) charge. That's not quite a full day of adventures, but it was not to worry: We had come prepared with a few external battery packs with USB-A outputs; connecting one of those to the Travelers Wifi device was more than enough to get it through an entire day. I'd recommend being similarly prepared to back up the Travelers Wifi device with an external battery.

Pick-up of the device in Zurich was trivial; Travelers Wifi has a dedicated storefront in the Zurich airport in the public (outside of security) area, and they were able to look up our online reservation (made in advance, prior to our trip) and hand over the device with no issues.

Return of the device was similarly easy; although the Geneva airport (from which we were departing) has no Travelers Wifi storefront, it does have several of the yellow "Die Post" mailboxes. The Travelers Wifi comes with a "self-addressed stamped envelope"; we just put the device and it's included cable and wall charger into that envelope, and dropped the resultant thin package into a mailbox at the airport.

I'm happy to be able to cheerfully recommend Travelers Wifi to anyone traveling abroad in Switzerland!