IT BURNS

[bloodyrosemccoy]

This year we tried to do something different with the Xmas lights, in an attempt to be enrivonmentally friendly and also not burn down the house. And it went pretty well--we found some nice crystally bubble lights, and everything was going well right up until we plugged 'em in. And even then, four-fifths of them were fine--but that last fifth was that frequency of LED-blue that is my ENEMY.

Now, I like blue. It's the color of a spring sky, or a pristine lake, or the love of my life, Doctor Henry "Beast" McCoy. But so help me, I HATE that LED blue. It's blurry and fuzzy and distracting, and maybe it's my glasses, but it also seems to refract differently, so it appears to float in front of the other lights like a completely unnecessary 3D effect. And it's not just obnoxious--it actually HURTS my eyes. Turn on LED blue and I react like Nazis opening the Ark of the Covenant. I put stickers over any of those lights that are on my own gadgets. They're an added stressor when driving at Christmas time. And by god, they are not getting on my Xmas tree.

Fortunately, while Mom'n'Dad don't share my murderous hatred, they don't want to put up an Xmas tree that I refuse to be in the room with. So, yeah, back to the old lights.

Comments

[mel-redcap.livejournal.com]

There's a particular shade of blue light that... well, it doesn't cause my migraines any more. I haven't had one for ages. But it used to, and it still feels like it should, and somehow it gives me a migraine aura without ever bringing on the spike-in-the-brain pain, and it stresses me.

It's also apparently the shade of blue light that won't show veins clearly enough for addicts to conveniently shoot up, or something, so it gets used in railway bathrooms (not often a problem, as I don't go to Sydney by rail very often anymore - though when I did, it was to visit my migraine specialist, which made running into the blue lights either Very Funny or Not Funny At All) and the lighting for the front seats in the local bus system (frequently a problem for me, and what the fuck, people, do addicts sit right up the front stabbing themselves with needles often?!).

*ahem* Long story short, I feel your pain, and those lights would leave my house very quickly too! :P

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd heard about the blue-light bathrooms somewhere.

I'm really glad it's not just me! It's a bit embarrassing to try to explain that the blue lights are exploding my head when other people don't seem to know what I'm talking about. Although their WTF response to me does explain to me why those darn things are so popular. Apparently they can't see the truth.

[mel-redcap.livejournal.com]

*blue light haters solidarity fistbump!*

[beccastareyes]

I always figured funny lights on buses was more so the driver wouldn't get night-blinded by the lights in the passenger section: our buses have weird red or magenta films over the lights. But I never heard of blue light being used like that, so...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

My b/f was just telling me about how much he hates those very same blue lights just a few days ago, how about that.

[dinogrrl.livejournal.com]

Blue LEDS are generally terrible for a lot of people to look at. Blue lights in general, actually. I'm actually okay with them, or can ignore the annoying aspects of them, in daylight (like, if they're accents on a storefront sign or something, but in dim light or at night they're horrid.

My dad had a VW Jetta for a while and the single worst part about the car was that everything on the dashboard glowed blue at night. You couldn't see anything on the dash because of that.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Wow. I personally love that blue color! It's so incredibly intense and *clean*. I might change my mind if it was in the house with me, perhaps.

Can you get some LED replacement bulbs and just swap out the blues for other colors?

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

I have a USB-plugin LED Christmas tree which cycles colours, and it's the green that makes my eyes try to stab me in the brain. Probably because it seems brighter due to rod/cone interaction. The cyan's not nice either.

[jennyanydots21.livejournal.com]

Driving at night recently, I've come across one particular car (or maybe a few similar cars) that has obnoxious blue headlights which get me right at the back of the skull, which is not ideal while driving. I'm actually fairly sure they're not street legal here as my Rules of the Road book specifies yellow or white front headlights, so I have no idea how they're still on the road!

Am generally okay with blue LED lights, and we do have some on our tree (although they're a fairly dark blue), but will keep that in mind in case we have visitors about.