I've been doing this on and off for decades now, thanks to blepharitis and the associated gland dysfunction you mention. The fact that I stare at a screen all day certainly doesn't help and I've had to stop wearing contact lenses even though my prescription is quite strong and any sort of glasses screw up my peripheral vision.
The downside to the compress (other than the one you mentioned) is the simple fact that I can't always just nuke my little eye-pad thing and lean back for 10 minutes several times per day at work. Even when I'm able to do it a few times per day as my eye doctors have suggested, any relief is relatively short-lived and doesn't treat anything long-term.
It sucks because my eyes almost always feel irritated or dry and no manner of lubricating drops, antibiotic drops, or hot compresses have helped. I've tried a few less tested but ultimately harmless things like fish oil supplements (since they're cheap and effects seem to range from unnoticeable to possible systemic benefits in the long term).
My takeaway has been that there's really no "cure" for blepharitis or chronic inflammation and meibomian gland dysfunction. All you can really do is minimize the things that exacerbate it and deal with it.
I was diagnosed with blepharitis two years ago. Amusing (not really...) little story:
Usually, for me, it occurs in just one eye. I haven't had it for months, but I do religiously clean my eyes every day now. The last time it happened in both eyes, and I ended up on the floor holding my eyes in the most intense pain I've experienced in a while.
My partner took it upon herself to fry up some onions. She hadn't friend them for more than a year before. A minor screaming fit at her for being so incredibly stupid and ignorant for doing that (I couldn't even take my hands away from my eyes for a day after she did that) and I thought she'd never do it again.
23 hours.
She did it again, and claimed that it never occurred to her that it would hurt me again.
I feel mine started through squinting. My layman's theory is that this introduced tension to the muscles in the area, and around the glands, which inhibited them over a long period of time. It is much better now for me, but like you I can't follow the care instructions to the degree I should. I find a very gentle massage of that area after heat really helps, and I also try to relax the muscles around my eyes and being aware of them becoming tense whenever possible.
Like you say though, it seems to be something you manage rather than cure.
This sets the backlight brightness. I'm not sure what the units are, but it can go all the way to 0. If I shine a very bright light at the screen (like sunlight), it is readable at 0.
Seems like there could be a Kickstarter. I'd want a high resolution external eink display as a secondary monitor. The refresh rate would be hell, but it'd be okay for text work.
This is still pretty appealing - I could stand to put static or near-static text there. I'd probably want to add it to my current pair of monitors, though, instead of subbing one out.
I've been wanting something like this for ages. Even as a small-scale secondary monitor, it'd be great to toss static text like tickets or APIs onto an eink display.
Oh yes! At least Kobo readers are Linux and you can SSH in. You could even install another distro I believe. Some ugly hack could be rendering the display content on your machine and just sent the image over.
The downside to the compress (other than the one you mentioned) is the simple fact that I can't always just nuke my little eye-pad thing and lean back for 10 minutes several times per day at work. Even when I'm able to do it a few times per day as my eye doctors have suggested, any relief is relatively short-lived and doesn't treat anything long-term.
It sucks because my eyes almost always feel irritated or dry and no manner of lubricating drops, antibiotic drops, or hot compresses have helped. I've tried a few less tested but ultimately harmless things like fish oil supplements (since they're cheap and effects seem to range from unnoticeable to possible systemic benefits in the long term).
My takeaway has been that there's really no "cure" for blepharitis or chronic inflammation and meibomian gland dysfunction. All you can really do is minimize the things that exacerbate it and deal with it.