Today, Jeff Atwood posted the Fonts and Colors settings file for his Visual Studio color scheme, and I have to say, I love it!  After seeing one of his older posts with a screenshot of his IDE, I'd started mimicking some of it, mostly the color of the line counter, background color, and selected text color.

One of the biggest improvements is simply the background color.  Dropping it from full on white (255/255/255) to a slightly lighter shade (248/248/248) makes a world of difference.  The harsh contrast takes away so much.  The more subdued colors make it easier to look at and far less straining on the eyes.

I've learned the hard way how not fun it is to over strain your eyes.  A couple of years ago, was working in a poorly lit office, staring at a monolithic CRT monitor for hours a day, and it jacked me up.  I had to stay completely off the computer for nearly 2-3 days.  If I looked at a monitor, even just for 15 minutes, I'd get a raging headache right behind my eyes.  Was very light sensitive, motion sensitive, and could not focus well (ie, reading even averaged size print).  No real permanent damage, and I'm sure others have had worse, but certainly not something I want to repeat.  Hence why I use LCDs now, have better lighting in my home office, take breaks about every hour or two, and love Jeff's color scheme.