Shades: Darken your screen's brightness more than Apple's built-in ability

I am that guy. You come up to my computer, squint, and say, "How do you see with it so dark?" I don't know what it is, but my eyes are easily irritated by bright computer screens. I almost invariably have the screen set to the minimal brightness that Apple will allow, but I've found that over my last few laptops the minimal brightness has gotten brighter with each new purchase.

That's why I was so glad to come across Shades (via Surfbits). Implemented as a preference pane, Shades does a simple but very effective job of making your screen darker. Apple's brightness control buttons allow 17 different levels of brightness (16 represented by the bars in the bevel and then one more for effectively off), but the jump from the dimmest screen to off is big. You might imagine that Apple's 16 visible levels cover from 16 to 32 on some kind of brightness measurement. Shades, via either a menu bar item, a floating bevel controller, or the control panel, let's you slide that range down so the levels controlled by brightness keys might be from 1 to 17, 8 to 24, etc. In other words, you can still use the Apple brightness control buttons to dim and brighten the screen, but the darkest dark and the brightest bright will both be darker.

Simple, well-implemented, effective, and with all the options you'd need, I wholeheartedly recommend this program to any of you out there who can't stand bright screens.