Slayers & Monitor

On July 2, the Slayers anime series (one of my first, and a permanent fixture in my top ten list of anime) began its fourth season with Slayers Revolution, after more than ten years in hiatus. The original vocal cast returns, including the inestimable Megumi Hayashibara as the protagonist Lina Inverse, and while the animation style remains true to the series that came before, the quality has clearly been updated for 21st century standards.


It couldn't have come at a better time. The anime series that comprise my active watch list nowadays don't seem to satiate in the way they used to. The last great series I can recall was Fullmetal Alchemist, which was nearly three years ago; the others that have sprouted up to claim its place have lacked the depth of plot and character necessary to achieve a sufficient level of catharsis, and some popular series appear to garner their popularity even while troding upon the most time-honored principles of good storytelling. (I think of the absolute lack of peril to the godlike protagonist of Heroic Age as a prime example. No crisis, no interest, no story.)

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Some readers may feel like paraphrasing C-3PO from Return of the Jedi, shortly after viewing this post: "I'm afraid Tensai's gone and done something rather rash."


Yes, I switched the layout of the desk since the last time I photographed it, but that wasn't the rash part.


The new Gateway FHD 2400 24" LCD monitor is. It's a widescreen, but I bought it for use in portrait aspect. Here's why:


It helps with web browsing, but when viewing documents in Word, the entire margin-to-margin page fits easily within the screen, and a single tap of the page down button actually does what it says--cycles down to show the next page, in entirety. Best of all, after an update to my Vaio's graphics chipset (and a little cursing, fist shaking, and configuring), I managed to increase the output resolution from 900x1440 to 1050x1680.

It was a bit more than I meant to spend, but freeing myself from the eyestrain of the previous 15" monitor was worth it.