Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for April 2020

My first photo with my own DSLR… in 2011

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Nine years ago, we were all in the USA in San Francisco on vacation. I had ordered a new camera, a Canon EOS 60D DSLR, on Amazon and I had just received it. This is the first photo I took with it at 06:37:58 in the morning while everyone else was still sleeping. Nothing special of course, but still so beautiful compared to everything else I had captured before.

Nine years later, I have given the 60D to the kids and I’m using a second-hand Canon EOS 6D which, despite being launched in 2012, still has a hell of a sensor, especially for low-light photography.

This year, if everything is all right (COVID, etc.), I’ll probably upgrade my 6D to a brand new mirrorless Canon EOS R6 (which has not yet been announced but only rumoured). I’ll keep all my lenses of course.

Series (TV Shows) we watch on Netflix

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Here are the series (TV shows) that we have watched on Netflix since subscribing in 2016:

Series Episodes watched Stopped watching
House M.D. 177
Suits 61 Yes
Orange Is the New Black 52
Jane The Virgin 47 Yes
Money Heist 33
The Crown 30
Twin Peaks 30
The Blacklist 26
Stranger Things 25
Sense8 24
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt 23 Yes
That ’70s Show 14
The IT Crowd 12
Video Game High School 11 Yes
The Expanse 10 Yes
The Get Down 9
13 Reasons Why 8
Friends from College 8 Yes
Cuckoo 7
Alias Grace 6
Everything Sucks! 6
iZombie 5
Lucifer 5
Master of None 5 Yes
Black Mirror 4
Kim’s Convenience 4
Marvel’s Daredevil 4
On My Block 4
Brooklyn Nine-Nine 3
Friends 3
How I Met Your Mother 3
Star Trek 3
Yunus Emre 3
The Good Place 2
Unorthodox 2
Altered Carbon 1
Sherlock 1
South Park 1
The Flash 1

Mind you, we also use Plex to watch series and movies at home. So, dont’t take the episode counts too seriously. There are some series which we have watched a lot on Plex but not on Netflix.

The Focusrite 2i2 audio interface and its free plugins

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On 22 October 2013, I purchased a Focusrite 2i2 audio interface.

Seven years later, it is still working great and I use it mainly now to connect my Yamaha HS5 monitor speakers to my iMac using balanced connections. I rarely use it for recording.

One great thing about Focusrite is the set of plugins it comes with and its Plugin Collective programme. In essence (and I quote its website), this is what Plugin Collective offers: “When you register any Focusrite hardware you gain access to the most innovative music software brands on the market. Plug-in Collective keeps you up to date with the latest tools, offering you new free downloads every couple of months, along with generous discounts.”

Over the seven years, I have managed to get all of those for free:

  • Audiority Deleight
  • Audiority Distortion 1
  • AudioThing SR-88 (SoundMaster Memory Rhythm SR-88)
  • D16 Sigmund
  • Eventide EQuivocate
  • Focusrite and sonible Balancer
  • Focusrite Red 2
  • Focusrite Red 3
  • Focusrite Scarlett Compressor
  • Focusrite Scarlett Equaliser
  • Focusrite Scarlett Gate
  • Focusrite Scarlett Reverb
  • Mastering The Mix BASSROOM (for six months though)
  • Mastering The Mix IGNITE
  • Novation B-Station (Novation Bass Station)
  • Positive Grid BIAS AMP 2 LE
  • Softube Drawmer S73 Intelligent Master Processor
  • Softube Saturation Knob
  • Softube TSAR-1R Reverb
  • Softube Tube Delay
  • Sound Radix SurferEQ Boogie
  • Venomode DEEQ
  • Venomode MAXIMAL 2
  • Venomode PIVOT
  • and the quite excellent XLN Audio Addictive Keys

I also have a licence for Ableton Live Lite but I have not installed it because I now use the also quite excellent REAPER.