Noulakaz

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

My favourite artists for the past 15 years

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I have been using Last.fm for the past 15 years (yes!) to track all the songs I listen to. Each time I play a track, whether it’s at home or on my phone, the track is added to my Last.fm profile. As you can easily imagine, after 15 years, Last.fm knows more about my music taste than most people in the world. So, without further ado, here is a list of what artists (and bands) I’ve listened to during the past decade and a half.

Rank Plays Artist
1 4,782 Depeche Mode
2 1,193 Avinash Meetoo
3 907 Madonna
4 906 Michael Jackson
5 696 Radiohead
6 660 Duran Duran
7 649 Erasure
8 522 The Beatles
9 512 Moby
10 487 U2
11 479 Daft Punk
12 456 Air
13 343 New Order
14 324 Björk
15 315 Kraftwerk
16 314 Aphex Twin
17 287 Jean-Michel Jarre
18 272 Indochine
19 263 A. R. Rahman
20 247 The Human League
21 232 Lana Del Rey
22 229 Pet Shop Boys
23 224 Etienne Daho
24 220 Massive Attack
25 219 Fischerspooner
26 210 Amy Winehouse
27 204 Boards of Canada
28 192 Coldplay
29 190 David Bowie
30 186 a-ha
31 186 OMD
32 186 The Cure
33 179 Lorde
34 178 David Guetta
35 171 Bob Marley
36 166 Röyksopp
37 165 Kaya
38 164 Dave Gahan
39 159 Portishead
40 156 Autechre
41 151 Kanye West
42 151 Pink Floyd
43 148 Atoms for Peace
44 147 Nine Inch Nails
45 146 The Knife
46 142 The Chemical Brothers
47 138 Django Django
48 137 Leftfield
49 132 Morcheeba
50 129 Nirvana

As you can see, I am a massive fan of Depeche Mode (and me!)

The rest is a mix of electronic music (e.g. Radiohead (yes, it’s electronic music to me!), Moby, Daft Punk, Air, Bjork, Kraftwerk, etc.), 80’s (e.g.  Duran Duran, Erasure, New Order, etc.) and classics (e.g. Madonna, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, U2, etc.)

I don’t like thinking of myself as eclectic. I’m more of a completist. I like collecting music. For me, music is a supreme art form and every kind of music is worth listening. I also sincerely believe that there is no bad music. Every single artist must love whatever he/she has done (or, else, that track would not have been released). It’s only that anyone of us has distinct taste and what I like (e.g. me!) is not necessarily your cup of tea. That’s fine.

My favourite characters from Orange Is the New Black

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Christina and I have just finished watching Orange Is the New Black. After seven seasons and 91 episodes, I have to say that OITNB is one of the best TV series we’ve ever seen. There are many reasons for that: it’s original, it goes deep into each character, paints a bleak picture of private prisons and is not afraid to criticize the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE).

There are hundred of cast members (it’s a prison after all) but, for me, there are a number of standouts. Here are my favourite characters:

Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren. As the show progresses, she becomes one of the most “sane” ones even though society believes that she is crazy. I wonder how many Suzannes exist in prisons at this moment. Loads I suppose.

Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett is dyslexic and, because of that, has had a life of decrepitude. At the end, she works hard and manages to pass her General Educational Development (GED) test which is generally taken by those, 17 years old and higher, who have not completed secondary school. Tiffany is yet another example (similar to Suzanne) of people who are just victims of the system. If she had been diagnosed with dyslexia when she was a kid, who knows what could have happened?

Joel Luschek is one of the prison guards and he is barely competent. Despite all his errors during the seven seasons, he manages to redeem himself at the end, just before getting fired. He drives a DMC DeLorean ’cause he’s stuck in early childhood. He’s not at all a bad guy but is so out of his depth in a prison that one can only imagine that his character has been inspired by some real prison guard, somewhere…

This is going to be controversial but I like both Linda Ferguson and Natalie “Fig” Figueroa. At the beginning, Fig is the bad one, while Linda is naive and gentle. As the seasons progress, Linda becomes the very mean one, not hesitating one second to sacrifice morality to increase the bottom line by a few percents. At the same time, Fig falls in love, get maternal instincts and decides that enough is enough. This shows that, in real life, people can change.

And, finally, Joe Caputo. Initially, he’s a bit creepy, then he becomes a great prison warden, then is taken hostage, then is fired, then becomes a sexual harasser, then a great teacher on prison reform and then, finally, seems to be heading towards having a normal life with Fig and that little girl:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=lvSrMLSC9BU

If you have not watched Orange Is the New Black yet, what are you waiting for? It’s on Netflix.

Be amazed: Markdown and LaTeX in an HTML document

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Create a new HTML file (e.g. maths.html) and put the following content in it:

<!DOCTYPE html><script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/texme@0.7.0"></script><textarea>

# Euler's Identity

In mathematics, **Euler's identity** is the equality
$$ e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0. $$

## Explanation

Euler's identity is a special case of Euler's formula from complex
analysis, which states that for any real number $ x $,
$$ e^{ix} = \cos x + i \sin x. $$

As you can see, only the first line is HTML and it basically loads a Javascript library called TeXMe and creates a textarea.

The remaining text is Markdown (which is a simple text-based markup). For example, in Markdown, # means header level 1, ## means level 2, ** means strong emphasis (aka bold).

The remaining text also contains LaTeX, more specifically mathematical formulas.

Open maths.html in Chrome and marvel at the results :-)