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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "florencisalesas" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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10:07 pm
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People wandering by the streets of my town (video)
Anonymous people wandering by the streets of Sitges, few time before shops close, at about seven or eight o'clock in the afternoon.
You can see lot of tourists already, people coming from Italy, France, Germany, England and other parts of Europe. You can see lot of South American families too, a bit of Africans and some classic people from Sitges of all live as well: the blind lottery seller, the old man at the penultimate scene who was my typing professor, amogst others.
I was looking for another kind of music but finally I did with almost the perfect one: the soundtrack of I Vitelloni composed by Nino Rota. This Fellini's classic, for those who don't know it, describes how they live a group of thirty years old guys who survive without to make any job, in a little Italian town at the early fifties. The point of the situation is that the guys enjoy a lot their life all they want, while their parents pay for their night parties.
Well, the joy of Spring.
I hope all you have a good May.
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08:50 am
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A Bear Called Paddington & Man of Everest
 
A Bear Called Paddington is the first book of a collection of stories for children written by Michael Bond. I never heard about this little curious bear because here we hadn't this so extremely British books when I was a kid. The truth is that I am suspicious that we still don't have them translated even now. This book was published in 1958 for the first time.
I just started some few pages from the it and I have to say you I find it delicious. For me the English language used in it has the warm perfume of old set phrases that talk a lot about an era that seems to have disappeared for ever. Even this nostalgic side, the book is really funny and I laughed like an idiot until now. I have to continue to know what it will happen with this little Peruvian bear, even I am sure lot of you must know a lot of this nice guy already. For me it is a nice novelty and I am happy for this discovery:)
Man of Everest is a book written by James Ramsey Ullman after a long interview with Tensing Norgay, the first guy who reached the top of the Everest together with Sir Edmund Hillary. This book was published in 1955 for the first time. This exemplar is a very rare one: it is from the first edition, in English, and it was given by an English guy called H.R. Ridgway to my father, few before he died, in the early eighties.Mr. Ullman presents the book as a sort of autobiography of Mr. Tensing, but it seems he embellished the words of the Asian hero a little bit. Anyway it is a great human portrait. The truth is that, even to admire the beauty of high mountains and the effort of those who climb them, I never felt particularly attracted by the climbing too much, for don't say nothing. However this, lately I achieved some information about the two men who reached the Chomolungma (the mount Everest in Sherpa) for the first time, a Kiwi and a Sherpa, two very special kind of guys each one of them, by reading the first autobiography written by Mr. Hillary and another about the expedition made by a journalist.
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10:30 am
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Sea, waves and a bit more of relaxing videos
Two videos more I shoot in Sitges. Now, some bits of sea.
The First one were shoot past Summer (you can see ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) graeco_celtin one of the scenes :D) and the music is from Satie.
Second one has the Goldbeg variations of J.S.Bach (I ask sorry to lolanoonebecause they aren't the Gould versions, but I sure I thouhgt in it) at the background.
I hope you enjoy them :)
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10:22 am
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Clouds, Wind. Two short movies shoot in Sitges
In times of social tension (have it existed some era without ?) it is nice to get up our heads and look to the sky. My problem is that I do it too often maybe. It isn't not only an excess for the daily life but dangerous when I am walking by the street (I have to remember there are trees and lights along the street, and there are other ways to realize they exist instead kick them with my distracted head) Well, I think it might be good to get a balance, as all in this life.
Anyway, I made these two movies about the sky in Sitges. Nothing special: just the sky, clouds, wind, some bird, some plane; you know, all those things we have above our heads. All them are made in black and white. Why? nostalgia? looking for another side of things? idealisation? Idon't know. There is nothing original in it but I liked to do it in this way, hum!
The first one was the most simple and fast to shoot. I was doing other things while the camera was on for about half hour, shooting the sky from the window which looks to the interior patio of our building in Sitges. I put all that half hour into two minutes, forty seconds. The second is the cloudy sky of Sitges, shoot in several scenes, following the same technique but with now with some edition. To both pictures, I added some J.S.Bach music. It could be something quite arty if that kind of things weren't made about a million times before, since Lumière brothers era. But I enjoyed while I was making them :)
Have all a nice Tuesday.
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05:15 am
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Darrera versió després de l'ajut d'en Francesco Luti (it's an internal entry)
Sorry peope. I used this lj post for helping some friends in this blog http://elquaderngris.cat/blog/ , about Josep Pla's El Quadern Gris.
Thank you for your patience.
Aquesta sembla ser, de moment, la traducció definitiva, amb l'ajut del nostre amic "Santboià de Londres" i els afegitons del poeta i traductor italià Francesco Luti, que tinc la sort de conèixer. A sota he posat les notes que ell mateix em va enviar ahir a la nit (gràcies Francesco!) i, tot i el seu nivell -l'home és doctorat en una pila de coses i, sense anar més lluny, el divendres que ve llegirà textos de Dant en Florentí original- no sap que coi vol dir la punyetera "capresti"!!!
Aquí va la cosa tal com està ara:
La meva alegria és la malenconia,
i el meu repòs són aquestes angoixes:
Qui cerca la malaurança, Déu la hi doni.
Qui em veiés a la festa dels Reis Mags
seria bo; i més, si la meva llar
es veiés aquí, enmig de tan rics palaus.
Flama d’amor al cor no m’ha romàs;
si el gran sofriment foragita sempre al menor,
esplomada i en calma tinc les ales de la meva ànima
Tinc un borinot atrapat en un gerro,
dins un sac de cuir, ossos i (capresti? encara!!),
tres ruscs de brea dins una poncella. Molte grazzie per le correzione, Francesco! J Florenci Instruccions d'en Francesco Luti:
verso 8: se'l maggior(se refiere al 'sofriment') caccia(scacciare/ahuyentar/ ahuyenta) sempre il minor duolo verso 9: tarpata es el participio de 'tarpare' (cortar la punta a las alas de los pajaros para impedirles de volar, debe haber un verbo correspondiente en català) verso 9: penne (ahora es claro que son 'plumas' de pàjaros); l'ànima rasa (significa 'lisa') verso 10: calabrone (en castellano es 'moscardòn) verso 11: capresti (no aparece en diccionarios: muy dificil, deberìamos encontrar la traducciòn de las rimas al castellano y verificar...)
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07:50 am
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Phantom cars
Blurred vision from the past.
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08:06 pm
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Nervous people who get some relax and relaxed people who become excited
Nervous versus relaxed people (I have to admit I am in the first group):
Nervous people who get some relax at their nerves, taking some minutes to think ,and sedated people who lose, from time to time, their temper, have my admiration. In any case, to fight against our own nature is something to admire, as I see. In addition, it is nice to see how people become unpredictable, for a change.
The unpredictable weather watched from the sky... waiting for being predicted.
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10:53 am
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The Buster Keaton's biography for kids have been finally published in Spain and Latin America! :)
Well, the Buster Keaton’s biography for children between 9 and 13 years old I wrote has been published at last. WeeEEEEeee!!! :P
Here you have some photos I took from the cover, some pages and the rear side. Have a nice day!
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05:27 am
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Lately I have been very busy
I have some news to give. I couldn't be here too much lately.
I miss to comment all you. But now I'll have a bit more time (just I can organize it a bit better, that's all :)
Have a very good day/night all!
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05:34 pm
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A Terrible True Story of Horror and Social Hypocrisy
Enriqueta Martí, better known as The Vampire of Barcelona, in 1912
Behind the insipid name of Enriqueta Martí i Ripollés, is hidden the lady who in 1912 was sadly and famous better known with the truculent nickname of the Vampire of Barcelona. She starred one of the most atrocious stories of terror and social hypocrisy lived in Barcelona, and maybe in all Europe, in the early 20th century. This woman was a terrible children serial killer but – and this is the main difference with the other ones – she never did it by any kind of mental disease but because it was her business, providing with it, some of the most disgusting and perverted inner needs of the high society ladies and gentlemen of the Barcelona of that era.
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05:02 am
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Ten things I like that start with the letter D
Because the nice ladycelia asked me for:
Decadence - The natural state of my country from it has more than 500 years (since we had an incredibly idiot king who started a constant crises, while marrying a bitchy Queen of another country, created a third one which has been an stupid jail for some few others). Decadence is the natural state of Europe as well, from it has a bit more than one century ago. To live in a place which is falling in pieces, like this continent is now, is the only way to live in this world for a person like me. It is a nice way to pay for the sins of our parents - and our own ones - even it could be nicer if our youth used a bit less ignorant way to suicide itself. OK, European decadence isn't ever so glamorous in all places like in Venice, but I think I couldn't resist to live in a place full of opportunities for future : How we could to complain and die slowly of those nostalgia and melancholy I love so?
Denmark - my favourite country starting with this letter. It is another decadent country (this is an independent one, at least) it means for me a certain stupid ideal of a certain dreamed Europe I have in my uncertain head. All it is even more uncertain if we face the ever shocking reality. You know, just in this I fall here into the topic of the Mediterranean guy who likes to daydream in a sort of Shangri-lah placed in the Nordic Europe, when the people has more culture, etc. The reality says that all those countries are full of their own ignorant people who come to our home to wear Mexican sombreros (dear friends, Mexico is 10,000 km at the other side of the Ocean and even there nobodody wears sombreros now), drink beer (why the North European guys - I admire so for so lot of other things - have a so bad alcohol culture?) and piss in our monuments. *sigh*
Dreyer, Carl Theodor - (Denmark again, 1889- 1968) one of my favourite filmmakers. From the silent times until the sixties, his cinema represents for me a getaway to a world of silence and austerity, I feel at home, when I want to be as if I was a monk in a monastery.
Desert - with the two frozen poles, my favourite natural landscape in the Earth. Are there something more beautiful and inspiring that to see that the ever changing dunes of the Sahara Desert ? (my favourite of favourite ones) It is like to have the clouds (my other favourite natural thing in this world) spread by the ground, the serenity and all that stuff. A quite scary and disturbing thing as well, indeed.
Dynamo - How I could avoid a so cool word? I love it, specially written in Russian Cyrillic characters (OOooOOooOOooh, visual orgasm :P)
Daydreaming - The normal constant state of my mind.
Die Roboter - Made and recorded (the first time they did it) by the German group Kraftwerk in 1978, it is still being for me the best few minutes of music I think I have heard in all my life - and for me one of the peaks of the history of the human intelligence - and I am still loving each time I put it on the CD, vinyl or whichever player. I ever feel like a son of bitch, without to feel guilty for it. It is one of the coolest sensations, after a day you feel like the shit you are: you are a robot, a piece more of this world, an alienated and manipulated by the society piece of shit - as so other million people as well - but you are sexy just for being it, yeah! :P
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love and Stop the Bomb - Shoot by Stanley Kubrick and played by Peter Sellers in 1963, it is maybe the nicest story of love I found looking at the letter D.
Death - That interesting thing which ever happens to other people except you and it is so cool, thinking in abstract (Ingmar Bergman's Seven Seal and stuff like that, for example) but so horrible if I think in what happens really. It's a nice contradiction I have inside my brain, I guess.
Dialogue - One of the nicest inventions of humanity and one of the most rares to enjoy.
If you wish to play, leave me a note and I'll leave you a letter.
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06:50 am
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The sound of the sparrows in the early morning
It is so early that even we don't have the pleasure to feel the warm of the sun rays. Anyway, we can hear the random sound of the sparrows - or I have no idea which other kind of birds - fluttering outside of the house. Some of these voices sound very close, so as if we could separate each syllable they say – if we could understand what they say - as we do when we have a conversation through the telephone line. Some others sound like a mess, a mash mass gently distorted by a reverberation, as if they were a whole gigantic being moaning inside of a Cathedral.
After the nightmare I had, all those mixed sounds are creating a relaxing and anguishing ambient, both at once.
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05:51 pm
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Politics, Convictions, Principles and all that stuff
I am tired of the Spanish ellections but I become addicted about as well. As much I read and hear all about each party say, more hypnotized I feel.
Something I realize is that NEVER none of the politicians says to his adversary "yes, I agree with this you say". For me this is very weird, because it is the kind of things that happens to me a lot of times. And, the same I am sure it must happen to nearly everybody. For me it is so difficult to find somebody else - I am talking in general, not only politicians - I agree with everything, so as to find somebody else I totally disagree in anything, ever and ever. It is just mathematically impossible. There are ever some argument I have to say "Oh, Mister X, just in this I agree with you", or "Look, I normally admire your points of view but here I think you are wrong". And then, ever I talk with somebody - even if they have radical opposite views to me - we ever find some points we agree and, after to share our differences, we can take a coffee together without any problem.
So weird am I and the people I know for this? Why politicians are so bitter? Why they talk in that way? Who obligues them to talk in that way? (and sorry for copy those two last questions from a writing I love, just changing 'poets' by 'politicians' ;)
Then, why in any debate, politic meeting, etc. NEVER, none of the candidates say that to the other? Are they afraid to look cowards, traitors to their main "convictions" or something like that? I don't think so. Even more, I am sure that if someone had a moment of accepting some personal mistake, accepting that the opponent can say something right, their general image would been far better that it is now. How is possible that two parties - I am talking here about two imaginary ones - which generally they aren't so far in lot of ideals, can say to their opponent "you lie in all you say", "you are wrong in all you say" and blah, blah, blah, ever and ever the same boring repeated story, until the end of the times? Sometimes you easily can see this situation, even between parties the only difference they have is just in their name and few things more. I correct myself: even more in those parties. This is obviously because they are looking for the same kind of clients and - more than never - they have the need to show they are the only ones to sell their idea the best while the others are just liars, bastards, criminals, terrorists, etc. I think it must be even difficult to be so evil all the time, isn't it? Even the parties which scare me the most I hear some of the guys there are into them saying something that make me think... and I even agree! And I am not so easy to change my mind just because someone say something I like. But I think it would been very good for everybody if we were a little bit more open. Just a little bit will be enough.
Joan Fuster (a Valencian writer, 1922-1992) once said:
’Tota convicció -convicció seriosa- se us convertirà en un prejudici per a les conviccions ulteriors. Penseu-hi. Cada convicció que adquiriu és un prejudici més que acumuleu. I ja sabeu que vol dir un prejudici: un vici d'origen. Si sou zelosos de la vostra llibertat intel·lectual, si aspireu a conservar la "disponibilitat permanent" que n'és el pressupòsit, heu d’esforçar-vos per ser homes d'escasses conviccions. El fanàtic és un convençut: un individu que està convençut de tot, que té moltes conviccions. No crec que el fanatisme sigui una perspectiva gaire amable. La prudència, virtut cardinal, aconsella evitar aquestes exasperacions mentals i morals. I al capdavall, per a circular per la vida, no calen massa conviccions. N'hi basten tres o quatre. Només.’
Translation, the best I can:
’Any conviction you have - serious conviction I mean - will become a prejudice for your convictions to come. Think about it. Each conviction you acquire is a prejudice more you accumulate. And you know what means a prejudice already: a vice at the origin. If you are jealous of your intellectual liberty, if you aspire to conserve your “permanent availability” that is presupposed, you have to make the effort to be men of a limited number of convictions. A fanatic is a convinced person: a guy who is convinced about everything, who has a lot of convictions. I don’t think the fanaticism would been a too nice perspective. The prudence, cardinal virtue, advises to avoid this mental and moral exasperations. At the end of this, for walking through the life, we don’t need too much convictions. Three or four are enough. That’s all.’
What do you think about?
Current Mood:  depressed
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07:21 am
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Help! In What movie Appear White Mouses and a Piano?
I have a question about a movie I have no idea:
I have a friend who need to know the tittle of a movie he watched it has a lot of time, when he was a kid. The only reference he can give me is that in the movie appeared two guys who - he doesn't remember by which reason -, filled a house with lot of mouses. It seems that all the animals went up and down by all the house and even inside a piano (the piano scene is what he remembers the best). He saysalso he is nearly sure the guys weren't Laurel & Hardy. He is not sure even if it is a silent movie or an early talkie. He don't knows if it is a short of a long movie either. I know I don't give you very much information really. Not that bad as a challenge, eh?
I had several thoughts: There are mice in a Charley Bowers movie and I remember something with mouses in a Max Linder short but I have to admit I have a mess in my memory now.
Thank you very much for any information you can give me.
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06:08 pm
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Political Rant About the Independence of Kosovo
Sorry but it is made in Catalan. I think I can't make a rant like this in English :S
Basically I wish they have all the luck of the world in this new adventure, of course. And yes, I am happy they are now independent but I don't like the way this independence has come. All this has been made as much clumsy as possible -I am talking from everybody, from US, until any European country- and it can have terrible consequences to more people than we think. The manipulation of the information here and everywhere -I don't have to believe here is an exception in this old art- makes appear one side as the good ones (USA, France, UK, Germany, Australia and Kosovo itself) as the goodies of the movie and Russia, Serbia and now the European countries which are against it (Spain the first of them, even Catalonia seems very excited and happy about the new) the side of the evil.
Everybody is fighting for their interests as ever, that's all. And one of the main interests in this world is to make look our neighbour as a bastard Fascist, when we are so cute and Democrats. All this situation sucks because it has been in all the wrong ways as possible. As I said: I am happy any oppressed country gets the freedom but this situation (in fact any situation) is very very complex. Of course, to get that independence or not maybe needed years and maybe Kosovo and Serbia would been consumed after all that dangerous waste of energy. But I don't know if it is a so good idea to go fast, without wait the UNO say something about it. I don't like when we can use the ONU as a sacred thing or a wet paper, depending if the direction of the wind goes in our favour. My rant finishes with a big rant against the Catalan politicians who, once more, showed how idiots they are. I am the first person here I want the independence of my country and kick the ass to all those lies about us Madrid press agencies are spreading all around the world but NEVER in a legal way –not like now- and NEVER with even a shot o a single stupid bullet.
The super-rant in Catalan
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09:12 am
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Historical-political ask mainly adressed to my American LJ friends
... but to any other ones, of course! This is not a closed survey (I am not American and I have my own opinions about it as well he he he ;P)
Who has been for you the most important figure in the history in the US politics and why?
*He or she hasn't to be a president necessarily but he or she must have been clearly important for the history of the American politics.
*He or she must be American or American resident at least. Answers like Adolf Hitler, Karl Marx or Winston Churchill - to put some weird examples - even they influenced the situation as you want (philosophically, as enemies or friends) they weren't involved from inside of course.
Thank you very much for your opinion. It will be a good help :)
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06:50 pm
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What do you prefer: Coffee, tea... or poison?
Late days I started lot of posts I aborted because all them were boring and childish rants - here is elections time and, when they come, I want to kill somebody else each five minutes - and I am sick of it: it is not healthy for nobody. Then, I decided to mention a thing which for me is a symbol of happiness and friendship: the coffee.
I am taking now a cup of coffee. Its warm taste makes me be a good person, a hippie nearly. I feel in a mood I even could invite some guy of Ciudadanos or PP to take a cup at home, and talk with them about the meaning of life or how beautiful the sunset is now. It can be so nice to chat with those guys, who dream in my extermination - aren't they cute? - if that blessed black parfume flies all around...
*relaxed breath, with an idiot smile in my face*
Coffee, I love you because you make miracles at my spirit...
*Love*
I like tea too but I am not so hooked to it so I am with the coffee, I must admit. Poison maybe can be cool too, but I advise you to take it after your 150th birthday, not before, OK? 
Oh la-là, le café, mon ami!...
Anyway - once poison is now blacklisted - coffee or tea?
Current Music: "Electric Café" (somebody has a better suggestion?)
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06:45 pm
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14 –possible- Islamist terrorists arrested in Barcelona. Three suicide bomb attacks were planned
14 –possible- Islamist terrorists arrested in Barcelona. Past weekend they were planning three suicide bomb attacks on the city's public transport system. It seems the thing could be very serious.
You can read the basic information I found in English at The Guardian page, a newspaper full of lies - ever I read information about Barcelona at least - here:http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,,2245890,00.html , a far better comment, made by the ever lucid nausica2 in her post here: http://nausica2.livejournal.com/732842.html and a late one, made by myself, in my new blog (started today!) in Catalan, under the idiot nick of Subur Mecànic, here: http://suburmecanic.blogspot.com/
I ever had an idealized opinion about the decadence of our Occidental civilization (too much Schnitzler, images of Venice and Europe Endloss, I think) but it has becoming a total crap, with a terrible lack of glamour. It sucks.
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11:40 pm
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How Many People Have Ever Lived On Earth?
Have you never asked this question of yourself?
I found the answer in the net here bellow I posted it (copy and paste: great invention). After it, I think I can sleep better (or worse maybe). Imagine all those guys together, dressed - or naked - everybody with their own style and speaking their own languages. I searched for how many people weared glasses but it was impossible to find an answer with a minimum of credibility, tsk, tsk.
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06:58 am
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Some humor
Joe!...Do you have seen the cat?
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