Tag Archives: Meng Po

August 8, 2025 · 22:17

Contemplations

We all have them and in this day and age we kinda need them. The idea that you are weighing issues that might not be important at first. I got to this stage in a few ways and they all relate (in my mind). It started with Denmark and their ‘fight’ for digital independence. 

This got Libreoffice on my retina’s 

I currently do not need it as my Mac comes with Pages, Numbers and Keynote, but I am always looking for a next challenge and as Australia is drowning in Ageism (I am no longer a teenager) getting a larger field of interest is not a bad thing. The additional setting is that Microsoft keeps on pissing people off and that could result in drastic acts from all kinds of people. So when the Commonwealth throws out Microsoft, there will be plenty of people needing people who have knowledge of something beside Microsoft. The smaller setting is that Libreoffice comes with Draw and a Database and I have been away from databases too long. As I see it there will be a need for people with data cleaning skills. This is an undeniable fact and that means my skills might come needed in the near future. As such these settings all mean that I will have to set a larger stage and I reckon that starting with LibreOffice is a first stage. So when areas of Europe goes ‘non-Microsoft’ There will be an optional need for me. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? 

In other news I started shaping my second script Residuam Vitam now. It will be a jumpy ride as this is the first mini-series I create and I am still getting the hand of Final Draft, so it will be a sort of rollercoaster ride to say the least. The script is still forming and so far I seem to get things wring in casting the right ‘illumination’, some parts of the script seem to get the format wrong, so I am doing something not correctly and that is the short and sweet of it, so whilst I am ‘shipping’ the script from blog original to script original I seem to be making a few ‘errors’ (or so I think) and that is also the need for the LibreOffice text component. It might give me the visibility of the format codes before I copy it back into Fina Draft, or so at least I hope.

The Mini series should be set over 6-8 episodes all an hour long. But it is still shaping and as such I have no idea how this fares in the end, and it is spread over dozens of blog writings going back to August 2021 and ending in February 2024. I reckon that over those times there will be gaps and that will be done in this stage as well. There is always the chance that Baron Samedi (or Maman Brigitte) might take offense, but I hope they will not. In that setting there are a few other players like Lady Jiang and that gives me options, because script wise I am using the tales and ‘myths’ of people that tends to be missed by others and I combine them, something that has been done before, but never with these people and as such I might have a new original out here.

Still, the ‘offset’ of text formats is a little infuriating, especially as I am doing it all in Final Draft. It is infuriating as I am making mistakes, or at least that is what it seems to be. We have been brainwashed to the larger degree by Microsoft settings we adhered to using MS Office that we forget to keep and open mind in resolving issues. Perhaps LibreOffice will aid in this new mental ploy. It is the new age. Microsoft got us to think in certain ways for decades and now that we ‘see’ that it is bad to be depending on one solution, we see that we lost a little more than we bargained for. This is not on us or on Microsoft. They did develop ideas and drawing air from the solutions handed to us and now, after decades when we consider that there must be another way we see that we are pushed in a mindset that favored them (which is fine) but we lost something along the way. I thought I had resolved part of this when I stated using the Adobe way of things. But that way also has its mentality to resolve things the Adobe way. It is how we tend to be wired. 

So what to contemplate?
First is the way we think around programs, you might think it is simple, but it is not, we get trained in thinking a certain way and when we are comfortable with that way of thinking we forget other options. It is said that the dangers of too much comfort include stagnation, a lack of personal and professional growth, and missed opportunities, preventing you from reaching your full potential. I kinda agree with this, but it is not that clear cut at times. In addition staying comfortable also hinders the development of resilience by keeping you from facing adversity and can create a cycle of self-doubt that makes you less likely to pursue dreams. This is said, but in this I disagree. I do not think there is a lack of development of resilience, it is merely the thought of looking the other way, the road less travelled. I have done this plenty of time and the ‘connecting’ path to pursue dreams is as I see it massively American. 

You don’t need to pursue dreams, you merely have to recognise these ‘dreamy’ moments as milestone you might encounter. Or to be ‘fashionable’ with the influencers Sydney Sweeney wasn’t wearing American Eagle for me, she merely felt good wearing them and American Eagle paid her handsomely for posing in them. I was never a factor. Influencers use her to tell me that this is what I wanted all along and it is not. OK, she is pretty, the advertisement is nice and that is it. I am utterly convinced she has never heard of me. Influencers are making you doubt this small certainty and people fall for that setting of doubt. So resilience of self delusion is part of that larger stage that you face. To go your own way (sorry Fleetwood Mac) and drive yourself where you WANT to go, not where others expect you to go. 

As such I will beat Ageism, I will beat stupid people as I am now working realising the completion of my second Script. Just two more to go after that and whether or not they become real is not the issue. It was the creation my version of self required me to complete. That was all. Yes, it is ‘intoxicating’ that my dram state sees Matt Damon and Ridley Scott buying my creations, but it remains a dream. The reality is that I had to create them getting to howl laughter at my previous bosses who blindly follow Microsoft (or others) to get to the ‘success point’ they considered real. I might not fill that hole (I came up with a version of Facebook 5 years before Facebook and my boss said it had no future, he told me to focus on the mission statement). In the meantime I created more IP and created new lanes to solutions that made me feel good. And now I started my second Script. I am rolling in creativity and I reckon that is what I need to develop further as the world is rolling after AI and what it isn’t this world will soon come to a setting that the creative people are the actual gold any company has. And some might not work, but consider Nintendo, the failure that was WiiU caused the development of the Switch and Switch2. Since 2017 they sold 154 million consoles beating Microsoft and the Sony PS4 (117 million) and Sony had 5 more years to get the numbers. So creativity was as I see it the ruling factor and as I see it, certain bosses have little clue how to harvest creativity. I reckon that the setting for LibreOffice might get people thinking in different ways, optionally creating new technology. 

So whilst I see the soup vendors, I also see the myth of Lady Jiang and Meng Po Soup. I do advise you not to drink the soup, the old soup and certainly not the new soup. You’ll learn that lesson the hard way. Creativity is a bitch at times, but there you have it.

Creativity runs amok (I never knew that it could run a mock) and feel free to delusionally consider that a girl in good looking jeans is thinking of you (like some will suggest) but the critical mind knows better and you know it. We might all have creativity, but it requires a critical mindset to instill self doubt on what you design. I did it on at least 3 IP projects. The doubting mind searches deeper on itself. 

Have a great day. 

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December 30, 2022 · 18:41

Never forgotten

There is a stage I hd not forgotten about. I had no writers block, but a logic block. Stories fantasy or not have their own rules of logic. It might not make sense to the reader (at first) but it does to the writer and in my case, the logic did not add up. So instead of making ‘fictive’ logic, I took time to think through the events. And recently I did so. So whilst I kind of need to make a small recap to Residuam Vitam, the recap is mostly limited to the other articles, so that you can pick up the pieces. 

August 13th 2021 Death as a resource (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/13/death-as-a-resource/)
August 14th 2021 When death and chicken taste alike (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/14/when-death-and-chicken-taste-alike/)
August 16th 2021 When death is taxable (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/16/when-death-is-taxable/)
March 3rd 2022 From pot to bowl (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/03/from-pot-to-bowl/)
March 14th 2022 A view in the east (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/14/a-view-in-the-east/)
April 9th 2022 Struggle (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/04/09/struggle/)

There are a few more, but I am rewriting it all, optionally to insert it as a pdf. 

So, where was I? I had set the stage with Baron Samedi, the meeting with Hades and at that point we added Meng Po, they all have larger stages to contribute, and that is going smoothly. But the wind caught on, and as such, so did Ereshkigal and Mot. Their powers are similar, but not the same and as such they started to tread on the loom of life, the loom that these two wield like masters. The loom of life has sustained them throughout the ages as they became part of that machine, but now that the rules are adapting it changes what they are given in the end and their share has been so large for such a long time. They now create shadows the size of giants on their former selves and that changes the equation by a much larger degree. So as the gods create a new alliance, they also unknowingly create the anti-pod of their alliance and the people, the mortals are between the two parties. 

The detective (from the very beginning) becomes the axial of the middle, the becomes unknowing to her and to others the axial of a seesaw. Hades, Meng Po, Baron Samedi and Anubis are the main players of one side of the seesaw, the other end has Ereshkigal, Ta’xet, Tia and Mot occupy the other end of the seesaw. But these players are slowly introduced. As the new brew influences the people Tia becomes aware who informs Ta’xet. Ta’xet had a connection to Mot from the old days and now they start to learn on what is going on. Ereshkigal is the last to connect to this new eave, but only because Ereshkigal has had a deepened distrust of anything Anubis touches. It is at this point that Hel is awakened. She is awakened by Ta’xet who feels kinship to Hel, no like, but kinship is enough to take the stage in different ways. Ta’xet thinks (decently correctly) that any negative impact of dishonourable souls will anger Hel and it does, but she has no real friends as such she also investigates and she will get under the skin of the detective through all the people she lost in her career and as such she can stack against the other side. 

Now that I have a grasp of how the interactions are going, I can start looking at the dialogues of these characters. I need to push a few more items to the surface and I need to see what to do about Meng Po, her duty and her tsk never failed. As such I need to push a different border to clear her vested interest to the top of the pile. She is driven too, but how to ‘exploit’ it? That is still a stage I need to examine. The ‘mortal’ side is decently clear, the side of Hades (and the twist in all this) is also clear. I have some ideas on how to counter Baron Samedi. Here we can rely on Maman Brijit. She is also the Loa of justice and vengeance and the drink is a stage of injustice to those who will die and there is the rub, as Samedi will become a lot more powerful, the imbalance between Maman and the Baron becomes stronger. To some degree he becomes his own worst enemy and that was one element Hades was counting on. He played the game for so long, the sound of every string on the loom of life are distinct in sound and he knows all the sounds. So there we have the three parts and now I need to set a line to all the characters and reread everything to see if I left any obvious holes. 

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April 9, 2022 · 01:43

Struggle

We all struggle, I am no different, but my struggle is not with the having of stuff, not with the acquisition. It is with creation. I create I keep on creating, yet I see not the reason why I do things. It is not to show me how more advanced I am, how much more perfect or better I am. I create games, stories, movies, TV series and software. Yet, I cannot see why I am doing it. A lot is here in this blog, I have no need for some of it but in the back of my mind, it seems to be about more, and I have no idea what the links are. I am in the dark about WHY I am creating stuff. Is it about old tech? The printable display is there, but I have no idea why I came up with it. The Giggle water (two days ago) is mere fun, to see any liquid infused with nitrous oxide that releases the gas from the liquid on consuming it is fun, but I do not see why my mind is going that way. I see the stage why I went for the 5G, I am a technologist after-all, the new stage of marketing makes sense. Preparing myself for a wave that is inbound and that makes sense. Yet all around it are iterations of innovations and they are linked somehow, but I cannot yet see why they are there. And my mind is screaming to know the why, at times it is deafening.

Is it some delusional part to show Ubisoft I am better than any of them? It seems stupid, Guerrilla Software and Avalanche Software are doing that just fine and I am nowhere near that good. I am for the most a storyteller. Is it part of any story I was creating? Keno Diastima is doing fine for now. The large lines of three seasons are done, the smaller stories of season one are coming along and the large jumps that make for Season 2, and Season 3 are basically done. The end of season 3 remains and open end to the story. I feel it is a better end than milking the idea. The shock stage is what needs to be. That is how I feel it needs to be. Then there is the mini series Residuam Vitam, It is still developing. Some of the storylines are set, are shaped, the involvement of others are coming and so far I left Anubis out of the equation, I need his involvement to be near stellar, but there are gaps in what I know of Anubis from History and from theology. There is a stage from Hades that is now shaping, yet there is  form of duality that I want to explore, but it needs to be defined and I am wondering how to go about it. The part of Meng Po is almost done, but I feel that it needs her personal drive there. There needs to be something that pushes her. I want it to reflect on Lady Meng Jiang, there is the part we see with “Lady Meng Jiang heard nothing after his departure, so she set out to bring him winter clothes. Unfortunately, by the time she reached the Great Wall, her husband had already died. Hearing the bad news, she wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed, revealing his bones.” It is a nice fitting part, a nice piece of a puzzle making an image, but I feel that the image I see is a little different. You see she kept on pouring soup like it was a solution, it was the path to someplace. A set of the mind, a set of pieces of a puzzle, but not the ones any story give me (the parts out in the open), it is possible that Chinese writings give me more, but I do not know Chinese. There is a place that those who give service embrace, but I always felt that Meng Po was doing it to keep ahead of something, to go towards someone and I believe that her path was not set to one person, it was more but I cannot answer it by ‘weaving’ my own tale. Like the story of a game shapes the way we think, the way we perceive and the way we react. Like the technology that opens what we can see and what we could get. These parts seem to be connected somehow. This is not the problem. I feel that I am missing a larger piece of a puzzle, but it is not an image. It is like the puzzle is not an image but a film reel, or there is a 3rd dimension component I cannot see at present. Is it an innovation that is yet to come? Perhaps that is what the mind struggles with? Like a stonemason who has his block of marble. He knows that three more pieces need to be removed, but he cannot see the three pieces. That is how it feels, but there is still another part, it is not as simple as three pieces, and that is where I struggle. It is like there is something just out of view, I see shimmers of what I am supposed to see, but that is as good as it gets. And there I struggle still.

We all do at times, it is what we want to achieve, it is why we want to achieve and for the creators it is not bout the money, it is about the creation, it is ego. I fought ego my entire life, I never accepted it within myself, but I have ego, we all do, the delusional ones think that they are above it, but they are not. In this I personally believe that Vladimir Putin is the latest folly of ego, it slapped him down and he remains in ‘hiding’. In his mind a two bit place like the Ukraine cannot stop the Russian bear and the fact that they did is scaring him, his own ego defeated him and it is more about defeat than anything else. If my ego is to be about success and not failure I need to push myself past ego, my struggle for me is real, I get that and that struggle is more than a fight, overcoming it will open doors to ideas. And that is where I find myself. What idea did my brain work out that I as a person cannot see yet? That is the struggle for me and you face your own struggles, we all do. It is how we go about our struggles, that sets the definition of success or defeat. I do not mind losing, but to be defeated by my own brain is weird. It is not sabotaging me, it is teaching me to look in other directions. I just have no idea in what direction I am supposed to look, lets face it, do you?

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March 3, 2022 · 11:40

Netflix Prime

Yup, that is it and it is not a conundrum. This setting applies to both Amazon Prime and Netflix (other layers too). You see, their valuation is set to a larger stage of WHAT and HOW MUCH they can bring. And in a stage where we are on the brink of active militant debates, having an alternative is never a bad idea. You see, for some unknown reason I have been thinking of the Dutch movie ‘De Prooi’ (1985). 

I remember how stunningly beautiful the leading lady played by Maayke Bouten was. But there is more (there always is), the story was quite good, it was done as it always was in those days. Like a race to the destination with several scenes in the middle. Yet the foundation of a decently good movie was there and it could be remade, the story needs a little adaptation, and if it is set to a different location (San Francisco, Vancouver, Fort Lauderdale, New Orleans) a little extra work might need to be done. A script ready for collecting (whomever has the rights) and it is not a small setting. There are hundreds of scripts out there where the rights are no longer active, where the rights to a movie are nickels and dimes away from ownership (instead of tens of thousands or more). A setting that all streamers need at present and they are all over Europe, all over the commonwealth too. We forgot about the younger watchers, did we not? So what happened to the dozens of movies that were part of the Enid Blyton collection, the hardy boys, and there was a female version too. Sweden has its treasures (beyond Pippi Longstocking that is) and so forth. Even the Netherlands has its share of treasures. All forgotten, all in some drawer catching dust, all whilst everyone is chasing the next mediocre version that comes from one of these great stories. 

As such I wonder how long these stream chasers keep on chasing a reinvented wheel, whilst there is a place where you can find a good collection of second hand wheels at 10% of the price. You will spend op to 5% rewriting it, but is one in 5 is a decent success, you will have an interesting track record as well as a decently fast growing library of works. If we look back to the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s we see movies all with a gimmick, but as long as the story is good, it can be rewritten with the gimmick of today and tomorrow. So where are these writers? What will Netflix (Amazon Prime too) do when the budgets are trimmed down? I did not forget about Apple and Disney, but it seems that they have a different approach to where they want to go, or how they want to get somewhere. I might be wrong, but that is how they feel to me. It is up to them and it is up to Netflix and Amazon, they might to get ahead of the curve before the are chasing it in some uphill battle against that very same curve, because that is what falling behind the curve tend to be. A never ending uphill battle. 

And I reckon that this is a race where the number two has no reward, they merely chased the other one too late. Who will it be? I have no idea, I am not buddies with either on that level, I need not be (not entirely true), I have my own stories to write and for now I reckon that I might have a new chapter coming up in the mini series ‘Residuam vitam’, I think it had a different name earlier. For some reason the others have titles set in stone, this one does not. I cannot figure that part out, even as the story was pretty much set, but now there is a new stage, but I need to write it differently, because the party involved are not like us and that changes the stage. I should say that Meng Po alerted me to that part, but I cannot, because every time she serves me soup I forget what I was doing, but the soup is so delicious.

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December 31, 2021 · 23:42

When figments take over

Yes, that is a question, I am not sure if I have an answer because my mind is all over the place. It is like the scent I am picking up is taking charge on whatever comes next. It is a little weird, a little unsettling and even weirdly more, a path into the unknown.

First all, I have no idea where I am. My mind had taken me to some gritty (but clean) food place. It looks nothing like a restaurant, from the inside it seems like I am in a wooden shack that is set on top of concrete slabs. Not a place I have ever been, as far as I can tell. The prices are in Euro’s so I reckon I am somewhere in Europe. The staff looks at me awaiting my order. I order the triple carapace for €20. I get a large pewter plate, the plate is set in three areas almost like the old US eating trays. I get three parts of lobster, one is deed fried, covered with cheese it was a few small potatoes on the side. One is (I think) broiled and comes with steamed carrots and cauliflower, the last part is fried with butter, it has fried capsicum, mushrooms and a thick gravy with small pieces of lobster. It smells terrific and the weird thing is that I never had this before in my life, not even any of the individual parts as it is shown to me. I sit down and every bite is heavenly, I buy a bottle of water and drink it the part with the mushrooms is a little salty but still awesome. I get up and walk out of the shack, I am back in my living room. I have no idea where I was, I have (to the best of my knowledge) never been to this place and even now the scent of fried lobster, capsicum and mushrooms are filling my nose. I cannot explain it. The slightly delusional side of me is thinking back, over two years my mind created a little over $10,000,000,000 of IP, the delusional side is as I haven’t sold any of it, it might amount to a mere $10. The mind takes over at times. I cannot explain it and for now my brain is getting drunk on the smell of prepared lobster, which is weird as my last lobster is about 9 years ago and it was served Japanese style with fresh Wasabi, so I have no idea where the smells are coming from and I do not smell that good, not ever (thank god), I would take up cannibalism in a heartbeat, even my own heartbeat.  

Yet the situation remains, what was the vision, a mere scene for one of the scripts? Nothing happened, there was no hint, no clue no nothing, merely me eating and enjoying lobsters in three ways. So why write it down? Well for me writing down is keeping me busy, it brings clarity and in the back of my mind at times other things happen, it is not the first wave, it is the second wave that gives additional insights and I have had it on a few parts, for now I merely wonder if I can fit additional parts of the stage of ‘Residuam Vitam’, it also might b the third time I altered that title. I have parts in place, but I need a deeper need towards the parts that Meng Po plays in the story, her side it too one-sided, to facilitating and that does not work for me. You see some stories are ‘decently’ articulate in giving us “Lady Meng took the initiative to create a bowl of soup that would allow spirits to forget the suffering of their material life.” I believe that is merely half a story, you see facilitation only gets you so far, no matter how selfless a person is, when you are on a bridge handing out soup for 1000 generations, 10,000 moons there is a nourishing factor, I just haven’t figured out what it is, and the soup is important, smell is important. What if she hopes to meet the lost love in his next reincarnation? It matters as the soup is important for the story, it also matters as Hades and Anubis have alternate needs and a larger hunger, so what gives? 

It is hard for the figments to take control, but it helps setting a stage to the story and I for one still haven’t figured out all the cogs. The main lines are there and the players are known, but it needs to fit, not like a glove but like the cogs of a Swiss timepiece. The players have been around for millennia, so their stage of timing perfection matters. We go into any story, any interaction of divinity with small tokens, but the divine are timeless, so they think in centuries, not years and to make that story work requires a different brush. This is not a Winslow Homer aquarel, it is the Nightwatch by Rembrandt van Rijn, two different styles, two different approaches. In the first the player was The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. A little element too often overlooked, there was a 9 year gap between to commissioning and the delivery. There are all kinds of reasons and we can guess, let the critics set the tone, but time is the element that plays here. A photo in that identical stage would be taken in 1/125 seconds, the painting took months if not years. To set that time in different parallels we need to see that that any of the divine players can see any scene, any second like a Hasselblad H6D-400C, even whilst we are mere Kodak instamatics, scent is part of that Kodak but the camera does not record scent. So the stage needs to be altered and it is now I see the alternate scene, the part the lobsters never told me (they were getting eaten). So what if the soup does more than the players realised? What if the scent of the soup also captures the scents once forgotten? The spirit bathes in forgetfulness on the road to reincarnation, but what if Meng Po captures every scent experienced? What if she needs one specific memory and consider that in ancient China a little over 10% was blind, the beggars in the streets, ignored by all as they went on their business, but the blind still register scents, what if Meng Po was seeking a specific scent? It might work. All due to a lobster dish I never ate (poor poor me).

So at times let the figments take over, you never know where they are headed and in my case, I was clueless until the story was completed.

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December 16, 2021 · 00:00

After a fact to begin a fact

Yes, nice and cryptic. Not intentionally, but that is how I roll. But before I get into that, I promised to give something tomorrow, but as it is about 0:01, tomorrow is now. So here goes. As I was (trying to) being clever, I considered that any off looking equipment will get caught soon. It shouldn’t but that is no guarantee. So I needed the valve to disappear. Now, one thing I learned that security staff tends to be lazy. Perhaps technically unobserving is a better term, they are not stupid, so something that looks off will get noticed quickly, unless it looks the same. So I can be as clever as I can, but the valve might get noticed. So as I was considering options I remembered the colour picker app. An Android app that uses the camera to scan a colour and translate it to an RGB tint. So there was a solution, but there is no way we can have all these colours in stock, so I created an adjusted primer spray paint. Primer is white, so I added the design of a dial at the bottom (see below).

Now we can pick the colour, adjust the 10 scale Red-Yellow-Blue-Black dials and insert the pigment, a few good shakes (5-15 seconds) and the colour is ready. Now we apply the paint and the device and its band will look as painted as the pipes are and now, the chance of overlooking is massively larger. So that part was solved and I created a new piece of IP in the process. So spray-paint makers might find this approach an interesting twist. Instead of 187.4 colours, you have one article and let the user fix what they need. No hassle, no ‘not in stock’ issues. All in a days work.

Anyway, what set all this off is that I was day dreaming (at 22:00). And suddenly I had an idea towards the Exhaurire Vitam concept, how it all started. How Anubis and Hades meet each other. All because of a young girl (9) who gets abducted by molesters and her Dachshund (which I affectionately name Kransky) ends up in nowhere land, right in front of the one person that the molesters would never have wanted involved and the carnage is one they will remember for all days. These is a lot more, but let’s not quench your thirst too much at present. 

So as Anubis owes Hades and he repays by offering a gift that is useless to him, but he knows that it will benefit Hades, so he repays in this way and opens a door that will shiver and shake New Orleans in ways you might have read earlier. A setting I never thought of, I never contemplated it. It merely came to me, that and the rest of the settings are weird, close to a dozen pieces of new IP, no idea where it is coming from and when it does not impact my IP (5G, TV, selected IP) I will make it Public domain, perhaps I can actually restart some economies making me more electable then whatever is in political office at present. Yet, feel free to ask Meng Po for an opinion and a cup of soup, it’s free. 

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