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July 17th, 2009
kaveypie
| 06:09 pm - Magical Vid
If you watch just a few youtube vids this year let this be one of them.
It's a choir, with a wonderful version of a well known song. Just beautiful.
I just adore this: http://bit.ly/h4ewI
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ahnlak
 | 10:21 am - A Hint...
Dear Demon
When you're talking to a customer who is requesting a MAC, who has just told you why, and who has already transferred his domain name away from you the previous week, that may not have been the best time to ask him to fill in a customer satisfaction survey.
On the other hand, if I win an iPod for my "I hate you and I'm leaving you" survey responses, that would be a good note to end on!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/smile.gif) amused
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July 16th, 2009
kaveypie
| 08:09 pm - Peas from our garden!
Last month was the month of sugarsnaps.
This month is the month of regular peas.
We've had two good pickings so far with plenty left to pick.
And we also had 3 good sized yellow courgettes too!
YUM!
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ahnlak
| 10:18 am - End of an Era
Well, after 15 years of custom and numerous comical fuckups, Demon have finally driven me away - a MAC is on it's way to me as I type. Assuming, of course, that they don't screw that up too...
I've ranted about Demon here before - largely because once a year they conspire to seriously mess something up. This year isn't quite as spectacular as the time they accidentally issued a cease order to BT (resulting in a month with no connection), but if I have one more person tell me that the reason for 3 weeks of uselessly slow downlink speeds is because I've been "upgraded", I will pop down the road to Demon Towers with a pitchfork and a flaming torch.
A combination of apathy and a fear of being offline has always put me off moving. This time around I realised that for the same price I was paying, I could have an entire second line supplied by AAISP (much love) and still have change left over enough to keep my old line on a cheapo Plusnet deal as a backup. Combine this with the coolest router I've ever owned which will load-balance across a pair of ADSL lines, and even provides a fallback to a 3G dongle, and nothing short of a nuclear war should be able to knock me offline now.
First step was to transfer our main domain out of Demon's hands. That was fairly easy, although despite Demon being an ISP they insist on such a request being faxed (faxes? have I fallen backwards into the 1980s or something?) or snail-mailed. That was released on Tuesday, and the DNS changes now seem to have rippled worldwide enough that no more mail is going via Demon.
And so this morning, with a heavy heart, I called up the "Customer Relations" team at Demon and asked for a MAC. They did ask why, but once I'd told them "my line's been broken for three weeks and your engineers clearly have no clue what the problem actually is" the fight went out of them. The nice man did valiantly offer to make me "an offer", but conceded that it was unlikely to beat the £6 a month that Plusnet do, so he's put the request through.
There was a comic moment when he asked what I was currently paying - curious, as he presumably had my account details in front of him. I pointed out that the last bill I'd received (earlier this week) was charging £408 for the month, which was just another sign of why I was leaving (their accounts department ineptitude, not their astronomical prices).
With traditional Demon-ic timing, the helpdesk called me 5 minutes later to pass on a question from the engineers of "is it any better". No, no it isn't, but I would suggest they stop wasting their time as I'm not going to be a customer of yours in a matter of days.
So I'm sad to be ending one of the longest customer relationships I've had (off the top of my head, the only company I've ever been a customer of for longer is British Gas). But I'm also angry that a once-great company has sunk so low, and seems to care so little for it's customers. The only reason I'm getting daily calls from the helpdesk (which don't do anything, but at least make me feel loved) is that I kept hold of the number for the incredibly-well-hidden UK-based customer retention team from the last big disaster, phoned them up and shouted at them.
Since it was offshored, their helpdesk hasn't been allowed to actually talk to the engineers. There's no way to escalate a problem through official channels (you have to phone secret departments) and despite occasional claims to the contrary, there is no longer any specific support for business accounts. Gone are the days when you could phone straight through to a technician who understood that at least some of their customers know their stuff.
So, now I'm on a shiny new (and horribly fast) line for my main net connection, and will shortly move to a cheapo provider for my backup. More reliable, and cheaper as well.
All assuming, of course, that Demon manage send me a MAC which works. History doesn't leave me hopeful.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/sad.gif) sad
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July 15th, 2009
redshira
 | 06:49 pm - It's as if CCD isn't even happening!
WHY WOULD YOU TRY TO KILL BEES
ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE THE SORT OF PERSON WHO SUBSCRIBES TO A "NATURAL LIVING" COMMUNITY
BEES. ARE NOT FOR KILLING. MY FUCK. AT LEAST GET SOMEONE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT SORT OF BEES THEY ARE BEFORE YOU TRY AND FUCKING KILL THEM.
skjrghesgkueah;UJHREGJ;SERJGEGjKJRK
In other news, the Oxegen festival was a pile of fail. I left a comment in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gothhippiegrrl's LJ about it, ( and I may as well reproduce it here; be warned, it's long )
In other other news, I am unreasonably excited about going to see the new Harry Potter film, despite knowing that I will want to throw things at the screen at certain points. I can't go until Friday night at the earliest because every ticket within a 30 mile radius is booked, but EEEEEEE.
I have an appointment with a neurologist tomorrow, which will hopefully a) be the start of getting some control over my migraines, which really are the worst part of being me because they ruin almost everything and prevent me from doing nearly anything b) go better than the fucking awful endocrinologist appointment I had last week which was so unspeakably awful that I'm going to write a letter of complaint. The woman was dismissive, ignorant, arrogant, fatphobic, hostile, didn't bloody listen, and TOUCHED MY HEAD (scrabbling about in my hair) without asking first and then tried to make out that I was in the wrong when I freaked out. I'd go into details but it needs its own post, really, and I might make that post when I've written the complaint letter. James said he was tempted to ask her "Are you a real doctor?" I wish he had. He's been referred to the Marfan clinic in Dublin which means HOORAY he will get proper treatment and we will have a better idea of when he needs heart surgery (he has a dilated aortic root and a leaky mitral valve).
I miss being able to talk to people on IM. Our dodgy mobile modem interwebs is terrible and the connection drops at least once every five minutes, sometimes more like twice a minute, so the only chat I can use is Facebook Chat, and even that keeps cutting out.
I must apologise again (and explain to the newer people on my flist) for not being great at answering comments. Migraine is worse than ever, and connection is dodgy, and fibro thoroughly kicks my arse on a regular basis, and I am basically just rubbish at replying. However, I do make a very tasty clafouti, which I would never have thought to try had it not been mentioned several times by ailbhe, so thank you ailbhe*!.
*for some reason I really like typing the name "ailbhe"
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topfloortips
| 01:57 am - San Francisco Meet-Up: Thursday, Jul/16, 6:30pm
http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/2009/07/15/san-francisco-meet-up-thursday-jul16-630pm/ http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/?p=1066 Aaaand another one in the tradition to do a pre-workshop meet-up that is open for everybody to join, to hang out, to grab a bite, to have a beer and to talk photography.
Thursday, Jul/16 6:30pm is the date.
Anabelle’s Bar and Bistro in downtown San Francisco is the place.
Full address:
Anabelle’s Bar and Bistro (just left of [...]
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July 14th, 2009
rufusuk
 | 07:23 pm - Out of my parenting comfort zone
One of the things I have found the most difficult since having Catherine is getting out of the house, particularly anything that involves long car journeys and/or staying away. This was probably brought on in the very first weeks after Catherine was born, when I tried so hard to throw myself into the “new Mum” thing – going out to NCT get-togethers, music classes, massage classes, and everything else I thought a new Mum should do. I got more and more stressed as Catherine spent more and more of her time outside of the home awake and unhappy. After one particularly unhappy NCT coffee afternoon, where I spent the whole time literally holding the dummy in Catherine’s mouth to keep her quiet, I decided something had to change, and I battened down the hatches, and got a proper daytime routine in place. Part of the problem was that Catherine really doesn’t nap well outside of her own bedroom. She’s always slept shorter at nursery than here, and I’m lucky if I can get 30 minutes out of her in the car. And when Catherine doesn’t get enough sleep, she gets grotty. It’s taken a long time for me to start learning how I can “flex” Catherine’s routine when needed, and as she’s grown older she’s become more willing to be “flexed”. And I’ve been really pleased that we’ve managed to start getting out and socialising again – I’ve missed everyone! This weekend we hit two major milestones, things that I’ve thought we ought to try doing for a while. First of all, on Friday night we went over to Austin and Lynne’s new house to see it, and have a takeaway and play some board games. Originally John’s Mum was going to babysit for us, but she didn’t feel well enough, so we were stuck with either not going, or taking Catherine with us. So we stuck the travel cot in the car, packed Catherine’s travel Grobag and set out to see what would happen. Catherine was an absolute darling. She enjoyed the cook’s tour of the house, and tried to chase Austin and Lynne’s cats. She spent ages washing her hands in the handbasin (the latest, Lady-Macbeth-type obsession!). She was later than usual going to bed, but we tried to stick to our bedtime routine as usual, and bless her – she went straight to sleep in the Pickles’ spare room! Come midnight and time to go home – she scared us a bit by waking up very easily, as soon as we walked into the room. She was then wide awake for the whole car journey home, but when we got in and put her in her cot she rolled around a little bit, but then went back off to sleep. What a good girl. The next challenge came on Saturday – a two-and-half hour journey to Birkhamstead and it back for a friends’ daughter’s second birthday party. Any long journey that we have done like that before has been when going on a week’s holiday, and we’ve taken slowly, trying to fill the whole day, with a good stop part-way through. Not possible in this case. One the way down we tried setting out before lunch in the hope Catherine would sleep a little first, then we could have lunch, and perhaps a full tummy would send her to sleep again for the rest of the journey. She fell asleep quite easily in the car, did her traditional 30 minutes and then woke up. Thankfully she was happy to sit quietly for a bit, so we got a good chunk of the journey under our belts before stopping at a service station for lunch. She ate well, enjoyed a little roam around the services, and only had a small whinge when we put her back in the car. She didn’t sleep again, and I had to sing with her when she started getting a bit fractious, but we managed to make it to our friends’ house. Again Catherine slept like a dream. Again she was slightly late to bed as there were fun party things going on, and we all ate late, but she went to sleep without complaining, and slept right through. We didn’t take the baby monitor with us, as John thinks I should learn to live without it. We slept in the room directly above Catherine’s, and we would have heard her if she’d yelled, but I set my alarm for 8am to be on the safe side, as these days she tends to wake up and play in her cot until I go in to her, and I wasn’t sure I’d hear that. I slept soundly until rudely awakened by my alarm, and as I was getting dressed one of our hosts knocked on the door to day she thought Catherine was awake – there were some shuffling noises coming from her room. What a good girl. Coming back we tried things slightly differently, and ate lunch before setting out. I wanted to see if Catherine would sleep longer than her 30 minutes with a full tummy. Sadly not, but she was tired enough to sit quietly in her seat until we stopped at the services on the M6 toll. Cups of coffee for me and John, a slice of cake for Catherine and we set out again. Again, whilst she didn’t sleep, she was good as gold, and we got home without any yelling from any of us :) So that’s two new things to add to my list of stuff I know I can do. It’s liberating to think we can go somewhere for an evening and get Catherine home and back into bed. It’s great to think it is now feasible to visit some of our further afield friends and family. My next challenge is to try all three of us sleeping in one room – I’m still nervous about that one…
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kaveypie
| 07:46 am - Chocolates to be won: final reminder to enter
Last chance to enter competition to win chocolates: http://bit.ly/18G0Bs
(closes midnight today)
Give it a go. They're Artisan du chocolat!
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topfloortips
| 12:09 am - Everything you ever wanted to know about photography - but never dared ask: Photo Day 2009
http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/2009/07/14/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-photography-but-never-dared-ask-photo-day-2009/ http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/?p=1058 Photo Day 2009, live on the TWiT Network on July 15th!
Simple story: Leo Laporte hands Chris keys to TWiT Cottage. Chris sends shoutout into world of photography. Photographers from all kinds of fields show up to talk photography.
Date: Jul/15
Time: 11 AM to 5 PM (Pacific Time)
Location: » TWiT Live TV
Guests: John Chiara (the big camera), [...]
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July 13th, 2009
kaveypie
| 08:48 am - Lovely Girly Catchup/ Sorry about ducking out
Saturday: What a lovely day starting with lunch at Pizza Express (near Euston/ King's Cross), tubing across to Lancaster Gate to check in to our hotel, tubing across to Waterloo for our Duck Tour (which was so much fun) and then enjoying a lovely meal at Chez Gerard round the corner from London Eye.
Sorry for ducking out on Sunday. Less than a minute after walking through the front door I was in bed, and I think it was probably less than a minute again before I was fast asleep. Nearly 4 hours sleep later I felt somewhat human again and spent the rest of the afternoon catching goggle box.
Plus I went to bed early last night and it seemed to catch me up which is just as well as couldn't turn to Pete to drive me in if I had been half asleep as he's waiting for man to come and install our new phone/ADSL line.
Really was lovely to see the girls - hoping some of you LJ what you did on Sunday so I can enjoy it vicariously!
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July 12th, 2009
topfloortips
| 05:21 pm - tfttf371 - San Francisco Street Safari
http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/2009/07/12/tfttf371-san-francisco-street-safari/ http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/?p=1049 Join us in the Shalimar restaurant in San Francisco while we discuss focal lengths, street photography and lamb chops.
» Download the MP3 for this episode
Show Links:
San Francisco Street Safari - The Workshop
Shalimar Restaurant
» Get the show for free in iTunes
» Get the show for free using RSS
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July 11th, 2009
gothick_matt
 | 10:38 pm - Laziday
It's been a nice relaxing day. I needed some time off, so I lazed about this morning, then headed into town for some lunch and some shopping, then came back home, basically. I've done some laundry, I've watched some TV, and that's about as interesting as it's been.
I did try to go to the Bristol Wine and Food Festival, but it turned out to be £10 to get in. As I don't drink, and really my main plan had been to go there to have lunch and maybe buy a few things that took my fancy, £10 seemed a bit steep. I certainly wasn't alone; there were plenty of other people wandering back away from the ticket office, slightly surprised and mildly tutting.
I might have taken a punt on it if my £10 had let me go back in tomorrow for lunch, too, but they'd thought of that -- weekend tickets were £15.
I guess they've made a decision to keep out all but people who are definitely going to buy lots of stuff, which would make the £10 look fairly insignificant. As it is, that'll buy me a few lunches, and there are plenty of good places to get excellent food in walking distance that don't charge for entry -- St. Nicholas Markets springs to mind -- so I just couldn't justify it. Ah well.
So, I ended up getting take out from a coffee shop on Park Street and lying in the sun on Brandon Hill reading Seth Godin's Purple Cow. A good book, marred slightly by my not being American, and thus not recognising, or even understanding, some of the examples of marketing and products that he gives.
Anyway. So, apart from that, and putting a very few minor touches on that website for Ben's iPhone app that I've been working on for a week or two, a very lazy day.
Tomorrow I will either get my lounge looking slightly more like a lounge and less like a waiting room that someone's stacked some cardboard boxes in, or try to write a song. Possibly both...
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July 10th, 2009
topfloortips
| 03:00 pm - tfttf370 - Review “silhouette” assignment - Tech Guy
http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/2009/07/10/tfttf370-review-silhouette-assignment-tech-guy/ http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/?p=1039 Chris & Leo review images from the “silhouette” assignment
Show Links:
» Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy
»The TWiT netcast network
»Tech Guy flickr group
» Download the MP3 for this episode
» Get the show for free in iTunes
» Get the show for free using RSS
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jacint
 | 02:13 pm - Broadband
Due to the monthly fee being identical to my current package, I recently upgraded to ADSL 2+, with Annex M (which gives a much faster upload, but requires your exchange to have LLU). Like many upgraders have reported, I was getting a really crap download speed (~2Mbps), but a fantastic upload speed (~2Mbps). However, faced with a 2Gb download (for an IDE "upgrade"), I finally got 'round to calling my ISP and I was reminded why I chose Nildram in the first place - good customer support.
Dialling a number I had in my speed dial (back from when I moved house and had to phone often) got me straight through to a technical person who knew exactly what he was doing. Several profiles and tweaks later, I'm back to nearly the same download as I was before I regraded (I was getting 10Mbps down, but am now getting ~8Mbps down) and a steady 1.6Mbps up.
So all in all, a good switch. Now if only I can persuade my new router to route VPN traffic...
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redshira
| 01:28 am - oh and IF YOU ARE IN OR NEAR LONDON and you LIKE TO LAUGH
Go and see this thing! Comecidal Lolocaust! I would totally be going except, er, I live in the wrong country.
For the link-shy among you, here be the blurb und info (no photo for you ftb I has the dodgy interwebs):
The Jokerists
Comecidal Lolocaust
Fresh and tart stand-up comedy from the inimitable Rose Watt (slapstick ninja mistress), the incomparable Holly Burns (scientist and fashionista), and the irredeemable Del Des Anges (do not feed or disturb).
Please allow plenty of time for digestion: fairy cakes offered to survivors, suitable for 15+
* Sun 9 Aug 2009, 4:15pm The Camden Head
* Mon 10 Aug 2009, 4:15pm The Camden Head
* Tue 11 Aug 2009, 4:15pm The Camden Head
Dudes. I am not generally a stand-up comedy (ahahaha I just typed vomedy by mistake and if Del
is involved THAT MAY NOT BE TOO FAR FROM THE TRUTH) type of person, but I can personally vouch for Del being one of the funniest people I know, in whose company I am often to be found having trouble breathing due to her hilarity. By which I mean, if you are able to go to this thing and you do not, you are a fool. Seriously dudes, I even list her as one of my interests in my userinfo.
ILU DEL. IN THE FACE.
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July 9th, 2009
rufusuk
| 09:09 pm - Still Alive!
My Mum told me she was getting worried as none of my "tweets" have shown up since June 30th.
It turns out that the service I use to ship my "tweets" to LiveJournal has had a major server failure and is currently inoperable.
Don't worry, dear reader. I am still alive and well :)
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/bouncey.gif) bouncy
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redshira
 | 03:49 pm - OFFS HUMANS WHY MUST YOU BE SO FUCKING STUPID WHILE THINKING YOU'RE SO CLEVER
I nearly posted this in response to a STUPID post in a community but I decided to say it here instead so as to remove the likelihood of me going ASPLODE at the stupid smuggery and wilful ignorance.
I am so sick of this "well now we can manufacture sperm WE'LL NEVER NEED MEN AGAIN OMG" business and all that goes along with it. a) they haven't made sperm. They've made cells which are more like sperm than anything else they've made yet b) those people who can - ie most people - will still make babies the old-fashioned way because the majority of women like having sex with men, and will want to procreate with their men the way it's always been done.
WILL PEOPLE STOP BEING FUCKING RIDICULOUS. Saying "oh now the feminists will be happy because WE DON'T NEED MEN ANY MORE" is wrong in so many ways. Suggesting that the ability to create sperm without the presence of a man (which isn't possible yet no matter what the news is yelling) means women aren't going to bother with men any more is kind of like saying that the existence of nicely-shaped prosthetic legs is going to make people who don't like the shape of their perfectly-functioning legs cut them off and replace them.
ARGH STUPID PEOPLE GET OFF MY INTERNETS.
Speaking of my internets, it's unlikely I'll be able to get online until Monday because the Oxegen festival is happening across the road from me and ninety squillion people going HI I'M AT THE BEER TENT! NO, BEER TENT! will be using all the wotsit that we rely on for our dodgy mobile-modem connection.
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ahnlak
| 01:43 pm - C&W Meet Expectations
Unfortunately.
I received my "daily" update call from Demon at lunchtime - this is a creative use of the word "daily", but at least they're calling me which makes a change. It's also a creative use of the word "update", as until yesterday the status has remained at "well the engineer call is open but they haven't bothered to pick it up yet, I'll chase them".
Still, the C&W engineers have finally decided to read the call. And their response is to ask if the problem still exists.
"Yes", I say. "It is. Did they actually try changing anything?"
"Err." says the Demon man - I feel slightly sorry for him, but getting yelled at is the price you pay for being the customer contact. "No. But they noticed that the line isn't getting disconnected over the last few days, so they thought maybe it had fixed itself."
"No", I say, feeling a little like Ford Prefect in Hotblack Desiato's stuntship. "I just stopped fiddling with it."
"Oh. Well, I'll let them know and they can get right to work on it."
"Does that mean another week goes by before they ask if it's any better, then?"
"Oh no", he says, trotting out the same nonsense I've received every single time I've talked to Demon's helldesk since they offshored it. "I'm sure it be sorted very soon now. Definitely not another week. Umm. I can't give you an actual time. But I'm sure it will be soon."
I can tell this is going to go on forever, and I have this horrible feeling that when I ask for a MAC in a week's time, all hell is going to break loose because the bloody idiots have LLU'd me without asking, or indeed even telling me. So I try a different tack.
"Can't you just put it all back the way it was? You know, like two weeks ago before you 'upgraded' me?"
"No sir. That's not an option. We had to change the equipment in the exchange to upgrade you to this much faster service."
"How is this faster? I'd be better off with ISDN."
"Well yes sir, but once it's working you should be getting 12meg. At least."
"I don't need more speed. I never needed more speed. I need the speed I had."
"Sorry sir. I'm sure it will be fixed very soon."
Me too. My new line arrives on Monday.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/angry.gif) aggravated
Current Music: Sugarcubes
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July 8th, 2009
topfloortips
| 11:58 pm - tfttf369 Video - Scratched Lens - Tech Guy
http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/2009/07/09/tfttf369-scratched-lens-tech-guy/ http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/?p=1032 [See post to watch Flash video]
Watch in high quality (right click to save)
For a change, here’s a tech guy video episode. Are scratched lenses really that bad?
Show Links:
Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy
The TWiT netcast network
Tech Guy flickr group
» Get the show for free in iTunes
» Get the show for free using RSS
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gothick_matt
| 11:37 pm - Web design
( Why I've been a bit quiet for a couple of weeks )
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/bitospud/courier/black/tired.gif) tired
Current Music: New York City - Leadbelly
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