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Change Windows 10 default lock screen image via win registry LockScreenImage key change

Tuesday, September 21st, 2021

If you do work for a corporation on a Windows machine that is part of Windows Active Directory domain or a Microsoft 365 environment and your Domain admimistrator after some of the scheduled updates. Has enforced a Windows lock screen image change.
You might be surprised to have some annoying corporation logo picture shown as a default Lock Screen image on your computer on next reoboot. Perhaps for some people it doesn't matter but for as a person who seriously like customizations, and a valuer of
freedom having an enforced picture logo each time I press CTRL + L (To lock my computer) is really annoying.

The logical question hence was how to reverse my desired image as a default lock screen to enkoy. Some would enjoy some relaxing picture of a Woods, Cave or whatever Natural place landscape. I personally prefer simplicity so I simply use a simple purely black
background.

To do it you'll have anyways to have some kind of superuser access to the computer. At the company I'm epmloyeed, it is possible to temporary request Administrator access this is done via a software installed on the machine. So once I request it I become
Administratof of machine for 20 minutes. In that time I do used a 'Run as Administartor' command prompt cmd.exe and inside Windows registry do the following Registry change.

The first logical thing to do is to try to manually set the picture via:

Settings -> Lock Screen

But unfortunately as you can see in below screenshot, there was no way to change the LockScreen background image.

Windows-settings-lockscreen-screenshot

In Windows Registry Editor

I had to go to registry path

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\.]

And from there in create a new "String Value" key

"LockScreenImage"

so full registry key path should be equal to:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization\LockScreenImage]"

The value to set is:

C:\Users\a768839\Desktop\var-stuff\background\Desired-background-picture.jpg

windows-registry-change-lock-screen-background-picture-from-registry-screenshot

If you want to set a black background picture for LockScreen like me you can download my black background picture from here.

That's all press CTRL + L key combination and the black screen background lock screen picture will appear !

Hopefully the Domain admin, would not soon enforce some policty to update the registry keys or return your old registry database from backup if something crashs out with something strange to break just set configuration.

To test whether the setting will stay permanent after the next scheduled Windows PC update of policies enforced by the Active Directory (AD) sysadmin, run manually from CMD.EXE

C:\> gpupdate /force

The command will download latest policies from Windows Domain, try to lock the screen once again with Control + L, if the background picture is still there most likely the Picture change would stay for a long.
If you get again the corporation preset domain background instead, you're out of luck and will have to follow the same steps every, now and then after a domani policy update.

Enjoy your new smooth LockScreen Image 🙂

Tags: access, active directory, AD, admin, administrator, after, again, ALL, and, annoying, Anyways, background, Below, black, break, cave, change, change windows, default, screen

Tags: access, active directory, AD, admin, administrator, after, again, ALL, and, annoying, Anyways, background, Below, black, break, cave, change, change windows, default, screen
Posted in System Administration | No Comments »

The names of the Twelve apostles of Christ – Feast of the Twelve Glorious and Primal Apostles in Eastern Orthodox Church (30th of June)

Wednesday, June 30th, 2021

Roman_Domitilla-Katakomben_Fresko__Christus_und_die_12_Apostel__und_Christussymbol__Chi_Rho__1
Jesus and his Twelve Apostles, fresco with the Chi-Rho symbol ☧, Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome

One day after the June 29 the Feast of The Glorious and First among Apostles Peter and Paul on 30th of June according to so called new calendar in the Eastern Orthodox Church comes, the remembrace of Feast of the gathering of 12 Glorious apostles (Σύναξη των Αγίων Δώδεκα Αποστόλων).

The Secret Supper (Christ and the 12 Apostles iconographer Simon Ushakov y. 1685 (Jude the Iscariot the traitor without a halo)

"The names of the 12 Holy Apostles are: Simon (called Peter), Andrew his brother, Jacob the Zabedee and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Mathew (tax collectors), James, son of Alphaeus and Levi called (Thadeus), Simon The Canonite and Jude the Iscariot who has betrayed Christ"

(Gospel of Mathew 10:2-4)

13 When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: 14 Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, 15 Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, 16 Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

(Luke 6:13-16)

15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,)

16 Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.

17 For he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry.

18 Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

19 And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch as that field is called in their proper tongue, Aceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

20 For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.

21 Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, (Acts 1:15-26)

The Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles. Russian, 14th century, Moscow Museum.

"Jesus had other desciples as well that were seventeen and other circles of desciples around each of the pupils, however they have alwasys been considered less venerable as they did not been so close to Christ and did not understand so well the mysterios of Christ's teaching and did not persevere as mcuh as the twelve and the seventeen of desciples. Those had been been distinguished among the King, those who have been the closest people to the Teacher" (Saint John Chrysostomos)

In Constantinople Saint King Constantine ( y. 274 – 337 ), has built a famous Church dedicated to the 12 Apostles. In historian documents there is data for a first time the feast is celebrated in the V-th century.

While the memory of each apostle has a separate day in the Church calendar yearly circle, they 12 apostles are sharing the same honor, because the Holy Scriptures and the Tradition glorifious their high efforts for building the Church on top of the corner stone that is Jesus Christ himsef and for their perseverance to accept martyrdom for Christ, thus to accent this they're is this special feast the Gathering of the 12 Glorious Apostles on 30th of June. As the Holy Scriptures says they're a friends of God (John 15:14), and when the Son of Man (Jesus) sits on the glory of his power, they all are to sit on 12 thrones, to judge the 12 Hebrew tribes (Mathew 19:28).

In first centuries the Church has been feasting all the apostles together, Later she has included saint Apostle Paul, again the full list of names of the apostles are as follows:

1. Saint Apostle Peter the First Called (commemorated 29 June and 16 of January)

2. Saint apostle Andrew the First Called – as has been called by Christ together with Peter (30 November)

3. Saint Jacob the Zebedee (30 April)

4. Saint Apostle John the Zebedee – the evangelist (26 September and 8 May)

5. Saint Apostle Philip (14 November)

6. Saint apostle Bartholomew or Nathanael (11 June and 25 August)

7. Saint apostle Thomas (6 October)

8. Saint apostle Mathew – evangelist (16 November)

9. Saint Apostle Jacob – son of Alpheus 9 October)

10. Saint Apostle Jude – fleshly brother of Christ (son of Joseph), called also Thadeus and Levi (19 June)

11. Saint Apostle Mathew (Mathias) (9 August)

12. Saint Apostle Paul (Paul of Tarsus) (29 June)

The Church books define the feast day as the "Gathering of the Twelve", because this number of 12 apostles is initial and depics Christ essence of Completeness (as he is All in everything) Mathew (10:1-5)

Tags: about, after, again, ALL, and, another, Apostle, apostle thomas, Apostles, are, around, blood, books, brother, building, called, Chi, Christ, church, church books, desciples, feast, feast day, Glorious, holy scriptures, James, jesus christ, June, names, number, Saint Apostle Philip, twelve

ASCII Art studio – A powerful ASCII art editor for Windows / Playscii a cool looking text editor for Linux

Monday, June 28th, 2021

This post is just informative for Text Geeks who are in love with ASCII Art, it is a bit of rant as I will say nothing new, but I thought it might be of interest to some console maniac out there 🙂

ascii art studio aas program windows xp professional drawing program screenshot

While checking stuff on Internet I've stumbled on interesting ASCII arts freak software – >ASCII Art Studio. ASCII Art Studio is unfortunately needs licensing is not Free Software. But anyways, for anyone willing to draw pro ASCII art pictures it is a must see. Check it out;

Isn't it like a Plain Text pro Photoshop ? 🙂 Its a pity we don't have a Linux / BSD Release of this wonderful piece of software. I've tried with WINE (Windows Emulator) on Linux to make the Ascii Art Studio work but that was a fail. It seems only way to make it work is have Windows as a worst case install a Virtual Machine with VirtualBox / Vmware and run it inside if you don't have a Windows PC at hand.

Of course there are stuff on Linux to ascii art edit you can use if you want to have a native software to edit ASCIIs such as Playscii. Unfortunately Playscii is not an easy one to install and the software doesn't have a prepared rpm or deb binary you can easily roll on the OS and you have to manually build all required python modules and have a working version of python3 to be able to make it work.

I did not have much time to test to install it and since I faced issues with plascii install I just abandoned it. If some geek has some more time anyways I guess it is worse to give it a try below is 2 screenshots from PLAYSCII official download page.

playscii_shot1-official.

As you see authors of the open source playscii whose source is available via github choose to have an amazing looking ascii art text menus, though for daily ASCII art editing it is perhaps much more complicated to use than the simlistic ASCII Art Studio

playscii_shot2-official

There is other stuff for Linux to do ASCII Art files text edit like:
JaVE (this one I don't personally like because it is Java Based), Ascii Art Maker or Pablow Draw Linux (unfortunately this 2 ones are proprietary).

Tags: ALL, Amazing, and, Anyways, are, art, art editor, art files, Arts, Ascii, ascii art, available, based, Below, binary, bit, BSD, case, check, checking

Tags: ALL, Amazing, and, Anyways, are, art, art editor, art files, Arts, Ascii, ascii art, available, based, Below, binary, bit, BSD, case, check, checking
Posted in Curious Facts, Entertainment, Everyday Life, Rant | No Comments »

How to automate open xen Hypervisor Virtual Machines backups shell script

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2021

As a sysadmin that have my own Open Xen Debian Hypervisor running on a Lenovo ThinkServer few months ago due to a human error I managed to mess up one of my virtual machines and rebuild the Operating System from scratch and restore files service and MySQl data from backup that really pissed me of and this brought the need for having a decent Virtual Machine OpenXen backup solution I can implement on the Debian ( Buster) 10.10 running the free community Open Xen version 4.11.4+107-gef32c7afa2-1. The Hypervisor is a relative small one holding just 7 VM s:

HypervisorHost:~# xl list
Name ID Mem VCPUs State Time(s)
Domain-0 0 11102 24 r—– 214176.4
pcfrxenweb 11 12288 4 -b—- 247425.5
pcfrxen 12 16384 10 -b—- 1371621.4
windows7 20 4096 2 -b—- 97887.2
haproxy2 21 4096 2 -b—- 11806.9
jitsi-meet 22 2048 2 -b—- 12843.9
zabbix 23 2048 2 -b—- 20275.1
centos7 24 2040 2 -b—- 10898.2

HypervisorHost:~# xl list|grep -v 'Name ' |grep -v 'Domain-0' |wc -l
7

The backup strategy of the script is very simple to shutdown the running VM machine, make a copy with rsync to a backup location the image of each of the Virtual Machines in a bash shell loop for each virtual machine shown in output of xl command and backup to a preset local directory in my case this is /backups/ the backup of each virtual machine is produced within a separate backup directory with a respective timestamp. Backup VM .img files are produced in my case to mounted 2x external attached hard drives each of which is a 4 Terabyte Seagate Plus Backup (Storage). The original version of the script was made to be a slightly different by Zhiqiang Ma whose script I used for a template to come up with my xen VM backup solution. To prevent the Hypervisor's load the script is made to do it with a nice of (nice -n 10) this might be not required or you might want to modify it to better suit your needs. Below is the script itself you can fetch a copy of it /usr/sbin/xen_vm_backups.sh :

#!/bin/bash

# Author: Zhiqiang Ma (http://www.ericzma.com/)
# Modified to work with xl and OpenXen by Georgi Georgiev – https://pc-freak.net
# Original creation dateDec. 27, 2010
# Script takes all defined vms under xen_name_list and prepares backup of each
# after shutting down the machine prepares archive and copies archive in externally attached mounted /backup/disk1 HDD
# Latest update: 08.06.2021 G. Georgiev – hipo@pc-freak.net

mark_file=/backups/disk1/tmp/xen-bak-marker
log_file=/var/log/xen/backups/bak-$(date +%Y_%m_%d).log
err_log_file=/var/log/xen/backups/bak_err-$(date +%H_%M_%Y_%m_%d).log
xen_dir=/xen/domains
xen_vmconfig_dir=/etc/xen/
local_bak_dir=/backups/disk1/tmp
#bak_dir=xenbak@backup_host1:/lhome/xenbak
bak_dir=/backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_images/$(date +%Y_%m_%d)/xen/domains
#xen_name_list="haproxy2 pcfrxenweb jitsi-meet zabbix windows7 centos7 pcfrxenweb pcfrxen"
xen_name_list="windows7 haproxy2 jitsi-meet zabbix centos7"

if [ ! -d /var/log/xen/backups ]; then
echo mkdir -p /var/log/xen/backups
mkdir -p /var/log/xen/backups
fi

if [ ! -d $bak_dir ]; then
echo mkdir -p $bak_dir
mkdir -p $bak_dir

fi

# check whether bak runned last week
if [ -e $mark_file ] ; then
echo rm -f $mark_file
rm -f $mark_file
else
echo touch $mark_file
touch $mark_file
# exit 0
fi

# set std and stderr to log file
echo mv $log_file $log_file.old
mv $log_file $log_file.old
echo mv $err_log_file $err_log_file.old
mv $err_log_file $err_log_file.old
echo "exec 2> $err_log_file"
exec 2> $err_log_file
echo "exec > $log_file"
exec > $log_file

# check whether the VM is running
# We only backup running VMs

echo "*** Check alive VMs"

xen_name_list_tmp=""

for i in $xen_name_list
do
echo "/usr/sbin/xl list > /tmp/tmp-xen-list"
/usr/sbin/xl list > /tmp/tmp-xen-list
grepinlist=`grep $i" " /tmp/tmp-xen-list`;
if [[ “$grepinlist” == “” ]]
then
echo $i is not alive.
else
echo $i is alive.
xen_name_list_tmp=$xen_name_list_tmp" "$i
fi
done

xen_name_list=$xen_name_list_tmp

echo "Alive VM list:"

for i in $xen_name_list
do
echo $i
done

echo "End alive VM list."

###############################
date
echo "*** Backup starts"

###############################
date
echo "*** Copy VMs to local disk"

for i in $xen_name_list
do
date
echo "Shutdown $i"
echo /usr/sbin/xl shutdown $i
/usr/sbin/xl shutdown $i
if [ $? != ‘0’ ]; then
echo 'Not Xen Disk image destroying …';
/usr/sbin/xl destroy $i
fi
sleep 30

echo "Copy $i"
echo "Copy to local_bak_dir: $local_bak_dir"
echo /usr/bin/rsync -avhW –no-compress –progress $xen_dir/$i/{disk.img,swap.img} $local_bak_dir/$i/
time /usr/bin/rsync -avhW –no-compress –progress $xen_dir/$i/{disk.img,swap.img} $local_bak_dir/$i/
echo /usr/bin/rsync -avhW –no-compress –progress $xen_vmconfig_dir/$i.cfg $local_bak_dir/$i.cfg
time /usr/bin/rsync -avhW –no-compress –progress $xen_vmconfig_dir/$i.cfg $local_bak_dir/$i.cfg
date
echo "Create $i"
# with vmmem=1024"
# /usr/sbin/xm create $xen_dir/vm.run vmid=$i vmmem=1024
echo /usr/sbin/xl create $xen_vmconfig_dir/$i.cfg
/usr/sbin/xl create $xen_vmconfig_dir/$i.cfg
## Uncomment if you need to copy with scp somewhere
### echo scp $log_file $bak_dir/xen-bak-111.log
### echo /usr/bin/rsync -avhW –no-compress –progress $log_file $local_bak_dir/xen-bak-111.log
done

####################
date
echo "*** Compress local bak vmdisks"

for i in $xen_name_list
do
date
echo "Compress $i"
echo tar -z -cfv $bak_dir/$i-$(date +%Y_%m_%d).tar.gz $local_bak_dir/$i-$(date +%Y_%m_%d) $local_bak_dir/$i.cfg
time nice -n 10 tar -z -cvf $bak_dir/$i-$(date +%Y_%m_%d).tar.gz $local_bak_dir/$i/ $local_bak_dir/$i.cfg
echo rm -vf $local_bak_dir/$i/ $local_bak_dir/$i.cfg
rm -vrf $local_bak_dir/$i/{disk.img,swap.img} $local_bak_dir/$i.cfg
done

####################
date
echo "*** Copy local bak vmdisks to remote machines"

copy_remote () {
for i in $xen_name_list
do
date
echo "Copy to remote: vm$i"
echo scp $local_bak_dir/vmdisk0-$i.tar.gz $bak_dir/vmdisk0-$i.tar.gz
done

#####################
date
echo "Backup finishes"
echo scp $log_file $bak_dir/bak-111.log

}

date
echo "Backup finished"

Things to configure before start using using the script to prepare backups for you is the xen_name_list variable

# directory skele where to store already prepared backups
bak_dir=/backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_images/$(date +%Y_%m_%d)/xen/domains
# The configurations of the running Xen Virtual Machines
xen_vmconfig_dir=/etc/xen/
# a local directory that will be used for backup creation ( I prefer this directory to be on the backup storage location )
local_bak_dir=/backups/disk1/tmp
#bak_dir=xenbak@backup_host1:/lhome/xenbak
# the structure on the backup location where daily .img backups with be produced with rsync and tar archived with bzip2
bak_dir=/backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_images/$(date +%Y_%m_%d)/xen/domains
# list here all the Virtual Machines you want the script to create backups of
xen_name_list="windows7 haproxy2 jitsi-meet zabbix centos7"

If you need the script to copy the backup of Virtual Machine images to external Backup server via Local Lan or to a remote Internet located encrypted connection with a passwordless ssh authentication (once you have prepared the Machines to automatically login without pass over ssh with specific user), you can uncomment the script commented section to adapt it to copy to remote host.

Once you have placed at place /usr/sbin/xen_vm_backups.sh use a cronjob to prepare backups on a regular basis, for example I use the following cron to produce a working copy of the Virtual Machine backups everyday.

# crontab -u root -l

# create windows7 haproxy2 jitsi-meet centos7 zabbix VMs backup once a month
00 06 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 * * /usr/sbin/xen_vm_backups.sh 2>&1 >/dev/null

I do clean up virtual machines Images that are older than 95 days with another cron job

# crontab -u root -l

# Delete xen image files older than 95 days to clear up space from backup HDD
45 06 17 * * find /backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_images* -type f -mtime +95 -exec rm {} \; 2>&1 >/dev/null

#### Delete xen config backups older than 1 year+3 days (368 days)
45 06 17 * * find /backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_config* -type f -mtime +368 -exec rm {} \; 2>&1 >/dev/null

# Delete xen image files older than 95 days to clear up space from backup HDD
45 06 17 * * find /backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_images* -type f -mtime +95 -exec rm {} \; 2>&1 >/dev/null

#### Delete xen config backups older than 1 year+3 days (368 days)
45 06 17 * * find /backups/disk1/xen-backups/xen_config* -type f -mtime +368 -exec rm {} \; 2>&1 >/dev/null

Tags: after, Alive, ALL, amp, and, another, archive, are, authentication, automate, backups, bak, cfg, configure, echo, How to, hypervisor, Hypervisor Virtual Machines, machines, sbin, script, Shell, shell script, shutdown, Virtual, vm
Posted in Backups, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Package Management, System Administration, Various, Virtual Machines | No Comments »

Happy Ascension of Christ ! – The iconography of Ascension symbolism in the Church explained

Friday, June 11th, 2021

Ascension-Christ-held-on-halo-Angels-Vaznesenie_village-Seslavci_Bulgaria-16-17v

Icon of Ascension held in Church of Saint Great Martyr Georgi in the ex-village Seslavci (now suburb of Sofia)

The ascension of Christ is a feast that is a completion of human salvation. All the events connected to it the Birth of Christ (Nativity), the Crucifixion suffering the death and the Resurrection finalize itself with the Ascension. The Eastern Orthodox Church is famous for having a multitude of Images of major Biblical events, this ancient tradition is mostly present in Eastern Orthodox Churches and Oriental Orthodox Churches (Coptic Church, Syriac Church) etc.

The iconography of this holiday, as accepted by the Orthodox Church, is one of the most ancient iconographies of church holidays. The earliest but already established images of the Ascension date back to the 5th-6th centuries (the ampoules of Monza and the Gospel of Ravula for reference as one of the oldest we know). The iconography of this holiday has remained unchanged to this day, except for some minor details.

Ascension of Christ and Noli me tangere, c. 400, ivory, Milan or Rome, now in Munich.

"Having fulfilled Your providence for us and united the earthly with the heavenly, you have ascended to glory, Christ God, without even slightly separating from us, but abiding (with us) relentlessly, calling to those who love You. : "I am with you and no one can resist you ."
(Ascension feast Kondak).

Expressing above troparion deepness significance, the iconographers often depicted the Ascension as a typical painting on the domes of ancient Basyllicas / Churches.

The first look on the icon marks our eyes on the Mother of God Theotokos, the Angels and Apostles, while the main actor the Savior figure Himself who is depicted ascending is painted smaller and for the modern observer it looks like he is just on the background and of lower significance But this exact external discrepancy is painted on a purpose in order to correspond exactly to the holy scriptures. Actually reading in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles, the Ascension story we are left with the same impression; only few words are devoted to the glorios fact of the Ascension, and all the evangelists attention describing the event focuses instead on the importance of the Church in the world and its connection and relation to God. The back-retrospective of Christ The Savior (as a distant person ascending in Heavents), tends to show the emerce highness of Christ when compared to the most holy of the Earthly the Theotokos, The Apostles and the saints, it also tends to explain the unexplainable by words and for imagination the ascension of Christ with his Glorified Eternal body up to heaven of Heavens and the sitting on the right hand of God. The more detailed description of Ascension is found in the Book of (Apostle) Acts, it gives us the factual data albeit still incomplete underlying the importance of the Ascension.
The center of gravity in the narration of the Holy Scriptures and the stemming iconography falls not on the fact of the Ascension but on the signifance of the consequences of the Glorious unseen in the human history event for the Church and the world.

Ascension in the Rabbula Gospels, 6th century one of oldest icons of the Feast

In fact, when we read the story of the Lord's Ascension in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles, we are left with the same impression: only a few words are devoted to the very fact of the Ascension, and all the evangelists' attention is focused on something else. which establish and determine the influence and significance of the Church in the world, its connection and relation to God. A more detailed description of the Ascension can be found in the book of Acts. This description, together with the account of the Gospel of Luke, gives us those factual data, albeit incomplete, which underlie the Orthodox iconography of Christ's Ascension. The center of gravity in the narration of the Holy Scriptures, and with it in the Orthodox iconography, falls not on the very fact of the Ascension, but on the significance and the consequences it has for the Church and the world.

Olivet and the Chapel of the Ascension (The Mount of Olives)

The traditional site of the Ascension is Mount Olivet (the "Mount of Olives"), on which the village of Bethany sits. Before the conversion of Constantine in 312 AD, early Christians honored the Ascension of Christ in a cave on the Mount, and by 384 the Ascension was venerated on the present site, uphill from the cave.

Close-up of the Rock of the Ascension inside the Ascension edicule

Round the year 390 a wealthy Roman woman named Poimenia financed construction of the original church called "Eleona Basilica" (elaion in Greek means "olive garden", from elaia "olive tree", and has an oft-mentioned similarity to eleos meaning "mercy"). This church was destroyed by Sassanid Persians in 614. It was subsequently rebuilt, destroyed, and rebuilt again by the Crusaders. This final church was later destroyed by Muslims, leaving only a 12×12 meter octagonal structure (called a martyrium—"memorial"—or "Edicule") that remains to this day.

Jerusalem-mt-olives-ascension-edicule-the-temple-Church-onsite-of-Christ-Ascension

The Ascension edicule site in Jerusalem

The site was ultimately acquired by two emissaries of Saladin in the year 1198 and has remained in the possession of the Islamic Waqf of Jerusalem ever since. The Russian Orthodox Church also maintains a convent of the Ascension on the top of the Mount of Olives.

According to the testimony of the Bible's Book of Acts 1:12, the Lord's Ascension took place on the Mount of Olives, that is a well known pilgrimage place in Jerusalem even to this date.

Hence the icon depicts the event either at the very top of the mountain or among a mountain landscape. To accent that the mountain was the mount of olives, olive trees are sometimes painted. In accordance with the worship of the feast, the Savior is depicted ascending in glory ("Thou hast ascended into glory, Christ, our God …" – derived from the troparion of the feast). Some icons depics the Savior sitting on an ornate throne based on Church sung ("When God was carried on the throne of glory … "(Verse, voice 1 from the "praiseworthy').

Christ-ascended-with-two-angels-Vyznesenie

The glory of Christ is shown moving on a oval, rounded Halo consisting of several concentric circles – symbolizing not only the material skies we know but also the spiritual skies.

This symbolism shows that the ascending Savior is beyond the dimensions of earthly existence and thus the Ascension acquires a timeless character, which in turn gives a very special meaning to the details, taking them out of the narrow confines of the historical event.

The role of the Angels here is different and varies depending on the liturgical texts on which the image of the icon is based. For example, in some icons the Angels do not carry the halo "platform" with the savior, but turn to the Savior with a prayerful gesture, expressing their astonishment at seeing "how human nature rises with Him" (from the canon of the feast, song 3). In other icons agels are depicted trumpeting, in accordance with the words of the antiphon sung: "God ascended with an exclamation, the Lord ascended with a trumpet sound" (Antiphon, verse 4, Ps 46: 6).

Sometimes in the upper part of the icon, in the halo, the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven are seen opened before the ascending King of glory – symbolism according to the words of Psalm 23, "repeated in the worship: gates, and the King of glory will enter. " All these details, depicted on the icon, indicate the fulfillment of the prophecy of St. King David for the Ascension of the Lord.The role of the Angels here is different and varies depending on the liturgical texts on which the image of the icon is based. For example, in some icons the Angels do not carry the halo, but turn to the Savior with a prayerful gesture, expressing their astonishment at seeing "how human nature rises with Him" (from the canon of the feast, song 3). In other icons they are depicted trumpeting, in accordance with the words of the antiphon: "God ascended with an exclamation, the Lord ascended with a trumpet sound" (Antiphon, verse 4, Ps 46: 6).

In the foreground of the icon are depicted in the center the Mother of God between two groups of Apostles and two Angels. Here the role of the Angels is already different: they are messengers of the Divine providence, as we know from the book of Acts of the Holy Apostles (Acts 1: 10-11).

The Ascension of the Lord was attended by the Mother of God, which is definitely affirmed by Church Tradition, through the liturgical service texts, for example in the Troparion of the Mother of God, of the ninth song from the canon of the feast: St. The Mother of God has a very special place in the icon of the Ascension. Virgin Mary is depicted just below the ascending Savior, as she seems to be the center of the whole composition in order to depict the Church belief that the Mother of God is even higher in spiritual rank than anges and archangels. Her silhouette, extremely clean, light and clear, stands out sharply against the white robes of the Angels. Her stern, motionless figure contrasts even more sharply with the Apostles gesturing briskly on both sides of her. The distinctiveness of Her image is often emphasized by the foot on which She stands and which makes her central position stand out even more.

This whole group, together with the Holy Mother of God, represents the Church of Christ acquired through the blood of the Savior. Left in the earth on the day of the Ascension, the Church receives the fullness of her existence through the promised descent of the Holy Spirit on the forthcoming feast of Pentecost just 10 days following the Feast of the ascension which by the way is one of the 12 Main Church feasts in the early cycle.

Ascension-Drago-sacramentary-320px-Enluminure_Drogon_c

Drogo Sacramentary c. 850 Carolingian illuminated manuscript

The connection of the Ascension with Pentecost is revealed in the Savior's words: "If I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; if I go away, I will send Him to you" (John 16: 7). This connection between the Ascension of the deified human flesh of the Savior and the forthcoming Pentecost, which is the beginning of the deification of man through the descent of St. Spirit is also emphasized by the whole worship of the holiday. Placing the foreground in the icon of the group of saints, apostles and the the Theotokos is depicting the Church, makes clear expression of the meaning assigned to its foundation according to the Holy Scriptures in the last commandments of the Savior.

The fact the whole Church is meant here, and not only the persons historically present at the Ascension icon, is evident both from the presence of St. Paul the Apostle (to the right of the spectator, to the Mother of God), who historically could not attends the Ascension together with the other apostles, and from the special place of the Mother of God in the icon of the feast. The Mother of God and "Mother of the Church", the One, Who has received God in Herself the Theotokos has become a temple of the incarnate Word, here personifies the Church – the body of Christ, the Head of which is the ascending Christ as Ephesians reads ("And set Him above all the Head of the Church, which is His body, fullness to Him who fulfills all things in all things "(Eph. 1: 22-23).

That's why, showing the personification of the Church, the Holy Mother of God is depicted on the icon immediately below the ascending Christ and in this way it seems that they complement each other.

The gesture of Her hands corresponds to her importance. In some icons it is a gesture of Oranta – an ancient prayer gesture with raised hands, expressing its role and the role of the Church personified by it in relation to God, the prayer to Him and the intercession for the world daily by the Church. On other icons, Theotokos is depicted in gesture of confession, expressing the role of the Church in relation to the world. In this case, the Blessed Virgin holds her hands in front of her, palms facing forward, as depicted in the iconography of the martyrs-confessors. Her strict immobility seems to accent the immutability of the God-revealed truth, whose guardian is the Church.

The movements of the whole group from the foreground of the icon, the gestures of the angels and the apostles, the direction of their gazes, the postures – everything is turned upwards, to the Source of the life of the Church, its Head residing in the heavens. Thus, the image conveys the call with which the Church addresses her children on this day:
"Come, let us rise and raise our eyes and thoughts, let us gather our feelings …, let us stand mentally on the Mount of Olives and look to The Savior, Who floats on the clouds … "
(Ikos of the Kontakion, voice six.).

With these words, the Church urges believers to join the Apostles in their urge to ascend to Christ, as St. Pope Leo the Great says:
"Christ's Ascension is also our ascension, because where the Head is crowned with glory, there is hope for the body."

(St. Leo the Great, Word 73 (Word 61. dedicated to the Feast of the Ascension)

Ascension_Rabbula_gospels_antiochian_6v.

Ascension of Christ Syriac Gospel of Monk Rabbula, VI century Antiochian Church
The Savior, ascending, leaving the earthly world with His Body, does not leave it with His Deity, does not separate from His property – the Church, which He acquired with His blood – "does not separate at all, but abides in it"
(Kontakion). on the holiday).

"And behold, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20) – These words of the Savior apply both to the entire history of the Church and to every single moment of its existence, as well as to the life of each of its members until the very Second Coming of the Lord. The icon conveys this connection of Him with the Church, always depicting Him blessing with the right hand (very rarely He is depicted blessing with both hands ), and usually in the left hand holding a Gospel or scroll – a symbol of teaching and preaching. He ascends by making sign of benediction, not after blessing His disciples, according to the words of the Gospel: on the Church after His Ascension. Depicting Him benedicting, the icon clearly shows that even after the Ascension He remains a source of blessing for the Apostles, and through them for their successors and all those who will bless them.

Ascension_of-Christ-from_Vasilyevskiy_chin_15th_c_GTG-Andrei-Rublev-year-1408AD

Ascension of Christ by the most famous medieval iconographer Andrei Rublev year circa 1408 A.D.

But the icon of the Ascension has other meanings as well. The two angels, standing behind the Holy Mother of God and pointing to the Savior, announced to the Apostles that the ascended Christ would come again in glory: "This Jesus, who ascended from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go to heaven ” (Acts 1:11). In the Acts of the Apostles, as St. John Chrysostom says, "two angels are mentioned, because indeed there were two angels, and they were so, because only the testimony of two is unquestionable (2 Cor. 13: 1) (St. John Chrysostom) – A Word on the Acts of the Apostles, parat3).

Depicting the fact of the Ascension of the Savior and the teaching of the Church, the icon of the Ascension is at the same time a prophetic icon, an icon displaying how the Second and glorious Coming of Jesus Christ is to happen. Therefore, on the icons of the Last Judgment He is depicted as on the icons of the Ascension, but no longer as a Redeemer, but as a Judge of the universe.

In this prophetic sense, the group of Apostles with the Mother of God (in the center of the icon) depict the Church awaiting the Second Coming of Christ. So, as we said, the icon of the Ascension is prophetic, it is an icon of the Second Coming, because it reveals to us a spectacular picture, beginning with the Old Testament and ending with the end of world history.

It should be noted that despite the versatile content of the icon "Ascension", its distinctive feature is the extraordinary tightness and monumentality of its composition.

The iconography in the West has been pushed away due to the reformatoins in the Roman Catholic Church and the style of iconography has been severely changed to be more realistic and fleshly not according to the ancient Church tradition that the icon should be "passionless". The renessance and the Protestant reformation, who in pratice killed icon veneration in the west put an end to the old beautiful ancient Church iconography of the Ascension.

Rembrandt van Rijn Ascension of Christ painting y. 1636 A.D.

Ascension – Dosso Dossi (16h century) painting

Ascension of Christ Giotto year 1304 – 1306 Scrovegni chapel Padua-Italy

As you see in Catholic tradition after the Great Schism, the deviations from the old Church tradition is already seenable even in early western iconographists as Giotto in 13th century, the back-retrospective is exchanged, the center of the picture becomes Christ (displayng already the erroneous Roman-Catholic Dogma teaching the Pope as being a vicar of Christ – in catholicism they believe even to this day The Pope is Earthly representative of Christ) as you see the meaning that the Chruch is the focal point has exchanged.

Artcile is a Translation from Leonid Uspensky From the book. "Theology of the Icon" with minor inclusions (by G. Georgiev – back-retrospective explanation, and ratio over western iconography etc.)
Iconographic sources: pravoslavieto.com / wikipedia / orthodoxwiki and public Internet resources

N.B. Léonid Alexandrovich Ouspensky (1902–1987) was a famous Russian painter and art historian emigration who spend most of his life in French

Tags: accordance, Account, actor, acts of the apostles, AD, addresses, after, again, against, ALL, ancient tradition, and, Andrei Rublev, antiphon, Apostle, Apostles, are, art, ascension, ascension of christ, attention, Christ, church, Happy, iconography, symbolism

Saint Georgi of Sofia “the Newest” Bulgarian Confessor Christian saint martyred 1534 AD during reign of Turkish Sultan Selim in Medieval Serdika (Sofia)

Tuesday, June 1st, 2021

Saint-Martyr-George-of-Sofia-Georgi-Sofijski-in-traditional-wear-kalpak

Troparion, voice 4
With a soul wounded by the love of your God, the wise George the Glorious, he preached to the ungodly, Christ God, trampled with his feeth, the Turkish heresy; and when he adorned himself with the crown of martyrdom, you ascended to the heavenly multitudes: ask Christ God to preserve your homeland, this city (Sofia) and the people who always worship your deeds.

On 26-th of May the Bulgarian Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of one of the great Bulgarian Martyr saints Saint Georgi the Newest.
С~тый Геԝ̀ргїй Софїѝскїй Новѣ̀йшїй) St. Georgi (The Bulgarian equivalent name of George) is one of the 3 saints holding the name Georgi which has confessed Christianity refused to accept islam and accepted Martyrdom for Christ in period of 1396 till year 1530 and one of the 9 famous Sofia city saints. Saint Georgi of Sofia the Newest was named after the highly venerated in Bulgarian just like in whole Christian world saint George.

saint-Georgi-Sofijski-saint-great-martyr-George-and-The-Mother-of-God-iconostasis

St. Georgi was born in the city of Medieval Sofia (Sredetz), fortress of Serdika today’s Sofia in a family of Ivan and Maria – a wealthy and society recognized family of that time. He has born after a fervent and lengthly prayers of his parents who couldn’t have children for a long time and has been given a kid by the prayers of Saint Great Martyr George
It is important to say Georgi (the newest) celebrated on 26-th of May is a different saint from St. Georgi called “the new” whose memory in the Church is commemorated on 11-th of February.

Miracle making icon of saint Georgi Sofiyski (currently in the Church in yard of Alexandrovska Hospital Sofia)

The young Georgi quickly learned to write and read, a skills that only the most educated people usually coming from noble families could do. His favourite activity
in his free time when he was not in help of his parents was reading the Holy Scriptures.
He was grown by his parents in Christian goodness and fervency for the Christian faith.

Aged 25 he orphaned as his beloved father passed away to Christ. Georgi posessesed an extraordinary beauty, sharp mind and virtues, seeing the young man in his grief the local Turkish authorities tried as they usually do to attract the youngster to the islamic faith to make their way to interact with Georgi and do their business easier and most importantly have Georgi in their auhotirities congregation consisting only of people belonging to the islam as it was up to the Ottoman Turkish consistution law of the day.

To attract Georgi, turks first tried with hypocritical kindness and a care for the young to help him raise in the power of authorities of the city, not succeeding with that they have, they have forcefully wrapper the Muslim turban on his head and proclaimed him officially Muslim. Feeling offended by the ungodly deed of this enemies of Christ, immediately the saint throw the imposed turban on the ground and trampled on it.
The enraged muslim crowd seing his public offence for the prophet Muhammed handed him over to the Qadi in the court.

Neither the seductive promises of high office nor the cruel tortures could break the unshakable firmness of his Christian faith. The judge ordered that his body be cut into strips from head to toe and that the wounds received be scorched with dirty candles, which made the martyr’s body so hot that his face could not be seen. But all efforts were in vain.

The final verdict of the judge followed – Georgi to be hanged on the main barn in the city of Sofia, where there was a furnace for melting iron and copper ore. The execution command also stated that his body should remain on the gallows for three days in order to begin to decay, so that the faith of the Christians in the incorruptible relics of the saints and in the resurrection of the dead to be refuted and hence disgrace christianity. However, exhausted from his suffering mrtr. Georgi died at the hands of the executioners before they managed to hang him. To fulfill the command turks, anyhow hung him on a rope to show the sentence has been successfully carried out.

For three days the body hung on the gallows without any sign of decomposition, and on the contrary, an unusual fragrance of the holy relics of the martyr wafted through the barn. His mother sat under the gallows and grieving his beloved son hugged her son’s legs, staying next three three days to her son. The hanging took place on May 26, 1530 (according to other document sources in 1534). Thus on 26th of may the Church set a service in memoriam.

Ancient-Church-ROtonda-St-George-Sofia-Bulgaria

5-th Century Church of Rotonda St. George Centre of Sofia

The-Grave-of-Saint-Georgi-Sofiyski-Grobat-na-sv-Georgi-nai-novi

Saint Georgi Sofiyski / Saint George of Sofia the Newest grave near Rotonda Church Saint George in City Center of Sofia, Bulgari

After the expiration of the sentence, the kadi handed over the body of the martyr to be buried in a Christian way, and the burial was solemnly performed by the then Metropolitan of Sofia Jeremiah in the church “St. the great martyr George the Victorious ”. Now these relics are in obscurity. The mother of the martyr died on the 40th day of George’s death and was buried at her son’s feet.

These events took place during the reign of Sultan Suleiman I Kanuni (the Legislator) also known as Suleiman the Magnificent. This “Golden Age” for the Ottoman Empire was a time of unheard of atrocities against Christians in the territory of the empire and very difficult times for the Bulgarian people. The reign of Suleiman I and his father Selim I was a time of obscurantism and severe persecution of the Christian population, a time during which many Christian new martyrs on Balkans had the courage to defend their faith.

The capture, trial and torture of St. George of Sofia The latest took place near the then Sofia. Today the place is located in the yard of the famous Alexandrovska Hospital which was a King’s hospital during the times of Kingdom of Bulgaria after liberation took place from the Turks in 1878 y.. The exact location where martyrdom occured is between street St. Georgi Sofiyski ”and“ Pencho Slaveykov ”Blvd.

There was a large stone cross with an inscription on the site, which a few years after 1944, due to the risk of being destroyed, was collected by Sofia priests and is still preserved in the altar of the church “St. Georgi Pobedonosets ”on Blvd. Partriarch Euthymius”. Until the 1940s, a liturgical procession was held from the place of death of the saint to the Rotunda on May 26.
Nowadays happily, the old Lithia tradition is being renewed and a small Lithia is conducted by Bulgarian Orthodox Christian clergy and layman.

In the garden next to the building of the Second Surgical Clinic there was a stone cross, which indicated the place and history of the martyrdom of the saint, and today a temple was built in honor of the saint.

Church-of-saint-Georgi-Sofijski-in-Alexandrovska-hospital-Sofia-Bulgaria-the-place-of-martyrdom-of-saint-Georgi-Sofijski
source: Lives of the Saints. Synodal Publishing House, Sofia, 1991, edited by Parthenius, Bishop of Lefkada and Archimandrite Dr. Athanasius (Bonchev).

Saint_Georgi-naj-novi_Sofijski

HOLY MARTYR GEORGE OF SOFIA THE NEWEST, PRAY GOD FOR US!

Tags: AD, after, against, age, ALL, and, ANY, Anyhow, are, balkans, Begin, beloved son, body, city, com, during, faith, Georgi Sofiyski, Islam, long time, martyr, martyrdom, muslim faith, org, php, place, reading, rejection, saint, today, www

How to Install and Play old Arcade Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator Games on Linux in 2021 with xmame and GXMame GUI Frontend

Friday, May 14th, 2021

mame-multiple-arcade-machine-emulator
I've earlier blogged on how to install and play old arcade games with xmame compiled from source on the now old Debian 7 Linux under the article Install xmame from source on Debian Linux 7.0 (Wheezy) to play for better MAME (Arcade Games Emulation)
as well article on using the newer version of MAME emulator instead of xmame under the article Playing Arcade old school games on Debian Linux as well as how to make the MAME emulator work with a joystick see my previous How to configure Joystick ( Gamepad ) on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint GNU / Linux easily.

Since I have preinstalled my notebook with fresh Debian 10 Buster, for a long time I did not have the time as well as desire to play my favourite games of the youth to name a few this is Xain'd Sleena / Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993) / the Punisher (1993) / Captain Commando (1991) / Super Mario / Contra / Final Fight etc. and rest of the the SEGA Mega Drive / GameBoy / Nintendo / Terminator game (fake clone of nintendo) and other killing Arcade Classics of the late 90s and early year 2000, which we played on a public houses on a game cabinets with a joysticks.
Hence I tried to reproduce some of my articles just as of 2021 to see whether still we can get a nice playable MAME emulator on Linux with a Graphical GUI for Mate or GNOME. And it seems using a straight mame out of Debian standard repositories did not work with some of the more sophisticated ROM .zip files from the nices such as Punisher or XSLEENA.zip, this is how this article got born in an attempt to give a way for such old school game freaks as me to be able to play there favorite games of the youth.

Below is the few steps adapted mostly from above articles with some head banging and loosing multiple hours wondering until I finally got a working XMAME ROM emulator with the simple but working GXMAME graphical frontend for M.A.M.E..

To compile xmame with joystick support be it analog or whatever joystick you have to use a Makefile like below

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103-Makefile-for-joystick

Copy it on your PC and remove it to Makefile in the xmame-0.103 source dir:

# cd /usr/local/src/xmame-0.103

I have to install all the necessery package dependencies development header files, some of which are mentioned in the beginning of post articles and some of which I had to install manually, such as the preset Debian meta-package build-essentials Things to install on newly installed GNU / Linux (My favourite must have Linux text and GUI programs missing in fresh Linux installs), just to mention a few I remember had to install based on some compilation errors:

# apt-get install build-essential
# apt-get install –yes zlib1g-dev
# apt-get install –yes libexpat1-dev
# apt-get install –yes libghc-x11-dev
# apt-get install –yes x11proto-video-dev
# apt-get install –yes libxv-dev
# apt-get install libxext6
# apt-get install libxext6-dev
# apt-get install libxext-dev
# apt-get install libjpeg62-turbo-dev
# apt-get install libxinerama-dev
# apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
# apt-get install syslog-ng-dev
# apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev

If I'm missing some package necessery here you will have to find it yourself based on the *.h file produced as error during compile you should look it up with a cmd like:

# apt-file search glib2.h

And install it further.

You will need to edit Makefile or take and straight use or if necessery adapt an already prepared Makefile for my purpose:

# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103-Makefile-for-joystick;
# mv https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103-Makefile-for-joystick Makefile
# make && make install

Some .zip roms does not properly work with the newer mame you need to instead use xmame ..

Below is the version I use on Debian 10 as of May 2021 year.

hipo@jeremiah:/usr/local/src$ xmame –version
GLINFO: loaded OpenGL library libGL.so!
GLINFO: loaded GLU library libGLU.so!
xmame (x11) version 0.103 (May 13 2021)

To make the joystick work in xmame you will need to have a preset of modules loaded on the Linux for my old Genius joystick this is what works.

hipo@jeremiah:~/Games$ cat /etc/modules
# /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.
#
# This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded
# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with "#" are ignored.
snd-seq
3c59x
snd-emu10k1
snd-pcm-oss
snd-mixer-oss
snd-seq-oss
joydev
ns558
sidewinder
gameport
analog
adi
pcigame
iforce
evdev
usbhid

Fill in your joystick module there and make sure you manually load each one of the modules with modprobe command.
Next calibrate the joystick with some tool like jktest-gtk

If you need a good frontend for MATE / GNOME for xmame try gxmame. It is a real pain in the ass to configure, note that the only working version of xmame with good configuration as well as gxmame with a game list that is prebuild.
If you need xmame-0.103.tar.bz2 exact xmame version I'm using thethe archive is on:

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-0.103.tar.bz2
An old bundle of both gxmame and xmamerc configs is here

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame.tar.gz

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-config-for-joystick-hipo.tar.gz
For example my old working version of xmame ~/.xmame is here https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-config-for-joystick-hipo.tar.gz

Configuration of gxmame (even though it has has a GUI for configuring is below:

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/gxmame.tar.gz

xmamerc sample working file is here

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmamerc

My newest current version as of Debian 10 Squeeze of xmame and gxmame is below:

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/gxmame-config-newest_may_2021.tar.gz

https://www.pc-freak.net/files/xmame-config-newest_may_2021.tar.gz

Note that my rom files and stuff is located and configured in neewst configs to be under /home/hipo/Games/roms/ if your location is others grep it in .xmame/* and .gxmame/* files and set the correct PATH locations.

A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE is not to use the stable version of GXMAME even though it worked in 2003 fine as the project is abandoned and unsupported as of 2021 the latest downloadable stable gxmame file on Sourceforge gxmame-0.34b website is not working correctly (even though it compiles fine).
You have to compile and use instead the newer version gxmame-0.35beta1.

If you want to use gxmame with a joystick you need to compile it with the respective option:

root@jeremiah:/usr/local/src/gxmame-0.35beta1# ./configure –enable-joystick
…

gxmame 0.35beta1

Print debugging messages…… : no
Joystick support………….. : yes

GXMame will be installed in /usr/local/bin.
Warning: You have an old copy of gxmame at /usr/local/bin/gxmame.

configure complete, now type 'make'

To install compiled binaries do the usual:

# make && make install

gxmame binary should be installed under /usr/local/bin/gxmame once launched you should get the shiny gxmame GUI.

gxmame-screenshot-debian-10-gnu-linux-mate-desktop

Perhaps there was other stuff I've done in the process I forgot to document here, so if you try to follow my guide and something does not work please tell me what I'm missing and you can't handle it either contact me.

The guide is for Debian Linux but should work on other .Deb based Linux distros such as Ubuntu / Linux Mint etc.

To enjoy my 4GB present of ROM files containing many of best well known M.A.M.E. ARCADE GAMES check archive here. Note that this collection was downloaded on the Internet and I do not hold any responsibility of the archive. If it contains files with any copyright infringment this is to be on your own.

Tags: ALL, amp, analog, and, ANY, apt-get, arcade, Arcade Games Linux, Below, debian linux, errors, gxmame, How to, linux?, net, old arcade games, pc-freak, purpose, tar, xmame

Tags: ALL, amp, analog, and, ANY, apt-get, arcade, Arcade Games Linux, Below, debian linux, errors, gxmame, How to, linux?, net, old arcade games, pc-freak, purpose, tar, xmame
Posted in Arcade Games, Everyday Life, Games, Games Linux | 1 Comment »

Christ is Risen – Truly He is Risen – Happy Easter !

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

admin

One more year the Holy Fire has descended and we have been blessed to great Each other with the All Joyful Paschal Greeting !

Христос възкресе! Воистина възкресе! (Hristos vozkrese! Voistina vozkrese!)

Христос Воскресе – Воистину Воскресе! Христос възкресе! Воистина възкресе! (Hristos vozkrese! Voistina vozkrese!)
Христос васкрсе! Ваистину васкрсе! (Hristos vaskrse! Vaistinu vaskrse!)
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη!

Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden!Christ is Risen ! Truly He is Risen !

For complete list of Paschal Greeting as a referrence to get idea how other weird languages sound like and how it is used in the major Eastern Orthodox Churches all around the world check out my previous article Christ is Risen Eastern Orthodox Resurrection Paschal Greeting in Different Languages

Tags: admin, ALL, and, around, article, Blessed, check, Chi, Christ, Churches, complete, complete list, Easter, Eastern, eastern orthodox, eastern orthodox churches, eta, Fire, Great, Risen

Tags: admin, ALL, and, around, article, Blessed, check, Chi, Christ, Churches, complete, complete list, Easter, Eastern, eastern orthodox, eastern orthodox churches, eta, Fire, Great, Risen
Posted in Christianity | No Comments »

Lazarus Sunday – The Resurrection from the Death of Lazarus in the fourth day as a proof for the Mass Coming Resurrection

Monday, April 26th, 2021

Saint_Lazarus_-resurrected-in-4th-day-Miracle_Icon_Sinai_12th_century

Ancient Miracle Making Icon of Lazarus Resurrected in the 4th day after being in the grave by Christ – O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Lazarus Sunday is one the a moveable feast in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Church set it to always be on the 6th Saturday of the Great Lent.
I decided to write few lines about Saint Lazarus because he is one of my favourite saints and because I hope anyone could benefit spiritually by this.

The name Lazarus stems from the Latinised form of the Aramic: אלעזר, Elʿāzār, cf. Heb. Eleazar —"God helped")

The raising of Lazarus at Bethany – today the West Bank town of Al-Eizariya, which translates to "the place of Lazarus" – is the climactic narrative: exemplifying the power of Jesus "over the last and most irresistible enemy of humanity: death. For this reason, it is given a prominent place in the gospel. The feast of Resurrection of Lazarus is a great feast of importance for both us the Eastern Orthodox Christistians as well as Roman Catholics.

Back in the days when I first read about Lazarus while reading the bible for a first time I've been completely wonderstruck, reading that a man who was in the grave for 4 days could come back to life. Perhaps the resurrection of Lazarus story described was a major building block which give me enormous joy and same time fear and hope on God's mercy towards man. Of course reading about the Resurrection that is expecting each and every of us was mostly scareful especially when I remembered all my bad innumerous sins and transgressions but same time it filled me with joy that after all the life we live now is not meaningless, but after death bed another never ending life in a never dying new resurrected bodies is awaiting each human some of is to be living in never ending joy in the new body and some to be living in a new body holding the dark landmarks of their unrepented sins for eternity (the hell) about which we are constantly warned …

The Bible story of Lazarus brings me back in the days, whenI personally have experienced "a spiritual" resurrection when 15 years ago God by his great mercy has given me the gift of faith not because I have done something but because I was in suffer and obviously he had pity on my pain and answered my call for help. Have to say It was not me that have done something special besides a whole hearted prayers to Jesus Christ to show me if he really exists and imy promise that I will serve him if he is really God and not a history fiction. The following uneartly Joy and Peace I have received as a Gift from God while being in that desperated state I would not forget my whole life. In that very moments back in the distant 2006 I still remember I was amazed on the difference of being with God feeling his presence in your soul and the emptiness of feeling alone in a cold and dark universe that doesn't care. The moment I received the grace of God not because of me but because of his great mercy was a moment of immerse joy that was consuming all the earthly suffering and cares. The "feeling" if it at all can be named a feeling was exactly like you have been death in spirit all your life or at least a big part of your life and suddenly you come to live and have breath.

It took me a harsh battle to find out where is Christ's Church and if really there is a Church as described in the Holy Bible (Jesus Christ promised a Church) and I was not aware where this Christ Church is even though I have been blessed to have live in a Eastern Orthodox country. During 2006 – 2007 I have to read many many books and have the chance to meet many people in Varna's Spiritual Educational Center Saint Archangel Michail and the key person Borislav Avramov who played and continues to play a main role for the existence of the center. I've the chance to meet many other good people who already have been Christians for many days and lived in the Church,as well as many other dedicated Christians who were orthodox but did not fully lived according to Church teaching. A key role in my development as a realized Christian played the monks from Pomorie Monastery Saint Great Martyr George who I have the chance by God's providence to visit many times. They have corrected many of my erronical understanding of Christianity which has been there due to my only source for Christian living examples was books and Internet. My knowledge and understanding on Christianity, Mysterious and Truths revealed by Christ hence was chaotical mixed up (as i had red too many books without any systematics, including many non-canonical books like the The Ethiopian Book of Enoch and many non-canonical books and ancient writtings which included a lot misfacts and heretisms. This all has led me to choose to become an Eastern Orthodox Christian being convinced by the historical facts about the Church which are still being lived to this very date in the Mystery life of the One Holy Eastern Orthodox Church.

Sarcophagus-of-Jonah-Lazarus_resurrection-engraved-3rd-4th-century

The Resurrection of Lazarus is described in the Holy Bible's Gospel of John Book

Chapter 11

Resurrection-of-the-Righteous-Lazarus-Christ-in-the-home-of-Simon-the-Lepper-fresco-of-homilies-of-saint-Gregory_Nizianzin

1. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.

²(It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)

³Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick.

⁴When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

⁵Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

⁶When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.

⁷Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.

⁸His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again?

⁹Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.

¹⁰But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

¹¹These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.

¹²Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well.

¹³Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.

¹⁴Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

¹⁵And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

¹⁶Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

¹⁷Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

¹⁸Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:

¹⁹And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.

²⁰Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

²¹Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

²²But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

²³Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again.

²⁴Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

²⁵Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

²⁶And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

²⁷She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

²⁸And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.

²⁹As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came unto him.

³⁰Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met him.

³¹The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.

³²Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.

³³When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.

³⁴And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.

³⁵Jesus wept.

³⁶Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

³⁷And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?

³⁸Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.

³⁹Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.

⁴⁰Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?

⁴¹Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

⁴²And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.

⁴³And when he thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

⁴⁴And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.

⁴⁵Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him.

⁴⁶But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

⁴⁷Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles.

⁴⁸If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation.

⁴⁹And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all,

⁵⁰Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.

⁵¹And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;

⁵²And not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

⁵³Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death.

⁵⁴Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.

⁵⁵And the Jews' passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.

⁵⁶Then sought they for Jesus, and spake among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?

⁵⁷Now both the chief priests and the Pharisees had given a commandment, that, if any man knew where he were, he should shew it, that they might take him.

Saint Lazarus original Burial Place in Tomb Bethany Israel (The Tomb of Saint Lazarus in Bethany and the House of Martha and Mary is a famous pilgrimage location for Christians even day)

The_Resurrection-of-the-Righteous-Lazarus-Christ-in-the-home-of-Simon-the-Lepper-fresco-of-homilies-of-saint-Gregory_Nizianzin

The Resurrection of the Righteous Lazarus by Christ in the home of Simon the Lepper.
Fresco of homilies of saint Gregory The Theologian of Nazianzus (Nizianzin)

Chapter 12
1. Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

²There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

³Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.

Resurrection_of_Lazarus_Ravenna_Sant_Apollinare_Nuovo_2016

Sixth Century icon of Resurrection of Lazarus Sant Apollina Nuovo Ravenna

By raising Lazarus from the Death in such a manner in a public before the crowd of hundreds or hundred of thousands of people's eyes. Jesus clearly show he is the Master of Death and Life and the Only Begotten son.
Which was the ultimate proof for the Jews that Christ is the true expected Messiah described in old testament prophetic books.
According to Jewish tradition the death bodies were lade in stone engraved tombs to preserve the bodies, as Jews (The Pharisees) the larger part of Jews has hold the believe for the Ultimate resurrection of the Death where they will be resurrected to live an ever lasting life with God the creator of all things. To preserve the body and keep it in a good shape s special oilment ritual has been conducted by every jew, more pompose for the rich and very simple for the poor pretty much like the funerals we organize today. Except that we Christians lay the death body in the ground and not in a tomb but in same way we believe in the Mass coming resurrection of the death (even though most of us has forgotten that).

Even today as we are in the situation of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemicsm, still jews continue the tradition to have multile attended funerals this year 2021 in February there was a big scandal in the news about all famous Jewish ultra orthodox Rabbi Rabbi Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik whose funeral was attended by estimated 10000.

So it is no strange if Lazarus funeral has been attended by many thousands as well especially if we consider the fact that at the time of Resurrection of Lazarus Jesus was so famous that everywhere he goes he was followed by large crowds of people waiting for a healing a word a blessing to see the Messiah.

Earliest_known_Image-of-the-Resurrection-of-Lazarus_catacomb_of_Giordani

The apostolic nature of Lazarus' appointment was given by the Church tradition, which says the bishop's omophorion was presented to Lazarus by the Virgin Mary, who had woven it herself. Such apostolic connections were central to the claims to autocephaly made by the bishops of Kition – subject to the patriarch of Jerusalem – during the period 325 – 431. The church of Kition was declared self-governing in 431 AD at the Third Ecumenical Council.

According to tradition, Lazarus never smiled during the thirty years after his resurrection, worried by the sight of unredeemed souls he had seen during his four-day stay in Hell. The only exception was, when he saw someone stealing a pot, he smilingly said: "the clay steals the clay."

In 890, a tomb was found in Larnaca bearing the inscription "Lazarus the friend of Christ". Emperor Leo VI of Byzantium had Lazarus' remains transferred to Constantinople in 898. The transfer was apostrophized by Arethas, bishop of Caesarea, and is commemorated by the Eastern Orthodox Church each year on October 17.

Lazarus_Tomb_in_St_Lazarus_Church_in_Larnaca,_Cyprus

In recompense to Larnaca, Emperor Leo had the Church of St. Lazarus, which still exists today, erected over Lazarus' tomb. The marble sarcophagus can be seen inside the church under the Holy of Holies.

After the sacking of Constantinople by the Franks during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Crusaders carried the saint's relics to Marseille, France as part of the booty of war. From there, "later on, they disappeared and up to the present day they have not been traced."

In the 16th century, a Russian monk from the Monastery of Pskov visited St. Lazarus's tomb in Larnaca and took with him a small piece of the relics. Perhaps that piece led to the erection of the St. Lazarus chapel at the Pskov Monastery (Spaso-Eleazar Monastery, Pskov),where it is kept today.

On November 23, 1972, human remains in a marble sarcophagus were discovered under the altar, during renovation works in the church of Church of St. Lazarus at Larnaka, and were identified as part of the saint's relics.

In June 2012 the Church of Cyprus gave a part of the holy relics of St. Lazarus to a delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, led by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, after a four-day visit to Cyprus. The relics were brought to Moscow and were given to Archbishop Arseniy of Istra, who took them to the Zachatievsky monastery (Conception Convent), where they were put up for veneration.

Let by the Holy Prayers of Saint Lazarus God have mercy on the world and us the sinners and grant us salvation and grace to live out trough this temporary life!

Tags: about, AD, after, again, ALL, alone, and, another, ANY, are, art, BACK, bed, Behold, being, bible, day, Lazarus, Mass Coming Resurrection, proof

Tags: about, AD, after, again, ALL, alone, and, another, ANY, are, art, BACK, bed, Behold, being, bible, day, Lazarus, Mass Coming Resurrection, proof
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The Great Canon of of Saint Andrew of Crete important repentance landmark in the Great Lent Church time

Monday, April 19th, 2021

The Great Canon and Great example of Repentance

Every year the Great Lent, in the Orhodox Church an important part of the Fasting time and Church faithful meeting for the Services is the reading of the so called "Great Canon" .
Canon of Repentance was composed in the distant seventh century by a notable saint in the Church saint Andrew of Crete (Greek: Ἀνδρέας Κρήτης, c. 650 – July 4, 712 or 726 or 740), also known as Andrew of Jerusalem.
He was an 8th-century bishop, theologian, homilist, and hymnographer. He is highly venerated in our One Holy Eastern Orthodox and considered in saint in the Catholic Church as well.

His life's most important work The Great Canon prayed in singing form during every Great Lent period in the Church since then and is example for Christians for how a repentance's set stone should be set and which are the main positive and negative personages we know from the holy bible scriptures. The Great Canon is known well and sung often by dedicated Christians even in their home in or outside of the great lent period.
The canon expresses the overall understanding of the Church through times for good and bad examples of how a man should live, if he wants to have a good life in Christ and what he should abstain and not do if he wants to accept in deed and "utilize" so to say the Salvation given by Christ on the Cross.

The Great Canon was composed by saint Adnrew in the Seventh Century ! And preserved its preserved its form and content up to this very day.
It is lenghtly one as it is a Church services that lasts sometimes from 1 hour 50 minutes hour or even up to 2 hours 50 hours if performed with a Bishop or a Metropolitan. The Saint Andrews Canon is red every day in the First week during first of Great Lent divided by IV parts on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Great Canon Content

Great Canon text consists of four parts, each divided into nine odes like any other regular church canon.
There are slight differences between the odes of the two compositions. In the Great Canon, there is a greater number of troparia (songs sung in honour of a Biblical major event, a saint veneration song or other song with content to glorify the miracles of Christ).
A common remembering part of the Canon heard is the begging "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,
At the refrain "Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me," a full prostration (a bow to the ground). is performed Also, some of the odes have additional refrains and troparia to the author of the canon, St. Andrew of Crete, and Saint Mary of Egypt who spend 47 years hermit life in the desert and is one of the greatest models of repentance in Christian history.

A basic distinguishing feature of the Great Canon is its extremely broad use of images and subjects taken both from the Old and New Testaments. As the Canon progresses, the congregation encounters many biblical examples of sin and repentance. The Bible (and therefore, the Canon) speaks of some individuals in history in a positive light, and about others in a negative one—the penitents are expected to emulate the positive examples of sanctity and repentance, and to learn from and avoid the negative examples of sin, fallen nature and pride. However, one of the most notable aspects of the Canon is that it attempts to potray the Biblical images in a very personal way to every penitent: the Canon is written in such form that the faithful identify themselves with many people and events found in the Bible.
Great-Canon-of-Saint-Andrew-Crete-manuscript-XII-century-Moscow

The earliest manuscript we know of attesting to the Great Canon (with a slightly different order of troparia and a shorter composition) is the Studite Triodion of the middle of the second half of the ninth century, stored in the library of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
This manuscript has the Canon in hits original place in the services of Great Lent – at Matins of Thursday in the fifth week (when the life of St. Mary of Egypt is read).
Only later does it also appear at Compline of the first four days of the first week.

The Canon is a soul-piercing, heartfelt lament of the righteous for his sins. The very beginning: “Where shall I begin to weep for the action of my wretched life? What first-fruit shall I offer, O Christ, in this my lamentation? (Ode 1)—attunes the soul for mourning and repentance, for the “wounding of the heart.”

The author of the Canon laments not only for himself, but for all mankind that has sinned. He recalls every transgression, every fall, from Adam to the New Testament. The majority of the Canon—eight odes—consists of Old Testament examples. St. Andrew doesn’t just recall the sins of the forefathers, but he experiences them as his own: “I have rivaled in transgression Adam the first-formed man, and I have found myself stripped naked of God” (Ode 1).

The transgressions of the forefathers become prototypes of the passions that torment a man: “Instead of the visible Eve, I have the Eve of the mind: the passionate thought in my flesh” (Ode 1). Or another example: “To whom shall I liken thee, O soul of many sins? Alas! To Cain and to Lamech. For thou hast stoned thy body to death with thine evil deeds, and killed thy mind with thy disordered longings (Ode 2: “See now, see”). Here St. Andrew follows St. Maximus the Confessor, for whom Cain is “the acquisition, the law of the flesh,” rising up against Abel, that is, the mind, according to the symbolic interpretation, and killing him. This is what St. Maximus writes: “Had Abel kept guard over himself and had he not gone out with Cain into the field, that is, into the plain of natural contemplation, before attaining dispassion, then Cain, who is and is called the law of the flesh would not have risen up and killed him” (Ad Thalassium 49).

If in the Canon St. Andrew recalls examples of Old Testament and New Testament righteousness, then it is first of all in order to reproach his soul for sloth and for sinfulness and to call it to imitation, for example: “O miserable and wicked soul, imitate the righteous and pure mind of Joseph; and do not live in wantonness, sinfully indulging thy disordered desires” (Ode 5).

The Canon is a broad historical panorama outlining the history of human sin and human righteousness, of the rejection and acceptance of God. The contents of the Canon are deeply Christ-centered, with heartfelt appeals to Christ in every ode, for example: “May the Blood from Thy side be to me a cleansing fount, and may the water that flows with it be a drink of forgiveness. May I be purified by both, O Word, anointed and refreshed, having as chrism and drink Thy words of life” (Ode 4). The only way of purification for St. Andrew is in Christ, through sobriety, feat (podvig), and all time giving and living all for God.

The Great Canon of St. Andrew is, undoubtedly, based on a robust Patristic foundation, with quotes from St. Meletius of Sardis, St. Ephraim of Syria, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Maximus the Confessor. And the merit of St. Andrew of Crete is that he was able to synthesize their experience and imprint it into the Canon.

What is given to us in the Canon of Repentance of St. Andrew of Crete is the Biblical, ecclesiastical, truly universal experience of repentance, of the stinging of the heart, of the excruciating removal of the old, dead man and the putting on of the New Adam, in Christ Jesus, our Lord, to Whom glory is unto the ages of ages.

Tags: about, action, AD, against, ALL, and, another, ANY, are, first, Great Canon Content, Great Lent, Great Lent Church, hermit life, mind, performed, saint, soul, Thursday, thy

Tags: about, action, AD, against, ALL, and, another, ANY, are, first, Great Canon Content, Great Lent, Great Lent Church, hermit life, mind, performed, saint, soul, Thursday, thy
Posted in Christianity, Everyday Life | No Comments »

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According to tradition, Lazarus never smiled during the thirty years after his resurrection, worried by the sight of unredeemed souls he had seen during his four-day stay in Hell. The only exception was, when he saw someone stealing a pot, he smilingly said: "the clay steals the clay."

The Great Canon of of Saint Andrew of Crete important repentance landmark in the Great Lent Church time

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