239 lines
8.9 KiB
HTML
239 lines
8.9 KiB
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<!doctype html>
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<title>
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Open Thoughts
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<meta name="author" content="Judah Sotomayor" />
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<meta property="og:title" content="In Pursuit of an Efficient Org-Agenda">
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<meta property="og:url" content="https://judah.freedomland.xyz//posts/efficient-org-agenda.html">
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<header>
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<h1>
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<a href="https://judah.freedomland.xyz//">
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Open Thoughts
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</h1>
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<a href="#main" class="visually-hidden">jump to main content</a>
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<ul class="menu">
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<li><a href="https://judah.freedomland.xyz//about">about</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://judah.freedomland.xyz//">blog</a></li>
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<main id="main">
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<article class="post">
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<h1 class="post__title">
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In Pursuit of an Efficient Org-Agenda
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</h1>
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<section class="post__meta">
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Dec 27, 2023
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</section>
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<section>
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<div id="table-of-contents" role="doc-toc">
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<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
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<div id="text-table-of-contents" role="doc-toc">
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#first-iteration">1. First Iteration</a></li>
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<li><a href="#second-iteration">2. Second Iteration</a></li>
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<li><a href="#finally">3. Final</a></li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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</div>
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<p>
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After beginning my Emacs and Org-Mode adventures I quickly realized the insufficiency of the standard agenda.
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It is wonderful at producing a list, but I am quickly approaching over 1000 notes.
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The agenda tooling is incapable of searching this many files efficiently, and it took over thirty seconds to generate an agenda.
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</p>
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<p>
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This was intolerable. I had two options:
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</p>
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<ol class="org-ol">
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<li>Place all my TODO items into a single file.</li>
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<li>Narrow the number of files the agenda mechanism needs to search</li>
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</ol>
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<p>
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I find the first option undesireable for reasons I mentioned in my <a href="https://judah.freedomland.xyz//posts/reflections-zettelkasten-tooling.html">post</a> about zettelkasten tools.
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I like to have my todo items mixed with the context where they were born.
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A student of the <i>Getting Things Done</i> methodology might ask, "Doesn't this violate the central todo-list principle?"
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Yes, it does.
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Org-agenda allows me to have my cake and eat it too.
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I can create a centralized todo-list out of all my todo items, and then immediately jump into the context of my next task.
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</p>
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<p>
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It took several iterations of configuration to reach a seamless workflow.
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If you'd like to jump straight to the final setup, <a href="#finally">here's the link.</a>
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</p>
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<div id="outline-container-first-iteration" class="outline-2">
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<h2 id="first-iteration"><span class="section-number-2">1.</span> First Iteration</h2>
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<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-1">
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<p>
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The first piece of tooling I used came from <a href="https://d12frosted.io/posts/2021-01-16-task-management-with-roam-vol5.html">this post</a> and <a href="https://gist.github.com/d12frosted/a60e8ccb9aceba031af243dff0d19b2e">this Gist</a>.
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Essentially it creates a function <code>vulpea-project-files</code> that can easily query for a tag, and then sets the org-agenda files to all the files containing this tag.
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</p>
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<p>
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Coupled with a helper-function that adds the tag <code>hastodos</code> to any file containing a TODO entry, it functioned well.
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</p>
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<div class="org-src-container">
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<pre class="src src-emacs-lisp">(<span class="org-keyword">defun</span> <span class="org-function-name">vulpea-project-files</span> ()
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<span class="org-doc">"Return a list of note files containing '</span><span class="org-doc"><span class="org-constant">hastodos</span></span><span class="org-doc">' tag."</span> <span class="org-comment-delimiter">;</span>
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(seq-uniq
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(seq-map
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#'car
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(org-roam-db-query
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[<span class="org-builtin">:select</span> [nodes:file]
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<span class="org-builtin">:from</span> tags
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<span class="org-builtin">:left-join</span> nodes
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<span class="org-builtin">:on</span> (= tags:node-id nodes:id)
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<span class="org-builtin">:where</span> (like tag (<span class="org-keyword">quote</span> <span class="org-string">"%\"hastodos\"%"</span>))]))))
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(<span class="org-keyword">setq</span> org-agenda-files (vulpea-project-files))
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</pre>
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</div>
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<p>
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This solution is great because it is pure elisp.
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Anywhere you're running Emacs it should function just fine.
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It also works well with one of my needs: transparent file encryption.
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Emacs has extensions for both <code>gpg</code> and <code>age</code> encryption that allow files to be transparently encrypted and decrypted.
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This solution can make use of that where a standard <code>grep</code> could not.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-second-iteration" class="outline-2">
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<h2 id="second-iteration"><span class="section-number-2">2.</span> Second Iteration</h2>
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<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-2">
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<p>
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Eventually, I grew tired of seeing the entire solution in my config file.
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All told, it is about 170 lines.
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This is a lot for a small utility!
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</p>
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<p>
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I decided to try using <code>ripgrep</code> to fix this:
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</p>
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<div class="org-src-container">
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<pre class="src src-emacs-lisp">(<span class="org-keyword">defun</span> <span class="org-function-name">set-org-agenda-files-ripgrep</span> ()
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(<span class="org-keyword">setq</span> org-agenda-files (split-string (shell-command-to-string <span class="org-string">"rg -torg -l TODO /home/user/org"</span>))))
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</pre>
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</div>
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<p>
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This worked nicely.
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It takes just a few lines, runs just as fast–probably faster–than pure elisp, and is much easier to read and understand.
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</p>
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<p>
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The only difficulty is encryption.
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<code>ripgrep</code> does not operate on open emacs buffers, instead it operates on what is saved to disk.
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Naturally, this means that it only sees the encrypted files.
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div id="outline-container-finally" class="outline-2">
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<h2 id="finally"><span class="section-number-2">3.</span> Final</h2>
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<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-finally">
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<p>
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The solution to file encryption is ripgrep preprocessing.
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I owe this solution to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/q4e2az/full_text_search_of_gpg_encrypted_files/">this reddit post</a>.
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</p>
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<p>
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Ripgrep can run a command (or shell script!) to files before processing.
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While the original poster was using <code>gpg</code> to encrypt files, just a few modifications allowed me to use <code>age</code>.
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</p>
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<div class="org-src-container">
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<pre class="src src-zsh">#!/usr/bin/env zsh
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case "$1" in
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*.age)
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# The -s flag ensures that the file is non-empty.
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if [ -s "$1" ]; then
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exec /usr/bin/age --decrypt -i ~/.age/personal $1
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else
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exec cat
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fi
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;;
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*)
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;;
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esac
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</pre>
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</div>
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<p>
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This script operates on all <code>.age</code> files, decrypting them to stdout.
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When using a preprocessor, ripgrep will simply search the output of the command.
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</p>
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<p>
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I often have a mix of files in my notes directory, so I use filetypes to restrict ripgrep.
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This means I have to add a new filetype to allow <code>.age</code> files through the filter.
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</p>
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<div class="org-src-container">
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<pre class="src src-sh">rg --type-add <span class="org-string">'aorg:*.org.age'</span> <span class="org-sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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-torg -taorg <span class="org-sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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--pre ~/age-preprocessor.zsh --pre-glob <span class="org-string">'*.age'</span> -l TODO /home/user/org
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</pre>
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</div>
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<p>
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Finally, we have our completed function:
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</p>
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<div class="org-src-container">
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<pre class="src src-emacs-lisp">(<span class="org-keyword">defun</span> <span class="org-function-name">set-org-agenda-files-ripgrep</span> ()
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(<span class="org-keyword">setq</span> org-agenda-files (split-string (shell-command-to-string <span class="org-string">"rg --type-add </span><span class="org-string"><span class="org-warning">\</span></span><span class="org-string">'aorg:*.org.age</span><span class="org-string"><span class="org-warning">\</span></span><span class="org-string">' -torg -taorg --pre ~/age-preprocessor.zsh --pre-glob </span><span class="org-string"><span class="org-warning">\</span></span><span class="org-string">'*.age</span><span class="org-string"><span class="org-warning">\</span></span><span class="org-string">' -l TODO /home/user/org "</span>))))
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</pre>
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</div>
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<p>
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Hope this helps!
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</p>
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</div>
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</div>
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</section>
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</article>
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<footer>
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Made with ♥ and
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