Ted Carnahan

Hebrew, Greek, and English living together in OpenOffice.org

1. First, go install SCIM as described in my instructions on installing Koine Greek, steps 1-4 (but replace gutsy with hardy).
2. Download the “Ezra 2.51 source and font release” from the SIL Non-Roman Script Initiative on this page.
3. Extract the archive and compile the keyboard with kmflcomp EZRAUNI24.KMN
4. Run scim-setup, click on the KMFL option, click install, then browse to the compiled .kmfl file to install the input method.
5. Save the settings. You’ll also probably need to log out and log back in for everything to work right.
6. Browse through the included Ezra SIL Keyboard Chart. Hebrew is not as keyboard-intuitive as Greek.

Special thanks to Sheila Harrison at the Non-Roman Script Initiative for pointing me at the right package to download.

Update: Sheila writes:

Thank you for giving others a chance to work through the process more easily. I appreciate your comment on the web page, but thanks should really go to Lorna Priest, who reminded me that the source was on the download page. I knew it was available somewhere but hadn’t double checked it yet.

Background: Wartburg has a pretty sophisticated setup for distributing video and audio between Weiblen Commons, the Refectory, and the Chapel. There is no mechanism in place for displaying video in the chapel, though.

Jennifer and I were asked if it’s possible to play DVD video with a projector in the chapel at a large event where there would need to be overflow into Weiblen and the Refectory. The catch: it has to cost $0.

I fired up VideoLAN and got to work. I had tried in the past to play the disc but add a network stream to the local playback. That will work, but video and audio won’t be in sync. Instead, on the DVD playing computer, start two instances of VLC. The first streams the DVD via HTTP but has no local playback. The second reads that stream (via loopback) and displays it. On the satellite computer, connect to the HTTP stream as usual. That way both displaying instances receive their data at the same time, and they will stay in sync - or close enough.

Hopefully someone Googling will come across this information and find the technique as useful as I did.

I have discovered a lovely service, MusicBrainz, which will sort through my rather poorly categorized collection of music and tag it with the proper artist, title, album, genre, etc. It does this by “listening” to the song, generating a fingerprint, and then looking that fingerprint up on a website which seemingly aims to be the Wikipedia of Music.

MusicBrainz’ tagging tool is called Picard, and it is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. I got my copy from my friendly neighborhood Ubuntu repository. If you register on the MusicBrainz site, the tags you edit and save for your music will be uploaded and shared with other MusicBrainz users. Enjoy!

I haven’t written much lately, and hardly anything about Wartburg. So a quick update:

• I was elected co-president of the “middler” class (second year students) along with my classmate Jealaine Marple. Last year was a pretty good experience, and if I keep moving up like this (last year I was co-vice-president), I expect to be elected Benevolent World Dictator for Life by the year 2047.
• Remember that proposal I wrote on about church demographics and websites about six weeks ago? It looks like it’s going to turn into a real research project. I’ll be doing that for my independent study project this J-Term. Jennifer’s due January 18, and she told me that if I wanted to go abroad for J-Term this year, I might as well buy a one-way ticket! So I’m Dubuque bound this year, but I’m excited about the project and even more excited about the reason for staying close to home.
• My Endorsement interview is coming up here at Wartburg on October 15. Pray for me! Two members of the Central States Synod Candidacy Committee are flying up here to interview me and one other student. This is the second step in the four-step process leading to ordination, and it serves as the authorization to go on next year’s year-long internship. You can read more on the process in the ELCA, though the people in that slideshow look waaay holier than I do.

Pauker displaying Hebrew language flashcards

My classmate Bryan introduced me to a little open source project called Pauker which helps train you with flashcards. Because it’s made with Java, it’s cross-platform and I can share flashcard sets with my classmates who use Windows and Mac. Bryan sent me a couple of the sets he has made already, and the program works pretty well, even with the crazy Hebrew stuff I’m working on lately.

I think there’s something to this too:

“Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved.”

– Medieval German proverb

Thanks to First Things for this little bit of edification.

My child hasn’t even been born yet, but I’m already thinking (planning, obsessing, et cetera, ad nauseum) about what it will be like to raise kids. Crazy thoughts! One thing is certain: I’m going to try really hard not to be one of those parents who has to protect their kid from everything, including their own shadow.

That’s why this article, “Is It Just Me? Let’s Stop Scaring Our Kids” hits home so much. The author asks

How did this happen? How did it become too scary to let kids be kids?

And the answer:

“TV,” says Trevor Butterworth, an editor at the media watchdog group stats.org. “Cable TV exists to scare the pants off you.” That’s how it gets you to stay tuned. And what is scarier than a kidnapped kid-no matter how far away?

A lot of people think that Jennifer and I don’t own a television for some religious reason. Some have even asked if we’re Amish! (I mention at this point that computers outnumber people in my household two-to-one.) They can’t imagine choosing not to expose themselves to a lot of television as a choice that a modern, rational, enlightened person would make in our society - so it must be an irrational option imposed from some religious authority.

But that’s not it at all. We don’t choose not to own a television because we’re particularly pious. We choose not to import the world of symbols and ideas that television conveys because many of them are pretty unenlightened, irrational, and unhelpful. I don’t see it as something that makes us better than others (though it does, for good or ill, set us apart as different) but as a choice we’ve made which has had many more positive impacts than negative.

I don’t think that getting rid of television is sufficient to keep a parent from becoming the kind of person who is afraid to let their 12-year-old daughter walk one block to a friend’s house. But it certainly can’t hurt.

I find the automatic refresh on my seminary library’s catalog really annoying. I like to open up lots of tabs of results and then evaluate them later. Horizon (Dynix) doesn’t let me do that - those tabs auto-refresh to the main search page after 6 or 7 minutes. I can always press the back button on each of those tabs, but it shouldn’t have to be that way.

Thus, I decided to learn Greasemonkey scripting. There’s a great online book to help you learn, and Greasemonkey is very intuitive.

The onLoad attribute of the body tag calls “setTimer(); setfocus();”. setTimer() is the culprit. So here’s the one-liner to get rid of that (and keep setfocus()):

document.body.setAttribute('onload', 'setfocus();');

Quick and easy. You can install my very first Greasemonkey script here: dynix_norefresh.user.js. You will, of course, need the Greasemonkey Add-on for Firefox.

In case anyone is excited about buying us stuff, you can now shop our baby registry at Target.

No, I have no shame. Why do you ask?

Jennifer just had her 20 week ultrasound, and our baby is healthy and happy! We had a bunch of pictures taken, but here are the seven best in a public album (cropped for privacy reasons). We’re waiting until the birth to know whether Baby is a boy or a girl.