I normally don’t post identical writings here and at Greenbaggins, but this issue seemed to call for an exception:

I once participated in a discussion in which someone cast aspersions on a historic Reformed father over some things he supposedly said. I don’t know if the figure ever said those things or not. I simply replied that even if the individual had said those things, I hoped that someone didn’t write about my favorite sins 400 years from now. Worse yet, that someone would put them on YouTube for the world to see!

Having commanded several large units, I know all too well that a leader can’t possibly know everything that everyone does in his/her organization. A good leader sets their expectations, trusts their people to perform accordingly, and holds them accountable for their actions and performance. One key to good leadership is to correct mistakes in a just and appropriate manner when they happen and mentor those involved to do better in the future. I suspected that this might be the case with the ceremony in the video which sparked the discussion here. I wrote to TE Keller last night respectfully asking for clarification. I received his reply today and post it unedited and in its entirety here:

Dear Bob,

Thanks for your note about the video of our May, 2009, service in which a deaconess was being commissioned.  Having watched it myself, I can understand your concern! But I can also assure you that this is not our practice, and that it was only one of our newer ministers making a mistake.

We do not ordain our deaconesses nor do we ask our congregation to obey and submit to them. The minister in the video is newer on our staff and he accidentally read the deacons’ questions from the BCO and did not use the different questions we commonly use for deaconesses.  Others who go to Redeemer can attest that this is not our practice, and it will not be in the future. The minister in the video apologized when he realized what he had done.

The best way to understand what happened is to consider the case of another of our ministers who recently inadvertently baptized a number of infants without asking their parents any of the questions. In charity onlookers assumed this was a mistake, and no one assumed that either the minister or Redeemer was in violation of the Book of Church Order. I spoke to this minister yesterday and he was grateful that no one had put his mistake on You Tube!

I must say I was surprised that the person who filmed the service and the person who posted and re-posted the video clip did not first do the courteous and charitable thing, namely, to ask simply, “Is this what it looks like on the surface, or is there a good explanation?” If they had done so, as texts like Proverbs 17:9; 18:17; 25:8-10 urge, they would have saved you (and others) both time and concern.

I hope this response helps. By the way-you can share this letter with anyone else that expresses concern.

Tim Keller

I have had a number of interactions with TE Keller, sometimes holding opposing positions, and have always been impressed with Tim’s grace and integrity. The conduct of the ceremony in the video was a serious mistake which was taken seriously and corrected appropriately. The young TE involved could probably benefit from our prayers.

As most folks here know, I strongly disagree with the commissioning of women as deaconesses. I’ve actively and vigorously opposed it in the blogosphere and on the floor of the PCA General Assembly for the last several years. However, the appropriate place to make a stand is in the courts of the church – sessions, presbyteries, and the General Assembly – debating applicable overtures, not on YouTube.

The editors of the excellent Aquila Report desired to expand beyond news and events into commentaries and columns. They asked a number of folks from varying Reformed backgrounds to contribute, including your humble blogger. I agreed to write two commentaries/columns a month and they assigned me the first and third Fridays of the month.

My first commentary appeared this past Friday, titled Changing Guards or Changing Standards. In it, I take issue with an article written earlier this year in ByFaith Online. Times are interesting in the Presbyterian Church in America these days. I’ve been active both on the Internet and in some forums with many of the issues. Some are bound to find their way into my commentaries.

OTOH, I have no clear vision for the columns. My current plan is simply write about whatever is on my mind that may be of more general interest. Looking some of my brothers’ and sister’s writings, the topical range is quite wide.

I’ll try to post here whenever I have an article up on The Aquila Report, but may not be all that timely with the notice. I highly recommend The Aquila Report for all those interesting in current and pertinent news from around the Reformed Faith community…especially on the first and third Fridays of the month.

OK, I’m officially an idiot. The problem that I related in my previous post did not turn out to be a problem with the Epson drivers. The answer turned out to be trivial, but events conspired against my finding it initially.

At the end of installing the PIPS drivers from Avasys, the installer suggests that you to run the setup script. When you run the script, it asks you for the port to which the printer is connected. Since the printer is USB, I accepted the default of /dev/usb/lp0. The script then creates /etc/ekpdrc with the configuration information.

/dev/usb/lp0 USED to be correct because my Brother HL-5240 used to be on the parallel port. However, I changed it over to USB a while back for a number of reasons. The Brother now sits on /dev/usb/lp0. Instant conflict with the settings I specified for the Epson PIPS driver.

I didn’t catch it earlier because the Epson wasn’t powered on, and lp0 was the only active device in /dev/usb/.  Tonight for other reasons, I happened to be in /etc and noticed the ekpdrc file. I viewed it just for grins and noticed the port assignment. I went to /dev/usb and saw lp0. Then I remembered that the printer wasn’t powered up, so I turned it on. Magically, lp1 showed up in /dev/usb. Bingo, the light bulb went on! I manually edited /etc/ekpdrc to change lp0 to lp1, restarted the system, and all works perfectly.

In the end, this was definitely a problem caused by the keyboard actuator.

In this previous post, I covered how to regain daily notifications for non-security updates in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty. I don’t know if that will work in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic because the associated setting value is an integer in Karmic, not a boolean. For Karmic, I decided to use the GUI and the Gnome Configuration Editor utility which I describe in this post.

To be clear, Ubuntu notifies you daily of security updates by default, but only weekly of non-security updates like application upgrades. I like to be up-to-date as much as possible, so would like daily notifications of all updates. With Configuration Editor, this is easy. Launch the editor through Applications -> System Tools -> Configuration Editor (assuming that you installed it as described in this post). Click on Edit -> Find…, then type “update” in the search box (w/o the quotes) and click OK. This will be the result:

Notice that I highlighted /apps/update-notifier in the search results at the bottom, and also regular_auto_launch_interval key name. The explanation box under the name section then describes the key and its settings. According to that description, I should set the key to ‘0′ to get immediate notifications. So, double-click on the key to get this dialog:

Simply change the ‘7′ to ‘0′, click OK and you’re done! You will now receive daily notifications of all updates, not just security updates.

I spend a good bit of time in my home office, and I like to listen to music while doing stuff. I listen to different types of music, so having a variety available is ideal. Since I have decent speakers with a subwoofer for my computer and a reliable broadband connection, Internet radio fits the bill perfectly.

I’ve tried a number of programs and stations over the years. In my old Windows XP days, I used Screamer Radio. It’s small, fast, and will run from a USB stick. I sometimes listen to it while working on others’ machines. In Ubuntu, I usually use either Rythmbox or VLC Player.

I have come to settle on Sky.FM as my Internet radio source. They have a wide variety of stations and a reliable connection. I’ve been listening to their free stations for quite a while, putting up with the occasional commercials. I had copied links to the stations I used the most into Rythmbox under the radio section. While Rythmbox sounds OK, VLC sounds much better. However, Rythmbox kept all my links nicely organized in the radio function.

I recently noticed that Sky.FM had a 2-day free trial on their Premium service. It was over a weekend, so I decided to give it a shot. The normal service sounded OK, so I was skeptical that the premium service could sound any better. That skepticism was misplaced. Premium sounds great. I was hooked.

The only problem was the when I cut and pasted the links to the Premium playlists, Rythmbox couldn’t play them. VLC had no problem with them, even when I downloaded my entire set of playlists from my custom page. VLC 0.9.x would not display the changing song titles on the premium service, at least on my setup. This required further work.

The solution turned out to be quite simple. Open a steam in VLC by clicking on the media type of your choice. When asked what program to use to play it, choose VLC. If it isn’t in the list, navigate the file system in the dialog to /usr/bin/vlc. This will open the stream in VLC:

Now select Tools -> Codec Information (or Media Information, your choice):

Note that I picked the 96 kbps mp3 format for this example. Also note the address in the Location box. That’s the address that you want to paste into Rythmbox. I added my favorites this way to Rythmbox one at a time.

But I found that in Karmic, this is no longer necessary. VLC 1.0.2 under Karmic will display the song titles as they change and also if you hover the mouse pointer over the icon in the system tray. Since I can also download all my favorites in one shot into VLC (won’t work in Rythmbox), so as long as I don’t close VLC I always have my music at my beck and call. So unless you have an unnatural attachment to Rythmbox and prefer your music slightly muted, you can get the great sound of VLC plus the song titles on the premium service.

One additional hint for both Rythmbox and VLC. If you left-click on their icons in the system tray, the player window will collapse into the icon while continuing to play. I developed the habit of always keeping a player loaded in the system tray and ready to play at a click. Very handy, and doesn’t make a dent in my 8 GB of RAM.

BTW, the best mp3 coding on the free service is 96 bps as you saw above in the screenshot. The best from the premium service is 256 kbps:

Even at this rate, it doesn’t begin tax my 20 Gbps FIOS connection:

But I normally listen to the 64 kbps aacplus stream, which sounds about the same for less bandwidth.

It all sounds awesome! Well worth the price of admission.

This story does not have a happy ending. I have not been able to get the Epson PIPS drivers to work on Karmic. [UPDATE: Fixed it! Link at the end of this post.] I’ll make this short. I tried lots of solutions, pored over the web for help, found nothing. I did eventually get the PIPS drivers to install, but they don’t work. The stock Gutenprint driver works fine with the CX7800, but doesn’t produce the high quality photos of the PIPS driver.

Here’s how I got the PIPS driver to install.

I downloaded the latest driver for my Epson Stylus CX7800 printer from Avasys. To convert the rpm package to a deb in the terminal, you need to install alien:

sudo aptitude install alien

Then you can convert the driver package:

sudo alien -c -d pips-scx7700-cups-2.6.3-1.i386.rpm

The -c converts the scripts in the package, which is very important. The -d specifies a .deb output file. When alien finishes, it produces a message like:

pips-scx7700-cups_2.6.3-2_i386.deb generated

But it will not install because it depends on three libraries that aren’t in Karmic or its repositories: libgtk1.2, libgtk1.2-common, and libglib1.2ldbl. In cases like this, one can often install the required libraries from older version repositories. In this case, I went to Jaunty’s repositories since PIPS worked fine in Jaunty, downloaded all three and installed them. To work correctly, they must be installed in this order: libglib1.2ldbl, libgtk1.2-common, libgtk1.2. That prevents dependency issues between them and then they will install fine.

Once the dependent libraries are installed, you can install the PIPS driver. Because it’s a 32-bit package and I’m running 64-bit Karmic, I had to use force-architecture. You can leave that part out if you’re running a 32-bit installation. The installation command is:

sudo dpkg -i –force-architecture pips-scx7700-cups_2.6.3-2_i386.deb

That will now “successfully” install the PIPS driver. You can then install your printer as I describe in this post. However, whenever I try to print to the PIPS printer, the job ends up being routed to my other USB printer and things go downhill from there.

I wrote a post on Avasys’ forum seeking help. If I get anything useful, I’ll post it back here. If anyone has any more ideas, I’d love to hear them.

UPDATE: Solved! It was not a driver issue per se. See this post.

When I upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic from 9.04 Jaunty, it appeared that the upgrade process preserved all my settings. However, I’ve found several that were changed for unknown reasons.

First, I found that my screen kept blanking after about 5 minutes of idle time. So, I sent into System -> Preferences -> Power Management. I worked my way through all the settings numerous times, but they didn’t make any difference in this behavior. Hmmm.

After a while of this nonsense, I remembered one other possibility. I went to System -> Preferences -> Screensaver:

I had alway used the screensaver to put up a blank screen after 1 hour. The Karmic upgrade set the timer to 5 minutes! I have no idea why Karmic changed that setting, but it’s fixed now.

Also, I had networked my printers through my desktop for the laptop to use. This all worked swimmingly in Jaunty. It stopped working after the upgrade to Karmic. I checked the printer properties under System -> Administration -> Printing and sure enough, Karmic had “unshared” them. So, I right-clicked on the appropriate printers and rechecked Shared:

But that didn’t fix the issue. Digging further in the Printers dialog menu, I clicked on Server -> Settings in the upper left. Sure enough, Karmic had reset the server not to share any printers on my network. So, I checked the “Publish shared printers connected to this system” box which Karmic’s upgrade had cleared:

After that, all worked fine.

It’s hard to understand why Karmic changed these particular settings, but the changes caught me off guard. Hopefully this will save someone else some time.

I posted here about my upgrade, here about getting my Epson scanner to work, and here about losing the shutdown confirmation timer. In this post, I’ll cover getting Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to reset the x-server.

Prior to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, holding down Ctrl-Alt-Backspace simultaneously instantly closed the current session and reset the X server. This was incredibly useful when changing or upgrading video drivers, or when needing a quick logout after changing groups and permissions. But, the developers said that some folks wanted it changed because they hit this sequence by accidentally or unintentionally and lost their work. What???? How do you hold three keys down simultaneously by accident?

Anyway, recovering the capability required editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf manually as I documented here. In Karmic, it’s a bit easier. Simply go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard. Click on the Layouts tab:

Next, click on the Layout Options… button:

About 1/2 way down the page, click on the arrow next to “Key sequenct to kill the X server” as shown above. Then simply click in the checkbox to show a check there as in the screenshot. Click on Close and you’re done. That’s it – functionality restored!

I handled fixing the scanner issues in my previous post. There are a number of minor “paper cuts” that drive me crazy in Karmic. Here’s another solution.

I hate the silly countdown timer that first appeared in Jaunty. Jaunty had an easy solution by simply right clicking on your user name, then click on Preferences, then clear the checkbox next to “Show confirmation dialog…” or some such wording. Not so in Karmic, where the closeout applet is pithed. Sheesh.

To eliminate the confirmation dialog in Karmic, type this in a terminal window:

gconftool-2 -s ‘/apps/indicator-session/suppress_logout_restart_shutdown’
–type bool true

Fixed. But…there’s a GUI front-end to gconftool and gconftool-2. It isn’t pretty, but it does work. It’s called Configuration Editor. You can find it in Synaptic or in the new Karmic Ubuntu Software Center. I haven’t played with the new software center yet, so let’s give it a trial run. Go to Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center, they type “configuration e” in the Search box on the upper right:

Configuration Editor shows up highlighted. The white check in the green circle over its icon means that it’s installed. In your case it probably won’t be. Clicking on the blue arrow on the right of the highlight brings up a description of the package:

Cool. The “Install” button appears rather than “Remove” if the application is not yet installed.

I had to hunt a bit to find the Gnome Indicator Applet Session settings, but I found them under Apps -> indicator-session (so, what exactly does it indicate about the session?):

Just put the check in the box as I did, and no more annoying shutdown/logout/restart confirmation dialog with timer. There’s a whole lot more in Configuration Editor, but tread lightly.

Posts are pending on the Epson Photo Image Print System drivers, re-establishing your network printers, and the annoying 5-minute screensaver setting.

I wrote about my upgrade from Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty to 9.10 Karmic in this post. Overall, it was painless. But, with any operating system upgrades there tend to be some small issues. I’ll concentrate on the scanner in this post.

The scanner in my Epson Stylus CX7800 rarely makes it across on OS changes. This time proved no different. I discussed the general recovery procedure in this post and this one. I decided to search the web for new information and found several approaches to the issue. The most straightforward was a PPA repository maintained by DoctorMO. While written for a previous version of Ubuntu, it included both iscan and iscan plugins, the latter in 64-bit. I gave this approach a shot, and it worked…almost.

After setting up the repository and installing the drivers, sane-find-scanner found the Epson:

found USB scanner (vendor=0×04b8 [EPSON], product=0×081f [USB2.0 MFP(Hi-Speed)]) at libusb:002:002

However, “scanimage -L” did not find the scanner unless executed with admin privileges as “sudo scanimage -L”:

device `epkowa:usb:002:002′ is a Epson Stylus CX7700/CX7800 flatbed scanner

The problem lay in the fact that the user doesn’t have write permissions to the device. Changing the device permissions provides a quick approach that would work until the next restart. Using the address that sane-find-scanner provided, usb/002/002 in this case:

sudo chmod 666 /dev/bus/usb/002/002

That works, but only temporarily. The old fix would be to add the affected user to the scanner permission group as I described in this post. The problem is that the developers eliminated the scanner group in karmic, as I found out in this developer discussion 2/3 of the way down the page. There’s a good discussion of the issues that the maintainer of iscan joined, but it boiled down to the scanner group again. Poo. What now?

I returned to Avasys and discovered that they had updated iscan drivers available. I downloaded and installed the new iscan drivers from Avasys. That got karmic to recognize the scanner, which now works perfectly. Mission accomplished!