Several years back I purchased two uninterruptible power supply units (UPS) for my home file-server and firewall. The idea, of course, was to prevent these systems from experiencing temporary power interruptions and potentially causing file corruption in the case of my file-server or just being a nuisance for the firewall. Last year both units died within a month of each other. I couldn’t believe it… I was convinced they had a time trigger to fail after X number of years in a ruse to get customers to spend more money. Not wanting to fall for this, I started looking for alternatives.

A new, comparable UPS would cost approximately $150 (these were high-end models) and I certainly wasn’t excited about buying two.  Replacement batteries from the manufacturer would have cost approximately $80 each so I was still looking at roughly $160. I looked around at replacement battery sites and was largely unimpressed. Let’s just say the site design for several sites left me questioning their credibility. I finally found RefurbUPS.com and was sold when I found their instructional video for how to replace the batteries. It wasn’t a complicated procedure but that gave me the warm, fuzzy feeling I was looking for to buy from them. Total price from RefurbUPS.com including shipping was $90.29 for two sets of batteries.

After receiving the replacement batteries I installed them and was dismayed when the UPS started beeping and the Replace Battery LED lit after being turned on. I re-installed them a few times with the same results. I watched the instructional video again, realizing it was hard to mess up a two and a half step process, and was stumped. My one thought was maybe the UPS needed to charge a bit. I left the unit plugged in but turned off overnight and when I checked the next day all was well.  The UPS turned on fine, no beeps, and when I hooked it up to my file-server it said it had a full charge.

The UPS have been up and running with the new batteries for a few months now and are holding strong.

My awesome glassware.

Rhonda purchased the set through The Glass Fox. She called them prior to ordering and asked about personalizing beyond the normal options on the site and they were able to accommodate exactly what she wanted.

I highly recommend them and expect to use them again in the future.

Bookmark This Link.

Here’s the code (prettified):

javascript: function pandora() {
    window.open( 'http://pandora.com/#radio',
                 '_blank',
                 'width=725,height=340,' +
                 'scrollbars=1,location=0,menubar=0,titlebar=0,toolbar=0'
    );
}
pandora();

Enjoy.

The first delivery was from a friend who just returned from California.

California Delivery

From left to right: Brew Free or Die IPA from 21st Amendment Brewery, Hitachino Nest White Ale and Hitachino Nest Red Rice Ale from Kiuchi Brewery, and Pliny the Elder from Russian River Brewing Company.

The next delivery came by way of my Grandmother from North Carolina.  There’s a great little beer store in her town and she’s recently started going and asking the owner about beers that I might like.

North Carolina Delivery

From left to right again: Fourteen Ale from Wyerbacher, Celebrator Doppelbock from Ayinger Bier, Dragon’s Milk from New Holland Brewing Company, Urthel Samaranth from De Leyerth Brouwerijen, and Samichlaus from Castle Brewery Eggenberg.

Some of these I could likely find in Georgia but don’t think I’ve seen any of them before.  I’m fairly certain I could find the Hitachino Nest beers locally but I know for a fact 21st Amendment and Russian River do not distribute to Georgia, though I hear 21st Amendment will be starting soon.  I can’t wait to try each of these beers but am most excited about Dragon’s Milk, Pliny the Elder, and Fourteen Ale.

In other beer news, I’ve posted photos of the Winter Beer Carnival Rhonda and I attend last weekend; it was a blast!  Photos are here.

Key features of kui are:

• Browser-based: Once installed, all you need is a browser to access your MBeans.
• Easy-to-use interface: kui provides a familiar and consistent interface for viewing and administering your MBeans.
• Standards based: kui works with a wide variety of application servers and browsers.
• Pure Java and JavaScript: kui is written using Java and JavaScript for easy modifications.
• Open source: kui is distributed under the New BSD License.

Head on over to the kui website for more information, screenshots, and available downloads.

This week’s task list:

This week's task list

AuthenticatedController.java

public interface AuthenticatedController {
    // This is empty on purpose.
}

SimpleController.java

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

public class StateController implements AuthenticatedController {

    public ModelAndView handleRequest( final HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest,
            final HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse ) throws Exception {
        ...
    }

}

AuthenticationInterceptor.java

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSession;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.HandlerInterceptorAdapter;

public class AuthenticationInterceptor extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter {

    public boolean preHandle( HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response,
            Object handler ) throws Exception {

        if ( !( handler instanceof AuthenticatedController ) ) {
            // Authentication not needed, allow request to continue.
            return true;
        }

        boolean isAuthenticated = checkAuthentication(...);

        if ( !isAuthenticated ) {
            // User is not authenticated, handle response as needed, and halt processing.
            response.setStatus( HttpServletResponse.SC_FORBIDDEN );
            return false;
        }

        // User is authenticated, allow request to continue.
        return true;
    }
}

spring-beans.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">

<bean name="authenticationInterceptor" class="custom.AuthenticationInterceptor" />

<bean name="urlMapping"
    class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
    <property name="interceptors">
         <list>
	     <ref bean="authenticationInterceptor" />
	</list>
    </property>
    <property name="mappings">
	<props>
            <prop key="/controller1.json">controller1</prop>
            <prop key="/controller2.json">controller2</prop>
            <prop key="/controller3.json">controller3</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

</beans>

The svnversion program makes it easy to get the revision number of your working copy by simply executing the program:

macbookpro:rel-091105 stokesc$ svnversion
7175

To use this from Ant we can use the exec task. The example below will execute svnversion and capture its output into the Ant property repository.revision which is used later on in our build script:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<project name="Build Script" default="make" basedir=".">

    <target name="make">

        <!-- Get current working directory. -->
        <exec executable="pwd" outputproperty="dir.root" />

        <!-- Get subversion revision number. -->
        <exec executable="svnversion" outputproperty="repository.revision" />

        <echo message="Repository revision is ${repository.revision}" />

    </target>

</project>

This worked well for us for a few years but when we needed to build from an older branch the revision number wasn’t representative of the last revision in the branch.  Looking at the options for svnversion I found passing -c will return the revision number of the last change rather than the current revision which is what we really wanted.

macbookpro:rel-091105 stokesc$ svnversion -c
1:6985

You can see the difference in revision numbers from this command versus the one above, but this still isn’t perfect due to the starting revision number that’s been added.  A little change to our Ant script can strip this off for us.  Here we use the redirector and filterchain types and a regular expression to modify the output.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<project name="Build Script" default="make" basedir=".">

    <target name="make">

        <!-- Get current working directory. -->
        <exec executable="pwd" outputproperty="dir.root" />

        <!-- Get subversion revision number. -->
        <exec executable="svnversion" outputproperty="repository.revision">
            <!-- Specify '-c' to get last changed rather than current revisions. -->
            <arg value="-c" />
            <!-- Use redirector/filterchain to parse output.
                 svnversion -c will return output in format [initial]:[current]
                 and we want to strip off [initial]: -->
            <redirector>
                <outputfilterchain>
                    <tokenfilter>
                        <replaceregex pattern="[0-9]+\:" replace="" />
                    </tokenfilter>
                </outputfilterchain>
            </redirector>
        </exec>

        <echo message="Repository revision is ${repository.revision}" />

    </target>

</project>

We’re now able to go back and package older versions of our application with a true indication of their svn revision.