Jeshurun's Blog

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A Java compliant WSDL file for Zimbra Admin’s SOAP API

by on Dec.18, 2011, under Technology

Not too long ago I had to interface with Zimbra‘s admin API for one of my projects, and quickly realized that it is er.. a little weird. You see, Zimbra has a SOAP (and also a limited REST) API, but does not does not publish a WSDL for them. Neither is an xsd or DTD available to validate your requests against or to generate client stubs. To make things worse, the only documentation available is a lengthy but simple text file which lists the available operation names as tags and the attributes / elements that go with each of them. In case you are interested in this file, you can find it in the docs folder of your Zimbra installation.
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Android Apps Fire Sale

by on Dec.06, 2011, under Random Scribblings

The Android marked reached 10 Billion downloads today, and to celebrate, Google is offering some quality apps for the next 10 days for 10¢ a piece!

Android Market's Exponential Growth

Android Market's Exponential Growth

If your current device doesn’t support an app you would like to purchase, but you would like to get it anyway, say because you plan to upgrade in the near future, you could still get the app from the online store at this link: https://market.android.com/details?feature=banne­r&id=apps_timed_promotion

Here is the list of fire sale apps for 6/12/2011:

  1. SoundHound
  2. Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD
  3. Minecraft – Pocket Edition (yep!)
  4. SwiftKey X Keyboard
  5. Endomondo Sports Tracker PRO
  6. Great Little War Game
  7. SketchBook Mobile
  8. Fieldrunners HD
  9. Color & Draw for kids: phone ed
  10. Paper Camera
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Alienware M14x Unboxing (Pictures)

by on Dec.04, 2011, under Random Scribblings

I’ll just let the pictures do the talking on this one..

Also check out how this baby reboots in under 20 seconds:

So who is hoping to find one of these under the Christmas tree? Stay tuned for our next post where we rip it apart and apply some quality thermal paste to keep it running cool..

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JAX-WS Web Services with Spring and Apache CXF

by on Nov.28, 2011, under Technology

I recently had to evaluate CXF to expose existing services in a Spring project. I thought I would jot down my thoughts and conclusions from my experiments with the technology, and log my experience as a quick tutorial for fellow coders.

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Bitten by the Java TreeMap removeAll bug

by on Apr.14, 2011, under Technology

I had to learn the hard way today about the nasty issue surrounding Java’s TreeSet / TreeMap implementations. The problem is that the removeAll method doesn’t always do what it says it does: remove all elements present in the collection called on that are present in the collection passed as the argument.

Supposedly the problem occurs when the equals and compareTo method in the type contained in the Collections aren’t consistent with each other, and the sizes of the collections compared aren’t equal. Look at the following link for an example
JDK Bug 6394757 : (coll) AbstractSet.removeAll is surprisingly dependent on relative collection sizes.

Anyways, the rule of thumb for me from now is if need be to implement a SortedSet Set that will have either removeAll or retainAll called on, use an HashSet instead, and later use Collections.sort

Set<MyType> mySet = new HashSet<MyType>();
// add some elements, do some operations
mySet.removeAll(anotherCollection);
List<MyType> myList = new ArrayList<MyType>(mySet);
Collections.sort(myList);
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[SOLD] Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for sale

by on Jan.08, 2011, under Random Scribblings

Update: The phone has been sold. Thanks to all who were interested.

After much thought I have decided to sell my Xperia X10. I have only had the phone for a few months, but as I develop apps for Android, I need a phone with the latest Android version.

I’ve attached some pictures below, and as you can see from them, the phone is in excellent shape and has no scratches on the body. I’ve always used a screen guard so the screen has no scratches as well, and I also have a new spare screen guard which I will give with the phone.

The phone comes with a 16GB microSD memory card. I’ve never used the headphones that came with it. My asking price is $315 + shipping. Click on the images to view them in full resolution.

Check out the pictures below:
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Phishing emails running rampant this holiday season

by on Jan.03, 2011, under Random Scribblings

Ever since the holiday season started I have been receiving a hoard of phishing emails both on my personal and work email accounts. The emails seem to be after my bank account and either state that the bank believes my account has been compromised and I need to re-enter all my details on the website at the link given below to ‘fully reactivate’ my account, or that I need to enter them to ‘update’ my account to benefit from the banks ‘new security features’.

What is interesting is that I started receiving these emails soon after of my credit card was used fraudulently online to purchase merchandise from stores in France. Thankfully, my bank refunded the purchases and issued me a new card.

Below is an screenshot of a phishing email masquerading to be from TD Canada Bank: (continue reading…)

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PHPBB Admin Panel Access Denied

by on Dec.20, 2010, under Technology

There seems to be a bug with the latest version of PHPBB3. After a fresh install, if you log out, log back in and try to access the administrative panel you might get the message “Access to the Administration Control Panel is not allowed as you do not have administrative permissions”.

I’m not sure why this happens (and I haven’t had time to dig into the source, perhaps I will file a bug report when time permits), but to get around this the following steps worked:

  1. Make sure you have remove the install directory.
  2. Login to the front end.
  3. Click on the “members” link on the top right and then click on the site admin’s username.
  4. Right beside the username you should see a link which says [ Administrate user ]. Click on the link.
  5. Re-authenticate yourself.
  6. Click on proceed to acp.
  7. You should now be looking at the admin panel.

Did this work for you? Do let me know in the comments below!

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Zimbra – Releasing quarantined emails and attachments

by on Dec.15, 2010, under Technology

If you are reading this post, chances are you administer a Zimbra mail server, and you need to recover an email that was blocked by amavisd for one of your users. This might have happened for a variety of reasons, including your spam score being too high, you have blocks based on file types, or if the email contained an attachment that was encrypted. What you would have quickly found out though, is that there is no quick and easy way of recovering a blocked email and forwarding it on to the intended recipient (at least in the community edition, I’m not sure of the network edition).

There presently seem to be at least three ways of doing this, and following is the low down on the easiest way I’ve found so far. If you just need to view the email, please skip to end of this post.

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Rebranding Rogers Xperia X10a for Android 2.1 Update

by on Nov.14, 2010, under Random Scribblings

For those oblivious to the obvious, the Android 2.1 update for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 smartphone has finally hit Canada. If you bought the X10 from Rogers and haven’t debranded it, just connect your phone to the computer via USB and use Sony Ericsson Update Service (SEUS) or Pc Companion for some 2.1 goodness.

This post is for those who are having trouble getting the update, especially those who de-branded the phone to get global updates in the past. Most of this was done with a bug in the SEUS software which allowed a firmware from a different region to be flashed to the phone.

The problem now is that SE have fixed this since then, and re-branding your phone back to Rogers firmware has become somewhat tricky. Re-branding is necessary as presently the generic flash tool for North America isn’t available yet, and the only way you can get the Android 2.1 update, while still keeping your model as X10a is to get the update from Rogers. I spent half a day trying to figure this out, and I thought I might post my findings here, hoping someone else might find it useful.

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