Let’s review some of the main components of Jack’s pattern:

• Controllers — Typically view controllers, responsible for requesting data, processing results and presenting them to the user.
• Commands — Encapsulates everything needed to make a service call including the data for the call itself.
• Exception listeners — Responsible for taking action on any non-expected exception thrown from the service tier call.
• Command Queue — Responsible for managing network requests. Controllers will place requests onto the Command Queue and listen for responses. Exception listeners will also listen for unexpected responses and deal with them appropriately.

This paradigm really lends itself well to Android’s own Command Dispatch pattern implemented by the use of Intents, Services, and Broadcast Receivers.

Overview

An Android IntentService will be used as a RESTful service delegate, hiding communication details from components that need to communicate with back end services. The IntentService is also the Android representative of the iOS NSCommandQueue (command queue) in this pattern. Intents will be used as the Command object in this interaction and meshes well with their current use within the Android operating system. BroadcastReceivers will play the part of exception listeners and will also be leveraged by Activities who are the Android representative of an iOS View Controller. The implementation details do change slightly due to the differences in operating systems and will be covered in subsequent sections. Intent Filters based off of data in the Command Intent, will allow for targeted broadcast notifications of RESTful service results (or failures). We’ll follow a convention over configuration pattern for targeting specific broadcast receivers with results from service calls.

Operation.Request and Operation.Response (Data)

Marshallable and unmarshallable data objects representing an operation request and response will need to be created for each RESTful operation. These data objects will also need to be Parcelable so the operating system can use interprocess communication (IPC) if necessary. These data objects will extend from 2 abstract classes, OperationRequest and OperationResponse, that will serve as marker interfaces, have common attributes across all services, as well as to enforce certain contractual needs required by the Rest Delegate Service.

Intents (Commands)

Intents are used as the Command objects and will contain all the information necessary to make the network call, the results of that network call, and routing information based off the Intent metadata The action and category metadata for the Intent is different throughout the lifecycle and is dependent on where in that chain as to what the value is.

Rest Delegate Service Intents – Are explicit intents and will contain the following extras:

• “rds.service_request” – The OperationRequest and should contain everything necessary for the Rest Delegate Service to make a RESTful call to the service tier and formulate a response that can be broadcast and understood by all Broadcast Receivers.

Broadcast Receiver Intents – Are implicit intents and will identify their consumers by a combination of the Intent’s action and category metadata. The action will be a static string, “me.ericmiles.mobiletrans.ACTION_REST_RESULT”. The category will be one of three things: the fully qualified name of the response type, ie “me.ericmiles.mobiletrans.ops.LoginOperation.Response” , the fully qualified name of the exception caught during service communication, ie “org.springframework.web.client.RestClientException”, or the default exception category if no Broadcast Receivers would react to a caught exception “me.ericmiles.mobiletrans.UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION”. The category is the key component to allow broadcast receivers to filter out intents they do not care about. This will be discussed in more detail in the Intent Filter section. Broadcast Receiver Intents can have the following extras:

• “rds.service_request” – The OperationRequest that was used to make this service call. It is sent in the Result intent in case an exception Broadcast Receiver wishes to try the request again.
• “rds.service_response” – The OperationResponse received from the RESTful call if one is returned.
• “rds.http_response_code” – The HTTP response code if one is returned from the RESTful call. May be used in processing by broadcast receivers.
• “rds.exception” – The exception if one was caught.

Broadcast Receivers and Intent Filters (Listeners)

Broadcast Receivers will be used as listeners for RESTful service operation responses. These Broadcast Receivers could be registered programmatically within an Activity or can be registered statically via the Android manifest. Programmatically registered Broadcast Receivers will generally be for a specific operation for an Activity. Statically registered Broadcast Receivers will generally function as exception listeners, handling unexpected errors that transpire during RESTful communication. Broadcast Receivers extend from the Android BroacastReceiver class.

Intent filters are used throughout the Android ecosystem by Activities, Services, and Broadcast Receivers to filter Intents they are only interested in. In our communication pattern, we want to encapsulate logic to handle specific responses in their own broadcast receivers, be it regular RESTful responses or exception handlers.

Permissions

Normally broadcasts are sent across the entire device, allowing any components that has registered for an Intent to receive it. As a protective measure, to prohibit outside applications registering for our RESTful response broadcasts, we will require an Android permission to be used for all recipients of the implicit Intents used for operation responses. This permission will also be designated with the “signature” protection level, meaning that only applications that have identified using this permission and having been signed with the same certificate as the defining application can receive this intent. This will rule out any other application from being able to receive these Intents unless they somehow manage to get ahold of the signing certificate (keep those secure!!!)

Rest Delegate Service (Command Processor)

The Rest Delegate Service is responsible for RESTful communication aspect of the communication pattern. The Rest Delegate Service is an Androind IntentService; it is a special Android service that runs on an OS managed thread separate from the main UI thread. This will allow the service to handle network communication requests without blocking the user’s interaction with the UI. The Rest Delegate Service will leverage the Spring Android framework for RESTful service communication and will leverage the Gson library for marshaling and unmarshalling JSON data under the covers.

When a response is from the RestTemplate, the RestDelegateService will package up the OperationResponse, the original OperationRequest, and the HTTP response code into an implicit Intent, and fire a broadcast. This broadcast will allow any interested parties to listen for the response as there may be more than one. For example, upon successful login, not only with the MainActivity that originally fired the Command be interested, so will the Session Manager as it needs all the session information returned from the Authentication REST service. The category for the Intent will also used the fully qualified name of the OperationResponse so appropriate Intent Filters can be applied by the operating system.

If an exception is caught, there will be no OperationResponse nor will there be an HTTP response code. Instead of placing those items into the Intent, the fully qualified name of the Exception caught will be used as the category. This will allow specific Broadcast Receivers to act as exception handlers for pre-defined errors. A default, catch all will be used in case there is no match.

Activities (View Controllers)

An Activity is the controller in the communication pattern outlined in Jack’s blog entry. It is responsible for managing user interactions and what transpires during those interactions. In the Android implementation of the pattern, Activities that have RESTful service interaction will be responsible for firing off Service Intents for the Rest Service Delegate and handling those responses by managing a Broadcast Receiver that is programmatically registered for those responses with appropriate Intent Filters.

Conclusion

I think this pattern lends itself really well in the Android environment as you can see by the attached sample project. Interaction with the user gets a little tricky with the Exception listeners, particularly if you want to interact via Dialog boxes, however a there are numerous ways to skin a cat and it can be done. Check out the linked Github project and let me know your thoughts on the implementation.

Notes

I’ve included Mockey as my stubbed out service tier; it’s a pretty configurable, lightweight utility to create stubs for your service tier. If you care to use it, once started you’ll need to update the rest_endpoints.xml resource file with the appropriate IP address Mockey is running on, so your deployed application can interact with the service. Also, I’m unsure why Mockey doesn’t persist some of the configurations, but you’ll need to do the following:

1. For the AuthenticationService’s Default scenario, also make it the “Universal Scenario Error Response”.

GitHub Project

Somewhere between 3pm and 3:30pm we entered a flat and immediately saw tails. Justin headed one way and I headed another. I see one Red pushing through some pretty skinny water. I toss a paddletail swimbait in electric chicken all around the Red and get no action. BTW, flats fishing will REALLY highlight how weak your casting is. You need to hit very small 6 to 12 inch windows, which I’m not all that great at. Anyways, after casting at this Red 6 or 7 times, I get a bit impatient. Throw the swimbait just beyond him and bring the bait back into it…it bumps it and the Red spooks and swims off. Drats. I look further up the flat and see ANOTHER tailing Red. I figure the last Red didn’t like my swimbait so I switched over to a 3″ Gulp Shrimp in New Penny (it wasn’t the bait, it was my placement I later came to the conclusion). I make 3 or 4 casts to this Red and finally get a decent cast. The fish hits and it’s on! A fun couple of minutes and I land my first flats Red, an upper slot sized (don’t remember the exact size, somewhere between 22″ and 24″).

I release the fish and then proceed to catch the next 2 tailers I see, all were between 22″ and 24″. So now I’m 3 of 4 I’ve casted to and feeling pretty good. I start to make my way over to Justin and see a few more tailers. I make casts to a few and either get a spook or just no interest. I get over to Justin and at this point I’m 3 of 6 for tailers. I watched Justin hook into a decent size red only to have his leader snap after a few seconds of fight. I tell Justin I’ve caught 3 of 6 and he’s in disbelief. We both spot a LARGE tail coming out of the water on the flat in some deeper water. Luckily for me, Justin had to retie so I start making casts. I cast 5 or 6 times before the tail disappears, but it wasn’t spooked. I hold still waiting for it to reappear. After 5 more minutes the tail reappears between Justin and I. He gives me the green light to cast. On my 2nd cast I get a strike and I set the hook. Line starts peeling off back out into the grass….Hold on there fella!!! After a nice 5 minute fight, I land a nice 26 3/4″ Red.

The water starts exiting the flat and the bite slows, so we call it an evening at 5pm-ish. I have 4 Reds on maybe 10 casted at, I think Justin finished with 2 caught but he had the biggest of the day at 28″+. Between the 2 of us we saw probably 20 or so tailers…a GREAT day on the flats.

Thursday is our full “scout day” where we planned to fish both tides in Copahee so we’d have an idea of how we want to fish on the day of the tourney. We get out at 8:30am-ish and hit the water (and a bit hungover). Justin and I always have a good time when we hang out, the night before was no exception.

Dragging a bit, we catch bait and head to the Sound. Low tide is at 10:09am and high tide is at 5:02pm. My Ride is already dragging bottom on a few spots where the water is pretty skinny. We head out to some oyster mounds and start soaking baits. I’m using a live mullet under a float and cut mullet on a carolina rig. We see no action in the deeper water at low tide, so head in to the skinnier water and that’s when the action picked up (for Justin at least). I paddle up on and spook quite a few fish, but don’t hook into anything. Justin catches a few fish in the skinnier water before we head to the grass line once the water starts coming in. BTW, that live mullet lasted for 2 hours under that float until I accidentally raked it across some oyster beds and killed it.

I throw a cut mullet to the grass line and wait…I didn’t have to wait long. I get a bite, I tighten up the line and the fight is on. The Red makes several 10 to 20 yard runs and I finally wear it out after 5 minutes or so. This Red was 28 3/4″ pinched. WOW, nice Red. I release it and throw my cut bait back into the water in almost the same spot. After a short 5 minutes, I get another strike and reel down. The rod doubles over and line immediately starts peeling off at an incredible rate back out into the Sound. Line is pulled off for a good 20 or 30 seconds, I’m guessing well over 100 yards of braid. The wind has picked up quite a bit so I’m hesitant to pull my stake out pole, but I’m not getting this monster back in just sitting here. I pull the pole and the wind immediately starts taking me in the opposite direction of the fish. I manage a few one handed paddles in the direction of the line but my line is all over/through an oyster bar and the line snaps. Given that I just caught a 28 3/4″ Red and he was only able to get off short 10 and 20 yard runs where my drag was set, I’m fairly certain this was at least a 30″ Red…maybe a lot more. We’ll never know…dejected, I retie another Carolina rig and throw my line back out. I catch another 28 1/2″ Red before we hit the flats. We fish a different flat today and we don’t see a single Red. We get off the flat about an hour after high tide and head home. Justin wins the fish count today, finishing with 5 Reds but I win for the biggest at 28 3/4″.

Day 3 is Friday and we decide to fish the Wando due to the fairly strong 15 to 25mph north east winds…hoping for some relief from it. (we didn’t get it). Ran into Carter, a guide for Kayak Fish SC, at the Paradise Island launch he was chartering that day. Spoke for a few mins and watched him catch some bait before we launched. The wind was brutal and just made paddling and fishing pretty difficult. Justin and I were unable to land any bait at the launch so we were hoping to get some while out on the water.

3 hours later, no bait, no fish, and we had had enough of the fighting of the wind with no action. We pack up and head to the 41 bridge to go for bull Reds hoping to get some relief from the geography change and the change in tide. Catch some bait at the launch and head over to the hole. Cast our lines out and have them soaking for a bit when a yellow lab shows up on the bank. He seems excited to see us. He immediately jumps down in the water and starts getting in Justin’s way, swimming over/around/through Justin’s line. Justin reels up and attempts to paddle out into deeper water near me. The dog follows. The dog now swims over to me and is getting in my way. This goes on for close to an HOUR; him swimming switching off between Justin and my kayak, getting in the way. An hour of wasted fishing trying to get away from this dog who is ruining any chance we have at fishing. I can’t believe this dog was swimming in swift current, with a strong wind, for nearly an hour.

We think the dog will leave us alone if we head across the river and fish some docks; it does. Justin proceeds to catch 3 Reds underneath one dock and I go 0-fer. We call it a day and head in. I was skunked this day so I was pretty down but tomorrow will be a different day.

We knew we were going to miss the Captain’s meeting for the tourney the Friday night so we planned on doing the meetup at 6am at on Saturday morning. Overnight, one of Justin’s kids got sick and caused him to miss the alarm. I’m a heavy sleeper and didn’t wake up either so we don’t make it out of bed until 7:30am pretty certain we’re not going to catch anyone at the launch (we didn’t). We catch some bait at the island and head out, hoping to run into Ken or Tommy out on the water. The wind was insane, 25mph easily and constant. It made paddling very difficult. We saw a lot of other kayakers but didn’t attempt to weave in and out due to the wind. We just let it blow us down the grass line until we could find space to wedge up on the grass.

We fished the grass line and then hit the skinny water out around the oyster bars again through low tide. I caught 4 stingrays but didn’t manage a single Red. Justin’s having a pretty good day, landing several Reds. I finally get into a rather large one on the grass line only to have it come unbuttoned boat side after 3 or 4 minutes of fighting. I got another from he same spot about 5 minutes later but the leader snapped in half after a minute or two.

Since we were officially not in the tournament and I now had 1.5 days of fish skunk on my boat, we decided to skip the “weigh-in” and try to fish the same flat we had success on the other day. The wind picked up and became even worse (if that’s possible). There were now white caps in Copahee. Given how bad the wind was and how difficult fishing the flat would be with it, we make an executive decision to skip fishing and wait for enough water to enter the grass so we can drag our kayaks back and call it a day. Another skunk for me but Justin ends the day at 6 total. There are a couple of funny personal stories of us trying to get back to launch by dragging across the flat, diving through pluff mud, falling into a creek, etc, but I’ll spare those details.

I did have a good 4 days hanging with a friend I don’t see all that often and had 2 great days of fishing. The wind was killer the last 2 days (along with the weird dog), so ending on a skunk note sucked. I’ll be back at some point, Copahee was awesome as always.

All my pictures can be found here.

For my employer, we have several internal Android applications under development and we too wanted to employ this single mechanism to support multiple accounts paradigm in use by Google. How to do it is in the documentation, but I had to hunt for it a bit. How you obtain the token in the authentication mechanism and how you use that token in your service call is out of scope for this prescription. However, this prescription will show you how to tie all these pieces together:

1. Create your authenticator (out of scope for this).  Consult a previous blog I have on this subject for that prescription.

2. In the manifest for the application containing the authentication mechanism, alter the sharedUserId and put a static value.  Here, we’ll use com.captechventures.mobile.

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
      package="com.captechventures.android.authenticator"
      android:versionCode="1"
      android:versionName="1.0.0"
      android:sharedUserId="com.captechventures.mobile">

3. In the authenticator descriptor (authenticator.xml in my example), add an label to give the grouping of accounts a generic name. While not necessary, this will allow you to name the account something other than the name of the application it’s installed with (default behavior).

<account-authenticator xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:accountType="com.captechventures.mobile"
    android:icon="@drawable/icon"
    android:smallIcon="@drawable/icon"
    android:label="@string/auth_token_label"
/>

4. Create the 2nd (or 3rd, 4th, etc) application that needs to leverage that authentication mechanism with a sync adapter. Follow the prescription outlined in step 1, however skip the steps to create the authentication mechanism. You’re still going to need a SyncAdapter.

5. In the sync adapter descriptor (syncadapter.xml in my example), specify the same account as defined by the authentication mechanism created in step #1 in the accountType attribute.

<sync-adapter xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:contentAuthority="com.captechventures.test.hc1"
    android:accountType="com.captechventures.mobile"
    android:supportsUploading="false"
/>

6. In the 2nd application’s manifest, specify a sharedUserId value and use the same value that was used in step #2. Optionally, provide a sharedUserLabel as this will be the name of your application under the account grouping.

<manifest xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
package="com.captechventures.test.hc1" android:versionCode="1"
android:versionName="1.0" android:sharedUserId="com.captechventures.mobile" android:sharedUserLabel="@string/app_name">
<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion="8" />

7. When ready to publish your application, you must sign your 2nd application with the same certificate used to sign your first app. Without signing your application, Android will not allow your two apps to share resources (which you’ve specified you’d like to do with the same sharedUserId attribute in the manifest).

You now have 2 applications that can share/use the same authentication mechanism to your back end services! This makes credential management much easier on the user of your apps. A couple of points to remember:

1. When you request a sync with a content resolver, you MUST provide the Account with the appropriate accountType created in step 1 in the API call.

2. Clients are responsible for identifying if the authentication token is invalid, by making an API call to the AccountManager.

mAccountManager.invalidateAuthToken("com.captechventures.mobile", authToken);

3. The 2nd application requires that the 1st application be installed on the device for it work. You should install the authenticator with an application that will always be on your users’ devices or think of breaking that mechanism out into its own application.

I set out around 7:15-ish am for Lynnhaven Inlet. I get about 30 mins in when I realize mistake number 1, I left my hat at home. Not a big deal, I’ll just have to apply extra sunscreen to my face. About 90 mins in and almost to my destination, the big oops is realized, #2: I left my PFD at home. Now anyone who know me, knows I don’t get in my kayak without it for safety reasons alone. However, I was on my vacation and 90 mins into my 105 minute trip I wasn’t about to turn around. The other problem with this is that my PFD also contains my line snipper, pliers (for removing hooks from toothy fish), whistle, and my knife/multi-tool. I had no backups in my saltwater crate, so I was going to be fishing without a lot of important tools.

I get to Lynnhaven and go to park, it’s my first time here. I realize the spots are numbered and there is box where you’re supposed to pay to park. Oops #3, I don’t have cash. I leave the parking lot and head to the local 7-11, take out cash, buy a power bar and get some change. Head back and start unloading. I brought my YakCatch bag as I had intended to take home some trout or flounder to eat when I realized oops #4: the Ride 135 doesn’t have deck line to attach the bag to. Well, I guess I won’t keep any fish today, lucky them.

I get all my stuff unloaded and loaded on the kayak, and get onto the water. I started to paddle out into the inlet when oops #5 hits: I left my salt water license in the car and my croakies for my sunglasses. I’ve recently moved to a 2 crate system: one for salt and one for fresh. This is my first time in the salt with the system and thus the license wasn’t already in the crate. I turn around and make the paddle back to retrieve said items. I finally get out into the inlet and beach at the sandbar right across from the mouth of Crab Creek. I brought along my cast net to try and catch bait, it would be my first time ever throwing a cast net. First toss is a success, I get 4 finger sized mullet in my net! Second toss I get 5! Wow, this is going to be easier than I thought. Third toss I get 2 and the rest of the tosses are pure ugliness. No more bait, but enough to get me to fish a while.

At this point, I’ve got to re-rig one of my rods for a carolina rig so I get to work on 20lb Seagur Fluoro leader with my teeth. Ouch. I finally get my rig straight and paddle down the inlet a bit. I go to stake out at the creek mouth when oops #6 comes in: No anchor trolley for the Stick It In Pin. This was a known oops but still it was rather tough putting a 5.5′ stake out pole through a scupper and trying to manage that. I ended up having to reposition a few times to get everything squared away but once I was finally in position I stayed for quite some time.

I put a mullet onto the circle hook and tossed it out. At this point the tide was coming in so I let the current drift my rig. I feel a slight tug so I reel it in. I pull up a rather large blue crab that has cut my mullet nearly in half. The crab falls off, along with most of my bait. I rebait and cast back out. These slight tugs and losses of mullet to crab went on for 30 mins or so. Finally I get a good strike and set the hook. FISH ON! After a short fight, I land a 15″-ish flounder! He gave me lots of side boat splashes, I was soaked by the time he was landed.

I release the flounder, rebait my hook with another mullet, and cast again letting the current drift my carolina rig. I get another strike on the very next cast and get a little bit of surface action. This is no flounder, it looks like a trout!!! A short fight later and I get him to the side of the yak. It’s a good size! 19″ of beautiful specks and teeth!

If I had my YakCatch bag this trout would have been going home with me. Lucky for him, I did not so he was released.

I re-baited and re-casted and let the rig drift again. Recasting and re-drifting went on for a while. One time I went to reel in and the line was heavy so I swept my rod for a hookset…FISH ON! A short fight later and I have a blue up to the kayak…only problem is, it’s gut hooked. No pliers and no way I’m sticking my fingers in there…Lucky for him (and me) the blue’s teeth had put a hurting on the fluoro leader and it actually snapped when I put a little bit of pressure on the line. I let it go but I’m unsure how long it’ll last, he’s got a 3/0 Gammy Octopus hook in its gut. I had to retie my rig again, my poor teeth.

I eventually ran out of bait and fished some weed lines and small coves, landing one more small 8″ speckled trout on a 4″ New Penny Gulp Shrimp. Some weather was moving in, the current was swift and so was the wind, so I called it a day.

When I get back to the car, my cooler had somehow toppled over and water was all over the cargo area of my car: oops #7. This just was not my day! Glad I left when I did, some heavy rains started coming down on my way home.

All my pictures from the trip

Started with a large chartreuse and white buzzbait and that got em going. Caught 5 LMB ranging from 10″ to 15.5″ in the first 75mins. Landed 2 more LMB on a wacky rigged 5″ senko in the next 15 mins. From about 8:30am until about 11:30am-ish, things got REALLY cold. I wasn’t spooking, hooking up with, or seeing any fish.

Somewhere around there, I started to find a few and realized the bass in the lilies were also holding to other cover (lay downs); lure of choice for a lily field was none other than a frog, Capt Ken’s Clone. I had a lot of short strikes today and had 4 bass take my frog, fight for 5 to 10 seconds and somehow manage to come unbuttoned.

Around 1:30pm, found some of the ideal “pattern” for the day and threw my clone over. While retrieving I got a huge blowup, so I let it sit. Another blowup but it was a good 2 feet from my clone. I reel it in and wait for about 60 seconds and then throw back over. This time I get a solid hit and I set the hook. Thank goodness this time the fish didn’t come unbuttoned and I land the largest fish of the day, a hair over 18″ and nice and fat.

This is the most success I’ve ever had at Briery; I’ve been skunked several times here. I had my daughter Thursday nigh through Sunday, then Monday is the Salt, Tuesday I’m chasing Snakeheads, and Wednesday is a half day of guided fishing on Mossy Creek!

BTW, Briery in the middle of the week is FANTASTIC. There were only 3 trucks at the ramp when I got there, and I really only saw one other boat all day.

All my pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/102799211425946575386/20110911BrieryCreek#

I leave my client’s far west end offices and head to Hampton via I64 around 4:15-ish. Leaving this time and hitting Hampton around rush hour, I expected to get there close to 6:30 or 7pm. Even hitting a few thick showers, my pace wasn’t slowed and I got there around 5:45. I then spent the next 30 mins hmm-ing and haw-ing about where I wanted to park and launch; I finally pulled myself together and just did it. I threw aGulp! 4″ New Penny shrimp on a 1/4oz jighead and started fishing. There was a slight breeze but nothing awful to contend with at this point, probably blowing around 10mph.

Off the shore about 40 yards, I start banging the HRBT pylons hoping to hook into anything that will take my offering. Within my first few casts, I’m getting all sorts of nibbling on my hook. I keep whiffing on the hookset, so I’m chalking it up to blues or some other small bait fish annoying the hell out of me. After 15 minutes or so, I get my first solid strike and I swing for the hookset…FISH ON!!! A short fight later and I land my first fish at the HRBT, a small croaker.

I throw it back and get to fishing, changing up my retrieve from subsurface fast retrieve, to bouncing along the bottom, letting the current and wind pushing my yak, work my jig for me. I hook into another croaker, a small mud toad, and a small flounder.

About this time, Chuck has showed up and is now launching. We both begin to work the Pylons some more, waiting for the sun to completely disappear so the HRBT lights will work their magic. There is a storm on the horizon and even though the wind, the surf, and the outgoing tide are starting to pick up, Chuck assures me the storm should miss us. He has his marine VHF with him so I’m going to defer to him. We both catch a few croaker when Rob Choi and a buddy of his shows up and join us. I eagerly look forward to speaking to Rob. I haven’t met Rob but I’ve read numerous blog entries and KBF reports of his, he’s a very accomplished angler and fishes the area frequently; I knew he had some tips for me. We all continue pounding the pylons waiting for night to fall, so we can begin our Striper chase.

I make one cast right into a pylon and start the retrieve, I get a solid bite and I swing for the hookset…FISH ON!!!! My rod doubles over and whatever is on, is certainly larger than anything else I’ve caught so far. After about 5 seconds of fight, the large fish goes air born, shaking its head vigorously trying to dislodge the hook I have in its mouth. It’s dusk so I can’t quite tell what it is, but I think it’s a speckled trout…and if so it’s a nice size one. I continue the fight and the fish makes several, hard runs, almost Redfish like. At this point, I think maybe I’ve got a Red on (never seen or heard of a Red going air born). I finally get it to the side of the yak and realize I’ve got a sweet speck on my line. Put it on the board and it measures a little over 19 inches!!!! SWEET! My camera takes horrible night shots (as you can see in the album linked at the end of the post), however Rob got a hero shot of me holding my speck.

I release the speck and now I’m pumped. I’m ready to get into some Striper now and the daylight is almost all but gone.

Unfortunately, so has most of the decent fishing conditions. The wind is now blowing at a 15mph to 25mph clip, with some stronger gusts. There’s lightning off in the distance and it’s getting dark, but Chuck still believes the storm is going to miss us. The surf has become rather choppy (that’s putting it lightly) and combined with the wind, has become rather difficult to fish in. All the anglers have spread out, looking for striper hunting for baitfish in the light cast down from the HRBT bridge lights, so I can’t tell if anyone is having any luck. With the poor paddling conditions, I’m struggling. After 45 mins or so of doing a lot more paddling than casting, I make my way over to Chuck and let him know I’m going to paddle in and take a break and see if the storm pulls away from the area, along with the horrible wind and surf. I start to paddle towards shore and I get about 30 yards or so before I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder. What the….POW. Hit again, now my knee. I look around me and see big splashes forming all on the surface of the water…HAIL!!!!! I make a bee line for the cover of the bridge and all hell breaks loose at that point. The hail only lasts about 20 seconds, but then the intense rain starts.

There’s not much to talk about here as I spend the next 45 minutes, in the same place, constantly paddling…battling the outgoing tide, wind, and surf (all working in the same direction) to try and stay under the bridge and out of the elements. The swells had to have been 4 feet or so, maybe more. I know I had water breaking over the bow of my kayak on nearly every swell. Usually when a heavy storm rolls in this fast, it rolls out just as fast. It never did.

When it looked like we could safely paddle to shore, Chuck and I follow the bridge in to take a short break. The rain is still pouring, but the wind has let up a little bit. We wait about 30 minutes to see if the storm passes but it doesn’t let up. I had planned on quitting at midnight if the fishing wasn’t hot….it was 11:30 and I had no desire to fight the rain, wind, and current anymore so we packed it up and headed home. Fun trip and I’ll definitely make it again, but I’ll keep a closer look at the weather before hand and make trip changes based on the weather.

When I got home, I looked up historical doppler images and found this. For those of you unfamiliar with the HRBT, I’m fishing above the P where the ride line cross over the body of water. Wait for what moves in that area around 10pm…

All my pictures

I bought her a Shakespeare Tinkerbell rod and reel for Christmas, it lights up when you cast it. All I needed were some small hooks, some bait, and a bobber, and we’d be set. I bought some PowerBait Crappie Nibbles, size 10 Eagle Claw snelled hooks, and some much larger than necessary bobbers. We set out on Saturday morning around 9:30 and head over to the lake.

We get there and it’s much windier than I had hoped, but Sadie was excited about fishing with Dada so I didn’t want to let her down.

I prepared the tackle the night before, so I didn’t waste time at the Lake while my busy body daughter wondered when we were going to get to fishing. We go down to an area that I know holds Crappie. I let her be the bait girl, responsible for the jar of Nibbles. She gets me out bait when I need it. I tell her I need a nibble and she proceeds to open the jar and hand me 2 (while tossing a few more into the water). After putting the bait on the hook, I help her make a cast (ok, I casted for her) and we watch the bobber. The wind starts pushing the bobber back into the bank, no signs of fish. We reel it in and cast out again. This time we get some activity. The immediate shriek and giggle of Sadie watching the bobber splash and go underwater, I’ll never forget. It was a proud moment to experience my daughter enjoying one of my hobbies, something that I enjoyed when I was a kid with my step-father, mother, father, brothers and sister.

We still didn’t get any fish so we make a few more casts. It looks as though the bobber is going to get blown into the bank when I tell Sadie to reel in…at that point the line goes tight. FISH ON!!!!! I’m not quite sure Sadie knew or understood she had a fish, but Dada was screaming “Sadie you have a fish!!!! Start reeling! Good job! Keep the rod tip up! Keep pressure on! Keep reeling!” I’m glad I didn’t yell any expletives, I know I was so excited for her one of them could have slipped out. After a few cranks of Tinkerbell, she pulls in her very first fish…a tiny Bluegill.

I take the bluegill off the hook and offer up for her to look at it. At this point she realizes that she’s actually got a fish and doesn’t really want to get near it, almost a little scared. She can be a little shy around new things sometimes, so it’s understandable. I offer up the fish one more time to touch it, she wants no part of it. I toss it back in and watch it swim away. Gotta teach her Catch and Release early, right? Much to my delight, Sadie yells out “Let’s catch another one!”. Daddy is beaming at this point, I’m so proud of my little girl.

I tell Sadie let’s move down a bit, knowing the rock structure up ahead usually holds a few Crappie. Sadie replies, “yeah there’s prolly fish up here”. She’s already reading structure! LOL We make another cast and get another FISH ON. A few more cranks of Tinkerbell, and Sadie has landed her first Black Crappie.

This time, she wants to touch it.

After a few touches, pets, and pokes, I offer for her to throw the fish back. She says no and tells me to throw it back, so I toss the Crappie back in the water and we get back to fishing. We go another 10 minutes or so without much action. Sadie at this point is losing her focus, which was expected. Fishing takes a lot of patience and focus, something most 3 year olds lack but I was completely expecting it. At this point, the trip was a success. We get one more bite and land another small bluegill. Sadie is enamored with eyeballs, so she pokes the fish’s eyeball a few times. I chuckle and tell her the fish probably doesn’t like that, but he probably didn’t like the hook in his mouth either. The fish gets a little wiggly and starts flapping. It jumps out of my hand, into the air, and smacks Sadie right in the head, before landing in the water. I almost fall to the ground laughing and Sadie starts chuckling.

I happen to look down and sometime during the fracas, my bait girl has dropped the bait jar while it was open. All of our bait is spread out across the ground. I didn’t explicitly tell her, but I fired her (I took the bait jar and kept it in my pocket). At this point, her interest was waning. She was off chasing ducks and she left me holding the Tinkerbell rod and a nearly empty jar of bait. I let her chase a duck for a few minutes then we pack it up and head to the playground for a bit. I’m not sure who had more fun, Sadie or Daddy but I know one thing, I absolutely loved sharing my love of fishing with Sadie. I can’t wait to take her again.

All photos from our trip

Keep in mind, the original goal of creating the application was to become more familiar with Android, the APIs, the tools, documentation, etc. available for development. The application was just a proof of concept, not a necessity required by organization. All of our requirements come internally from our own team. First, we identified our requirements:

1. Server component(s) will exist to provide latest version information as well as to store application apks.
2. The application should be able to ping a server to determine if a newer version is available.
3. The server should be able to inform the application if they are current, a new version is available, or if an update is to be “forced”. Other information provided from the server is location of new apk and the new version number.
   • Forced install doesn’t mimic true Android Market functionality, however we determined there would be a need to push critical application updates upon the user, even if they don’t want them.
4. The application should auto check for app updates on launch, but only do so every 7 days.
   • We wanted to prevent unnecessary network traffic if a person launches the app several times a day.
5. Once it has been identified a newer version exists, the check is no longer made.
   • The user is notified upon launch (every 7 days) if an update is available.
6. The Update Check can also be made on demand whether a check has been made in the last 7 days or not.
   • Once an update has been identified the on demand Update Check becomes an on demand Install Update
     • On demand install launches a browser intent with the apk URL
     • The user must click the downloaded apk to install.
7. If an update is forced, the user is notified of the required update.
   • A browser intent is fired to launch the Browser with the apk URL.
   • The user must click the downloaded apk to install.
   • The user is not allowed to open the app until the install is completed.

Implementing and testing this solution from an Android standpoint took about 2 weeks of spare time (read evenings and weekends) for myself. The server side component was handled by another team (ok, one person). Implementing this solution involved updating our SQLLite database, our ContentProvider, adding new menu items, creating some new AsyncTasks, updating all of our activities, etc. I consider this a significant effort. If you have multiple enterprise applications that need this same functionality, you’re going to have build time into your schedule. Some of these components could be built into a shareable library, however you’d still need to weave this into each specific application via resource descriptors, activities, etc. FYI, the patch file to support all of this was 1823 lines long.While this solution is fairly robust, an easy way out would be to provide a simple check to see if a version exists and to notify the user. This would require significantly less time to design, develop and test, but at what cost? When do you perform that check? When the user launches the app? What if the user spends a majority of their time off network and only launches when they have no connection? If you provide a manual check, you’re going to have to visit some of the requirements set out above and now you’re back to investing significant time into the SDLC.

In conclusion, you can provide this functionality inside of the application itself. You can make it as basic as possible to “just get by”, but it’s going to have its shortcomings. You could create a library to reduce development effort to integrate this into each application, but it’s still going to require time to weave it into the application and test. Why do this though when the Market is almost already there, it just needs some fine tuning? That or the Android OS needs to support enterprise deployment in a more robust manner. I still hold my belief that Android isn’t quite ready for the enterprise for this reason (among several others).

Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big evangelist for the platform, borderlining on fanboy-ism. No, I don’t constantly put down that other mobile device OS from the fruit company, I just love Android. It has its shortcomings just like any other device, no device is perfect. But for the most part, I’ve been very happy with my device and the operating system; as a consumer device, it’s wonderful.

However, I got a chance to test the waters as a developer for a proof of concept project for my employer, CapTech. I found all of the development resources for Android to be wonderfully exceptional; I was very surprised. Documentation, working demos, device simulators, support groups, and development tools all already existed and were easily accessible, not to mention very familiar as I had been developing Java/JEE applications for the last 12 years using Eclipse or some derivative of it. While not the most polished UI designer, I felt the shift from web application and server developer to Android developer fairly seamless. I would expect other IT shops to feel the same with backgrounds similar as mine.

Once our application was complete, it came time to determine how to distribute. We had a few beta testers that had Nexus Ones, custom ROMs, or rooted phones so we merely put the application on a web server and gave them the URL. This paradigm worked fine when there are only 3 or 4 users, however we would need to potentially deliver the application to our entire company of 200+ employees (not all are on Android, but hey we plan for the worst). We didn’t want to shove our application into the market and thus exposing it to the entire world for a mere 200 people. We could have housed the apk on a web server just like we did for our beta testers, but how would we manage updates to the application? Email blasts?

These weren’t even our biggest hurdles, it was the choice of carrier for our company, AT&T. Most of our employees are on the company business plan and thus, use an AT&T device. If you don’t know, AT&T blocks installation of Android apps from any other source other than the Android Market itself. Putting our application on a web server wasn’t even an option for most of our employees. I posed this question to the AT&T Developer Forum and received a less than sufficient response, “We’re looking into it”. This essentially means you won’t see something from us in quite some time, if at all.

For Enterprise distribution, Android really needs the ability to add multiple “Markets” or alternative repositories to the existing Android Market. On top of this Google needs to prohibit carriers like AT&T from locking out alternative sources altogether. I understand AT&T’s reasoning, however until a mechanism is in place, Android in the enterprise is completely shut out.

I’m including my post and response to the AT&T developer forum as I was having quite the difficulty obtaining a direct link to the thread.

My post:

My company has a business account with AT&T for our wireless solution. We have roughly 200+ employees on our AT&T wireless plan. We have developed an Android application that we’d like to distribute to our employees and ONLY our employees, so using the Android Market is not an option. However, AT&T has disabled “alternative sources” on AT&T Android devices eliminating the ability to allow our employees to install the application without rooting their phones, installing cooked ROMs, or using something like the Sideload Wonder Machine; all of which are not options in a corporate environment.

How is AT&T suggesting businesses handle this situation? Surely AT&T had foresight into this situation when they decided to cut off end user’s ability to install applications from sources other than the market? We have a legitimate business need to install enterprise applications and currently do not have the means to do so.

AT&T Reps response:

Thank you for explaining your business needs.

AT&T selected Android Market as the exclusive source for applications because it forces developers to be accountable for the apps they submit. If the Android community has issues with an app, the app can be flagged and removed.

As you are probably aware with Android, there is no approval process for applications–they are all accepted by default and Google has stated that they place apps in the Android Market within 24 hours of their submission.

At the same time, we know enterprises prefer not to use consumer storefronts and that that other platforms have methods to distribute applications directly to employees. We are looking at solutions for this now.

Sr Product Marketing Manager
Hsuan-hua Chang
www.facebook.com/atttdeveloper ( please join our fan page)

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! My body’s internal clock wakes me up at 5:45am, a whole 15 mins before my REAL alarm was supposed to go off. While I’m excited about my opportunity to fish today, the desire to sleep almost won over. I’m glad I got out of bed…

I get to the Ottobine Country store at about 7:45-ish, get my pass (I was the 2nd of the day), and head up stream to Ottobine Elementary where I park and start to pull myself together. My leader is a bit short so I pull out an extra long piece of tippet and tie it on. As I’m clipping my tag ends on the connector knot, I cut the wrong piece and my tippet falls to the ground. Awesome way to start the day…

I get all my junk together and get over to the creek. It’s a beautiful, narrow creek running through pastures and a small wooded area. I start at a small foot bridge where the current is swift. It’s been a while since I fished anything other than a streamer, so I take out a bead head prince nymph, put on a strike indicator, and get to knocking the rust off a bit. I spend the next 30 mins or so working on my casting and drift technique with a nymph, it’s probably been 2 or 3 years since I fished this way. I keep moving upstream, with plenty of eddies, slackwater, and seams to fish but I’m not spooking any trout nor am I seeing any. I take out my thermometer and shove it in the water…I get a reading of 40F. I thought this was a spring fed creek so I was expecting it to be warmer; I chalk it up to a broken thermometer.

I carelessly keep moving up stream, not keeping a low profile when I notice the water has become deeper and more still and I see a fairly large trout swim away upstream. I should have been stalking a bit more and a little less careless, hopefully I didn’t spook the hole. I had placed several casts in front of this trout with the nymph and he didn’t take it before it swam off, so I decided I should switch over to the trout crack (kreelex). I make several more casts into this rather large, slow moving pool and get no hits. Well must not be anything in here other than the one fish I spooked, so I jump up to my feet to move on….SPOOOOOOOK!!!! About 10 spooked trout start darting all over the place, looking for cover. They must have all been stacked up on the bottom. Again, should have been a little more patient and worked the kreelex a little more diligently. Hopefully I didn’t kill the best hole I’d see for the day. 20 more minutes working the hole without a sniff and my worry was confirmed.

I head back to the footbridge and just below it, is a beautiful riffle with a very large pool below it. The following picture was taken from the back side of the pool, looking up to the top of the pool where the riffle enters.

I still had the kreelex on, so I cast to the opposite bank and let the fly fall and swing into the center of the pool. As I’m stripping the line goes tight and the rod doubles over….FISH ON!!!! Holy crap, line starts pulling off and something hits the surface. That can’t be the fish on my line, it’s the size of an alligator! You would think one would be able to remember every moment of the best trout fight of their lives, but honestly the next 10 minutes are a blur. I spent so much effort concentrating on fighting the fish and giggling like a child with joy. The huge trout made several jumps shaking its head, a few long runs (pulled line off my reel..wow it’s nice to hear drag on a fly rod), tried to break me off in the riffle’s current, and just wouldn’t let me get it anywhere near the bank. I was fishing with my 3wt with 4x tippet and I just knew it was going to break, but it held on for me. I finally get the fish to the bank and attempt to net it with my very undersized trout net (note to self, get a new bigger net). When I get the fish a few feet away from the bank and lay it down, I can’t believe the size.

I caught a large rainbow at Suzi Q back in December and this fish only had 3 or 4 inches of length on that other fish, but this fish outclassed the other by its girth big time. I’m unsure of the weight of this trout, but take a look at it compared to my hand.

This was a monster trout that has to have been at least 5 pounds and I’m estimating it at 24 inches in length (using my rod for comparisons). Easily the biggest trout I’ve ever caught. I quickly snap a few pics (sure wish someone was there to take a picture of me WITH the fish) and get it back in the water. I revive it and ensure it swims away safely…hopefully he’ll be there for someone else to catch another day. I tell you what though, I bet it won’t be snapping at any gold/copper kreelex flies ever again

Not sure how I’m going to top that one. I continue to fish and enter a wooded area that reminded me more of a Virginia brook trout stream….and I proceeded to fish it like one. I lost several kreelex flies and even a wooly bugger to over hanging limbs and branches and didn’t see any fish. I exited the wooded area and came to about a 1/4 miles stretch of stream improvements the Massanutten Trout Unlimited chapter has done. Let me tell you, the stream looks FANTASTIC. I didn’t see any fish holding in this section today, hopefully when the water warms up the fish will spread out. There are tons of log jams, mid stream boulders, k-dams, etc in this stretch…it definitely looks the part of trout water. I wish I would have taken more pictures here, TU really did an amazing job.

I finished the day at about noon and head back to the Ottobine Country Store for some lunch. I bought what is one of the best ham and cheese subs I’ve ever eaten for $4.50. If you fish Beaver Creek, do order lunch here. It’s awesome.

On a small side note, after I finished up I headed over to Mossy Creek to finish my day. There were 2 anglers parked at Route 42 and 4 anglers parked at the church. Coupled with the strong wind that blew in during the morning, there was nothing doing at Mossy. I did manage to catch another 12″ fallfish…damn creek chubs.

Picasa album of Beaver Creek.