After having all of the logistics completed, I was able to get back to Android development. I am still working on the sqlite database implementation in Field Day. After some research, I determined that the best method for implementing a thread is by the use of Handler and Runnable objects. Before implementing this method, the Field Day was writing to the sqlite database too often causing the primary keys I’ve chosen to fail. I implemented the UI option from Seshat of selecting how often the sensor values are logged. The Handler object basically just has the runnable ‘run’ every number of seconds that is chosen by the user. Inside the runnable function, the SensorSampleActivity goes to the interface for communication between the sensor Fragment and Activity to grab the list of sensors and adds appropriate metadata (geocode, accuracy, satellites, etc). and writes it to the database. I think it is working, but I still need to do some more testing. I have to get the database off the Nexus (not particularly easy) and examine the contents.

It’s been two weeks since my last post but you can probably figure that out by looking at the dates. Last week was Spring break so I didn’t do anything (except sleep a lot). The week before however, I did quite a bit. I finished booking the accommodations for the nights we are in the west fjords. I’m so glad that is over and done with. I was able to find two Airbnb’s for a reasonable price in the west. They are roughly in two of the areas where we are probably going to be spending a decent amount of time. All of our accommodations are through Airbnb, turns out. I’ve never used Airbnb before but it seems to be pretty straight forward.

After many painful hours of Google (I probably went through at least 7 pages of ‘Iceland car rental’ multiple times), I figured out the best option for our transportation. My first thought was to get a 7-seater SUV because we don’t have as much luggage and some of the options are cheaper than getting a 9-seater vehicle. After calculating our payload, roughly 1500 pounds, and looking at the specs of some of the SUVs we were considering, Charlie and I determined that none of the SUVs would be able to hold all of that weight. I was in correspondence with some of the car companies to figure out year of the vehicles to get exact payload and still none of them would work. I ended up going with the cheapest 9-seater I could find — a 2014 Renault Trafic Mini-bus from goiceland.com.

Now all we need to do is book our flights. I’ve done a little research in that area too and we really need to book soon. The flights are just getting more expensive as the days pass.

Our best option is this:

1. one-way flight to a large airport (JFK or YYZ (Toronto))
2. round-trip flight from large airport to KEF
3. one-way flight back to airport near Richmond (DAY, CVG, IND) or MIA for those of us going to XSEDE

So far, I believe the cheapest option is Toronto.

Only being here for half a week, I didn’t really get that much done. The little bit that I did do was not in the area of Android, but in the area of logistics, since I am part of that team.

I started to look into flights and what the best possible arrangement is. I’ve started a document, which you can find in Field Science -> Iceland 2016 -> Logistics, called Possible Flights where I’m keeping track of what I find. Each possible option is in the form of a table. The table documents the departing and arriving cities and times/dates and any layovers that will occur. So far, I have one arrangement in the document, and below I’ve documented my general findings.

Since many of us will head to XSEDE in Miami right after we leave Iceland, it’s not really optimal (as of the flights I’ve found right now) to buy a round trip to Iceland. That means we will have to buy a lot of one-way tickets, which is what we ended up doing two years ago. However, one-way tickets straight to Iceland from Dayton or Indy are extremely expensive — more than just a round trip ticket. I guess they don’t want you buying a one-way there. I suspect it’s partially because of the small size of those airports. One-ways from larger airports are much cheaper. That’s why I think we would buy a one-way ticket to a larger airport (say Toronto, for example), a round trip from that airport to Iceland, then a one-way to Miami, and another one way back to an airport close to us (Indy or Dayton for example, or Columbus).

I worked some with Charlie and Tara on figuring on Kanbanchi to use for keeping track of to-do things. It looks like a really nice and useful tool. We figured out the hierarchy of it in terms of our projects… refer to Tara’s post for more information on the exact hierarchy. I’ve started making one for Field Day and those tasks, which you should be able to find in the Field Science -> Software folder.

This coming week, I hope to finish the Field Day Kanbanchi to-do, work some more on Android, and talk to Charlie about who’s going to go to Iceland next summer. Though, I might not get as much as I’d like to done, since I have a lot of interviews to do with CS tenure-track candidates.