I recently bought OmniFocus for my iPad after finding other task management apps insufficient. The one real weakness I found in OmniFocus was the inability to link to tasks in other projects to indicate a cross-project dependency. (From my research online, I gather that most OmniFocus users think this is counter to accepted usage patterns and thus not a good idea. Nonetheless, it’s something I need to do.)

While doing research to figure out if this was possible, I found a discussion forum where an OmniFocus user mentioned that in the Mac version of OmniFocus (which I didn’t buy), it’s possible to copy the link to a task. I wondered if this was also possible in the iOS version.

I started by opening the task, clicking the “share” button and selecting “copy,” which yielded this:

omnifocus:///task/cIx7zMCx7iz?name=Test%20task&note=This%20is%20a%20test.&parallel=true
omnifocus:///task/cIx7zMCx7iz
- Test task @parallel(true) @autodone(false)
	This is a test.

The task’s URL is there: omnifocus:///task/cIx7zMCx7iz.

Next step: Can I use Workflow to parse just the task URL and copy it to the clipboard?

I have an action extension workflow with one step — View Content Graph. Running this workflow on the OmniFocus task, I could see that OmniFocus was passing the task URL to Workflow.

 

Using another action extension workflow that gets the URLs from the input and displays them using the Quick Look action, I determined — through a bit of trial and error by running it on various tasks — that the task URL is always the last URL that OmniFocus passes to Workflow.

 

The task URL can be easily retrieved using the Get Item From List action, so the workflow is just three steps:

 

The workflow is available here.

I recorded this video in May of 2015 during takeoff from Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur (NCE) on a flight bound for Heathrow Airport (LHR). The airport is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on three sides, and during takeoff we flew over the sea before turning back inland. After the plane levels over the sea, you can see part of the airport in the right side of the frame.

Video recorded during takeoff from LaGuardia Airport (LGA) on April 10, 2016. We flew over the northern end of Manhattan, which provided a good view of the skyline.

Vík to Jökulsárlón

The day after we arrived in Vík, we drove 193 km (120 miles) from Vík to Jökulsárlón, a glacial lagoon in Austurland, the Eastern Region of Iceland.

The trip was entirely on the Ring Road, and it took us through the most varied and stunning scenery we saw in Iceland.

Cliffs that seem to have sprouted abruptly from flat grassy plains:

Snow:

Lava fields:

Glaciers:

Barren flatlands:

And the remains of a bridge destroyed during a glacial flood:

The occasional farming community and gas station – which, if you’re lucky, might also house a convenience store or a café – are the only signs of civilization in this part of the country.

Single-lane bridges are common on this stretch of the Ring Road.

Most of them are short enough that you can make sure the bridge is clear before proceeding. The longer ones, like the one seen in the video below, have small places to pull over in case you meet another car head-on (which did happen to us once, on a different bridge). To give you an idea of exactly now narrow this bridge was, we were driving a Toyota Yaris, and it felt like a tight squeeze crossing the bridge.

This house was a popular spot for people to stop and take photographs (click the image to see it full-size), which is probably why the sign was at the entrance to the driveway.

We saw a few people walking around the gate (the driveway was gated, but there was no fence) to get a closer look. We just stayed next to the road and took some pictures of the land and the surrounding cliffs.

Jökulsárlón and the Atlantic Ocean

Jökulsárlón is a glacial lagoon and the deepest lake in Iceland. It’s full of icebergs that break off from Breiðamerkurjökull, one of the glacial tongues of Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland. (The lake can be seen in the beginning of A View to a Kill, where it stood in for Siberia.)

There’s a channel from the lake to the Atlantic Ocean (I think it was created by the glacier’s retreat), and the icebergs eventually end up on the nearby beach or floating in the ocean.

The beach is black volcanic sand, which provides a striking contrast to the white and blue-green icebergs.

Vík

Vík, the southernmost village in Iceland, is on the Ring Road and sits below the Mýrdalsjökull glacier and the Katla volcano. It has around 300 residents, a few restaurants and hotels, and one gas station/convenience store. (Our hotel’s guidebook said there was a golf course 300 meters from the hotel, but we never saw it.) There’s not much to do, but it’s a good base for exploring this part of the country, and the local scenery is stunning.

Vík’s most famous feature is Reynisdrangar, a set of basalt sea stacks just off the coast. According to legend, two trolls tried to drag a three-masted ship ashore, and they were turned to stone when the sunlight hit them at dawn.

The N1 gas station is the only place to buy anything in Vík. I’m not sure where or how often the residents of Vík, and especially the more remote areas, buy essentials like groceries. The nearest town that has anything larger than a convenience store is about 80 miles away.

Gas stations in Iceland are self-service, and you have to pay at the pump with a chip-and-PIN card. You have to authorize an amount on your card (in Icelandic krónur), and the pump will turn on. You can only pump up to the amount you authorized. At some stations, you pay directly at the pump. At others, there’s an automated pay station called an automat that controls multiple pumps.

At the N1 in Vík, there were four pumps but only one automat. We were buying gas on our last day in Vík, and I was waiting for a man to finish paying at the automat. He was clearly frustrated, because he turned to me and asked in a very thick accent, “You know how this thing works?” He was repeatedly inserting and removing his card, so I told him he had to enter his PIN and showed him which key was the Enter key (it’s actually in Icelandic, but I can’t remember the word). He said he entered his PIN, so I told him he needed to enter an amount. He said, “How am I supposed to know how much?” I told him I entered 10,000 ISK the previous day, and it was more than enough. He said, “Then I put 5,000.” (April found this whole exchange very entertaining, as she was sitting in the car laughing the whole time.)

The church in Vík sits above the town. It’s believed that if Katla erupts and melts the Mýrdalsjökull glacier, the town will be flooded with only the church surviving.

Reynisfjara

Reynisfjara, which is about 10 km from Vík, is probably the most famous beach in Iceland. Like the other beaches in the area, it’s called a black-sand beach, but it’s really pebbles. The basalt cliffs are, as far as I know, unique to Reynisfjara. During certain parts of the year, the cliffs serve as a nesting ground for puffins. (They weren’t nesting when we were there.) There are shallow caves in the cliffs, and you can also see the other side of Reynisdrangar as well as the Mýrdalsjökull glacier from the beach.

Dyrhólaey

Dyrhólaey is an arch-shaped peninsula that, like most of Iceland’s geography, was formed by volcanic activity. It’s visible from Reynisfjara, but to reach it by car is actually a 19 km drive from Reynisfjara. To actually get the best view of it, you don’t go to Dyrhólaey itself but to a nearby beach called Kirkjufjara beach.

Looking back toward Reynisfjara, you can see a rock called Arnardrangur or Eagle Rock as well as Reynisdrangar in the distance.

The Mýrdalsjökull glacier is also visible from this location, although it’s a much different perspective that gives you a better idea of the enormous area that it covers.