Category: Off-topic

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The subscription button

If people are wondering what the subscription button is doing there I have a answer. This blog is not going to charge for a subscriptions and never is going too. This button (because PayPal didn’t offer any other button that I could find) is for people how want to donate ten euros every month to this blog for six months at the time. This blog is going to remain free as it has always been since I did start this blog.

I thank all my readers for the support. Both for the donations and for reading this blog. It makes my work worth doing it.

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Change of my plans (off topic)

This is a off-topic to my normal earthquake and volcano topics here. There have been few others like that before this one and I apology for this off topic.

I have been reviewing my plans in last few days because of my economic situation here in Denmark. I have come down to two plans. My plan is now in two parts and it is as follows. But to make it work I might need some help from my readers how have insight into moving into this area (depends on what area I pick). I also might need some donations for the cost of the moving. But I want to say that I am not used to getting donations. So I am bit hesitant to ask for them. But last time I did so was out of pure emergency that I had in regards to my financial status. It is also in my plans that my next move (expect if to Iceland) is going to be a permanent resettlement to a new place. But I do hope that is not going to change do to some other external effects that cannot control.

Plans in the works.

Plan A: Move back to Iceland if my status does not improve. That is if I don’t get a job in Denmark or the status of the Icelandic Króna does not improve by a margin.

Plan B: Option 1: I move to Spain close the Seville city in Spain. Option 2: I move to Italy. The exact location within Italy would be somewhere close to Etna volcano in Sicily, Italy. I have sent a message to a volcanologist that works in this area and we all know. I hope that he can help me in this matter. But this is going to be a well planned move on my part. I estimate that this going to take at last 6 to 12 months to complete from start to end if everything works out properly (only one plan is going to be selected and finished). But I would have to go to Sicily at least once or twice before I move there. So I would have to travel a bit before I move to there. But I also need to find a good apartment in Sicily, Italy and they can be hard to find in this area far as I know.

This is all going to cost a lot of money (the move it self). I am yet to figure out how to pay for that at this moment. But I have started to work on a plan in regards to that. But it might involve getting a higher debt at my bank, even if I don’t like it. My debt would get higher if I have to move back to Iceland anyway. So I did figure that it would be wise to move south, where the prices are cheaper and it might be a possibly to live a decent live there.

I am considering how to deal with this topic here. I might just keep posting this off topic blog post. Even if I find it worse as it breaks up the volcano and earthquake blog posts here. As I don’t really have any other good place for this information. As I find it important to let my readers know what I am up to, as it effects the blog posts on this site. I also want to point that where ever I go. I am going to setup my geophone in order to record earthquakes in that location, or if I move to Etna. Both earthquakes and harmonic volcano tremor when Etna erupts.

The following plans of mine have been canceled for the moment. Move to Germany to watch the West Eifel Volcanic Field. But sometimes I reactive plans if it fits my plans. It is just the way I work in this matters.

Thanks for the support so far and I am sorry for this off topic. 🙂

Update: I just found out that this won’t get any easier for me. But in time I am going to loose the personal tax discount (Icelandic) in Iceland. That is going to mean a serious drop in income for me. I am going to try and figure out how this is going to work in the long run for me. But this still has not put me off my plan yet. I cannot make any sense of the explanation (icelandic) that they give on there web site. As I am unsure how to interpret what they mean by it.

I am also sorry for all this drama that I am creating with my personal problems by writing about them here.

Post updated at 02:32 CET at 6th of March 2011.

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Having income problems, asking for donations with reluctance

As many of you know I have been running for a donations to buy a computer LCD screen. That did work out and I want to thank you all for that. But I want to use the money that was donated for what they are intended. So the donations for a new PC monitor go into that and into buying a table.

But this month after all the bills are paid I am left with nothing to buy food with. I got some money on my VISA card. But that is a bad path to go into. I already know that by experience.

As I find it honest to people how donate money to me. My income is as follows. This is converted from ISK to USD, EUR and DKK. This numbers are also public at tr.is web site, as I am on social benefits (fixed income).

All numbers are approximate and subject to exchange rate of ISK.
ISK: 139.000
USD: 1.197,45
DKK: 6.445,63
EUR: 864,64

I can provide a screen-shot of my bank-account numbers if asked for. Just email me if you require that. But as I sad. This numbers are public as this is the social welfare in Iceland.

In the absolute worst case I move back to Iceland for a few short years while the worst of the economic recession is over in Iceland and then I move to Germany. I will see how this develops over the course of March, April and May (maybe). I have a plan D and E that I am describing above.

I thank you for all your support. Both the one that has been given and the one that has yet to be given.

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Fundraiser for items and trying to be a professional blogger





Euro foreign exchange reference rates (ecb.int)

While I am thankful for the all the readers that I get on this site it does not change the fact that I need to earn a good living. Currently I am on a fixed income (Welfare) due to my Asperger’s syndrome, but I have a really mild version of this syndrome. This fixed income is not a lot and never has been. But due to my move to Denmark is going to get even less. In Iceland I got 159000 ISK (about 997€, the exchange rate euro/ISK is poor at the moment) but when I moved to Denmark it is going to get lower and in the line of something about 138000 ISK (about 865€). So I don’t have a lot of money to work with over the month.

While this blog originally started as a minor blog about earthquakes and volcanoes in Iceland it grew fast. From September 2010 and until today this blog has had 424,518 page views. My helicorder web pages have had 2,090,461 page views since I did set those pages up (the year 2006). Based on this fact I did decide to try being a professional blogger. That includes getting enough money to live from this blog. I do not know how long that is going to take. But given how long it took University today (started as a blog) to get into that status I might have to wait few more years until I get enough income from this blog to get a stable living from writing on the blog site about Icelandic volcanoes and earthquakes.

This leads me to the ever ending results that come from this type of situation. I need to get a job. That evidently is going to give me less time to attend to this blog. I also plan going to school here in Denmark to learn programming, languages and electronics (if I can learn electronics). So work with that is going to give me less time in the end to write here. But the school is few months off so I am just going to wait and see how that goes. As I sad in a comment yesterday there might be a delay until updates return to normal because I lack the tables to setup my computers properly. There also might be a delay until everything gets back to normal updates, as it might take a good time to get connected a ADSL2+ service. I do not know when I get ADSL2+ connection, as I do not know the service time here in Denmark. Currently I am on poor 3G connection for the internet.

I am a writer and my plan is to write and publish eBooks to sell on Amazon. I am also thinking about releasing them in a blog format (I am still considering that option). I hope to get a income from that in the future. But there is going to be a while until I can start selling eBooks on Amazon and get a income from that sale.

Due to how low income I have. I have decided to do a little fundraiser here. For two tables that I need and a new (or used) PC monitor. I am going to do this as cheap as possible.

Computer Table price is 400 DKK (they did rise the price, damit!) – This is just a normal table. I do not like computer special boards.
TV table price is 300 DKK.
23″ LCD PC monitor price is 999 DKK last time I did check. There might be cheaper 23″ LCD PC monitors for sale in Germany. But I do not know the price on them. I might also buy a used PC monitor to use for a short time while I try to get the money for a new PC monitor. This are the prices where I live locally. But I want to buy this locally so I can get this items right away.

All other support besides this is also welcomed. I must point out that I can only transfer funds that go into my PayPal account into my credit card at the moment (I do not know if that changes when I setup a new PayPal account for Denmark). So any usage that I have there is going to minus first from whatever I transfer into that card. PayPal also takes 5% of whatever I transfer into my credit Card.

Here is the PayPal donate button. This the first time that I do this type of button. So please let me know if there are any issues with it.





Euro foreign exchange reference rates (ecb.int)

Thanks for the support! This blog is going to remain free as always. That is not going to change.

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Shortage on updates while moving and other things

In the next few days or weeks there is going to be a shortage of updates on this web page. This is because I am moving to a different country and I might not always be connected to the internet (and I might have a lack of internet connection in Denmark) when something happens in Iceland. I also might be traveling when something interesting takes place in Iceland.

I am going to do my best update on events in Iceland in the case something happens. But I am sure that something is going to happen while I am mostly offline in this transit of mine.

If anything happen, please post information on that in the comments. They are going to remain open for the next 30 days as is the default rule on this blog.

With my move to Europe I am also considering starting to cover volcanoes in Europe as well, as any major earthquake that happens in Europe. As that is also not done far as I know. But other sites that cover this topic are global. But I am considering going more regional (Europe) instead of being just local to Iceland. But I feel that there are enough global volcano web sites out there. So it is not in my plans to go global. But I have few problems, for instance on how to cover Russia. A country in Europe, but also has borders in Asia and to the U.S. But I am sure that I am going to be done figuring out this problem when I am properly connected to the internet again in Denmark (but I don’t know how long that is going to take).

Ads info.

I am considering adding the other Amazon stores to this web site. But that might take some doing due to hard languages in question (Japanese, Chinese, Italian, French etc..). But at the moment this is just on the consideration stage for the moment. At the moment the store is slow according to my counter. But I am sure that traffic is going to pick up in coming weeks. At least I hope so.

Any comments and suggestions on this are welcomed!

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People feelings about the advertisements ?

As a web site owner. I want to know what my readers feel about the advertisement plan that I am putting up here.

The reason that I ask is because I think critical and I want to know if this annoys anyone or not, or if that I am going to far with this or not. My plan from the start has been that to keep the advertisement integrated into the blog so it doesn’t annoy my readers in any way. I also want criticism if there is one on this plan that I have.

I just got approved for Amazon Deutschland (DE) Associates program. So I have started to add some small advertisement from them too on to the blog sidebar. I am going to setup the aStore tomorrow if I have the time.

I also want to thank people for the support and for reading my blog. 🙂

(I also use the quiet time for this, as there is nothing happening in earthquakes and volcanoes in Iceland at the moment)

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Update on Advertisement

Here is a little update on advertisement for this web site. I have removed all the Google Adsense advertisements due to difficulties in changing my home address with them. But Google sets up a technical barrier when it comes to move address on the fact that Iceland and Denmark don’t use the same currency (yea, just silly. But I am considering forwarding this issue to the EU Commission as this is against EU law far as I can tell). I was also unable to setup a new account with my new home address due some rather odd message from Google Adsense.

As people did notice I was testing out Adbrite advertisements. But as it turns out there was some bad behaviour going on there that I as a web site owner do not approve of. So they got removed. But they where also not placing ads on this web site for unknown reasons.

Because of all this I have switched back to Amazon ads. Due to the fact that most of visitors on this web site come from Europe I am going to display ads from Amazon UK and Amazon DE (in process). For others the web store is good place for people to look for volcano related stuff to buy. The Web Store is currently work in progress, but U.S and Canada is going to be added soon on that web site.

I hope that people show me understanding in regards to this issue.