Category: Website

I wish everyone a merry Christmas. I hope that everyone enjoy and have good Christmas season.

This December has gone down for me as the worst one for a long time now. As many of you already know. I am living on social welfare from Iceland (now this is important). Living on social welfare from Iceland means that my income is in Icelandic krona. It also means that I am subject to its exchange rate as I am living in Denmark (Danish krona). My total income in Danish krone depends entirely on the exchange that I am dealing with during the start of the month. For this December it has been awful. The exchange rate is around 22,55 ISK = 1 DKK at the moment with VISA. It got best in July, when it was 19,50 ISK = 1 DKK. This is a status that is unacceptable to me. But there is little that I can do to change it at the moment. My total income after taxes in Iceland is 153.000 ISK (6.793 DKK, €912), in December this number is 173.000 ISK (7.682 DKK, €1.031). This is not a lot when I have to pay for the rent, the bills and my current debt (that I am working on to get rid of soon as I can).

The reason why I am on social welfare is that I have aspergers syndrome. So I do not mix that well with normal, regular job. Even if I am fully able to work physically. My mind can be at different place at times. Communications and understanding can also be a challenge for at times. I do my best on this subject matters in normal life. But it might not work in a buy workplace where everything needs to just work between people smoothly. I have tried to work in such a place many years ago. It did not work and I got fired after just two weeks. I have been in temporary summers job in Iceland. But that job was cutting grass and lawns for people. But that was just during the summer and there was and never has been any career in doing that.

Writing as a job

I have since some years ago decided that my job should be in writing. The reason why I did start this blog is because I wanted to have something to do. Writing about volcanoes, earthquakes and such is something that I like doing. But the truth of the matter is that when you are writing about volcanoes it is clear that nothing is going on 98% of the time. The 2% of the time that something is going on happens every few months to years. This sadly means drop in traffic on my blog. That means less income from Google Adsense and Infolinks at the same time. The reason why I decided to have ads on this blog is to lessen my dependence of donations. I am going to keep the donation option going. Since that is what many other sites that I read do. Instead of getting rid of ads. You get a free e-book from me. Forever! Everything that I write and publish I send to you over e-mail when it is ready. You get a pdf file, since I can’t offer any other format. But it is drm-free (as all of my books are always going to be). So you can covert it to your needed format.

This brings me to my next point. I am almost finished with a short story that I started writing over 1 year ago (it takes time to write short stores and books). When it is ready. I am going to grab all those email address that I have from paypal donations and send the people how have donated to me a copy of that short story. I am going to do this every time I publish a new story or a book.

Donations help

Donations really do help me. Since the make it easier for me to pay my bills and buy food during the month. That is all there is too it. This blog is a one man project so far. So I do all the work my self. Check data, earthquakes, work on images and so on. That sometimes takes a lot of time. Work that is worth it and needed for this blog to properly explain what is going on when it comes to volcanoes in Iceland. The donations that I have got this month have helped pay for the backup power and hardware maintenance for Skeiðflöt geophone station. But I am still 1300 DKK short because of the cost of buying 3G hardware for Böðvarshólar geophone station that starts later this month. After Hvammstangi geophone station goes offline.

I thank you all for the support. I just hope that I can make it trough December without too many budget problems that I have already have. Now I just hope that I can buy the Christmas present that I want to give to my grandpa (DVB-T tuner, as Iceland is going all digital in the year 2013).

This blog is now known as Iceland geology blog. Now I am going to cover all types of geology in Iceland. Not just earthquakes, volcanoes activity. But that is going to remain large part of what I am going write on this blog. Since that is where most activity takes place in Iceland.

I hope that everyone enjoy the new format of shorts.

I have closed down the Iceland volcano and earthquake forum. Nobody was using it and I don’t see any reason to keep it running when nobody had used it for a long time. It was just collecting spam bots. But thankfully not many spam posts. But that might have changed on short notice. After 2. October 2012 the domain volcanoforum.eu is going to point to this blog until it expires (in 2013 or 2014).

Changing the name of this blog (again)

I am going to change the name of this blog on the 1. October 2012. The reason is for simply-faction and broaden this blog subject range. Also after 1. October 2012 this blog is only going to cover events and geology in Iceland. I am not going to delete older blog post about activity in El Hierro, Sweden and Denmark. But they are going to be moved into there own sub-category. Where they can be found if anyone is looking. That way I can clean up the list of subjects on this blog. Without having to delete any blog post that I have written in the past. My coverage of earthquakes in Denmark are going to be moved over to my oldest blog. That can be found here. All earthquake related blog posts about Denmark are going to be in English on that blog.

The new name for this blog is Iceland geology blog. I am going to cover earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, geological history and a lot more then what I have been doing for the past two years. This name is also simpler to remember then Iceland volcano and earthquake blog. So I think it is going to contribute to better success of this blog as an medium on the internet.

Two new blogs

I am moving all the Canary Island coverage to it’s own blog. That blog is called Canary Island geology blog. It is just going to cover geology events in Canary Islands. Earthquakes, landslides, cracks and such. I do not know how often I am going to update that blog. But I am going to update is as often as something interesting is happening in Canary Islands.

The link to the blog is http://www.jonfr.com/canary – Currently the link is inactive (the link works. But you just get a empty folder). But I am going to get it up and running in few hours.

The second blog that I am creating is called Falkland Island geology blog. Since I am going to move to Falklands Islands in about 10 years time. While there is no volcano or earthquake activity as such in the Falkland Islands. I am going to cover any major earthquake that happens close to the Falkland Islands. But Falkland Islands are located close to major fault lines that are close to Antarctica and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

I am not going to cover any event in Antarctica or South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands as such. But I am going to cover any events that might have an effect in Falklands Islands. But as most of the earthquake activity happens some distance from Falklands Islands it is unavoidable that I am going to cover activity that is closer to the Antarctica and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. This applies mostly when major earthquakes happens or an eruption sends ash cloud towards Falklands Islands. Earthquakes do happen close to Falklands Islands. With the magnitude up to Mw7.0 and larger. But they do not happen so often. Ash clouds often happen. As erupting volcanoes in Chile often push ash in the wind direction that takes ash cloud towards Falklands Islands. I do not know yet how often this happens. But it happens once in a while I think.

I am also going to cover fossils finds, general geology in Falklands Islands among other things. This new blog is going to be updated when something happens and when I have something new to tell about.

The link to the new blog is http://www.jonfr.com/falkland – Currently the link is inactive (the link works. But you just get a empty folder). But I am going to get it up and running in the next few hours.

My other blogs

I have two other blogs then this blog. My oldest blog can be found here. I blog both in Icelandic and English on that blog. I publish many things on it. Videos, Icelandic blogs, English blogs and more. I also have a blog called Spacewatch. I try to update that when I can. But in the future I hope to publish my own space pictures on it. But it is going to be a while until I can do that.

Other

I hope that people like the changes that I am doing now. But I have been thinking about this for the longest time now. But now is the time for action. Not just thinking.

Update 1: The blog Falkland Islands geology blog is now up and running. The blog Canary Islands geology blog is now up and running.

Blog post updated at 21:18 UTC on 30.09.2012.

I have now updated the comment settings. People now need to log-in in order to comment. If you do not have a account, then just register with the web site in order to start commenting. It is a easy progress to do so.

I am going to change the policy on comments on 5th of July. The reason is spam and the problem it brings. Mostly the problem is false-positives in the spam detection system. I do not always see those false-positives, so sometimes comments get missed and deleted for that reason.

Comments are still going to be open for everyone. But what changes is that people have to register to comment. The register option is in the “meta” group under the Amazon ads. There is also log-in to comment. But people should also be able to register and log-in from blog posts once I make the change.

If you are reading this. Then your DNS has updated to my new hosting site. That is cheaper for me in the long run while I am experiencing low amount of traffic on my web site. This domain is going to move to a new IP address in next few hours. While that takes place it might go offline during that period. Estimated time of change is around 03:00 CEST. At the same time a SSL options is going to be installed at the same time. That is going to allow people to browse this website over https. The forum is back online now.

Broke (again)

This is the never ending story with no end at current time. But I am getting a bit short of money (reason why I moved from expensive to cheap hosting again) for this month. The main reason is that I am moving to Denmark. With all that cost and so on. So any donations to help me with this month, or any month of the year for that matter are welcomed. Since I did switch to a cheaper hosting. I am finally going to see some plus from having ads on this web site, and my other web sites. But I have been running a rather deep loss money wise having dedicated server and low traffic. If the traffic is to increase again. I am going to move to bigger hosting in steps. When Shared hosting becomes too small. I am going to move to VPS hosting, when that gets to small. I am going to move to dedicated hosting. That allows me to have traffic to pay for the hosting expense as the traffic grows on my web site.

As for my income. It is my plan and termination to get off social welfare and stop being broke. I am not giving up on that plan. But it is going to be hard to do so. Since I am self-employing my self as it is. I also made a chose few days ago. I am going to be a writer and writing is going to be my work. I just hope that it is going to solve my money issue in the future. But for now. I am surviving on small amount of money. That is whatever is left when I have finished paying my bills.

Thanks for the support!

The progress of moving from dedicated hosting to shared hosting has started. When that part has finished I am going to update the DNS information. That progress might take up to 2 days to finish updating for everyone.

Until then. I am not going to post anything. Also note that if comments are made during this time period. They might get lost in the transfer process.

Due to lack of money (I am doing this before I get seriously broke again). Because there is not enough traffic or donations to keep me on dedicated server. I am going back to shared hosting. This is just pure budget issue that I am currently having. But dedicated hosting costs me around 850 DKK a month. At current status it is a price that cannot afford in any way or form. Due to lack of income from this web page, and the fact that I am low social income and this web page among my other web pages have not made any major improvements to that status.

It is also going to be a while until I publish anything and get income from my book publishing. Until that happens. I am going to be living rather poor. In the worst case I might have to move back to Iceland (but it is a idea that I do not like for many personal reasons. But sometimes there are no good option to have in life).

The move to shared hosting is going to take place in next few days. I am hoping for smooth transfer this time around when I switch hosting again.