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Earthquake swarm in Hveravellir

During the night of 6-January-2014 an earthquake swarm started in Langjökull volcano, the northern one. The nearby area is known as Hveravellir geothermal area. So far this has just been a minor earthquake swarm. With largest earthquakes not exceeding magnitude 2,0 at the moment.

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The earthquake swarm in Hveravellir geothermal area. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

The tremor plot of nearby SIL station shows that more earthquake activity is taking place then appears on Icelandic Meteorological Office website. This are then earthquake that are too small to be detected by other nearby SIL stations.

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The earthquake activity at Hveravellir SIL station. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

I do expect this earthquake activity to continue for some time now. It is impossible to know for sure if this activity is going to increase or not.

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Going advertisement free

This website and all the websites that I run are going to be advertisement free too. All I ask in return is that people support me with donations. The reason I am doing this is simple. Having advertisements doesn’t pay for me and annoy my readers, slow down the loading time of my website. I still need to make income and that is why I am going to ask for donation. In return, people get me work on earthquakes in Iceland, Europe, Canary Islands and other sites that I now maintain. I rather want to have 50 or 100 people donating 10€ a month rather than having advertisement on by websites. Removal of advertisements from my geophone website is going to take few more days, since I can’t edit the websites at the moment.

If I wanted to have my living off advertisement I needed to have the traffic levels of BBC News. Possibly double that in reality. I did also see this post from SMBC Theater Facebook page that explains this with advertisement quite well.

A number of folks like to say “I like ads because it means you get money!” The problem is it’s a lie. Even making $200 sketches we never off-set costs from ads. Even with hundreds of thousands of views in a week. Literally never.

The only reason we were able to make SMBC Theater was DVD sales, Crowdfunding, Zach kicking in from the comic’s revenue, and some old prize money I had from screenwriting. Also, everyone worked as a volunteer. For four years. That’s thousands of man hours unpaid. That’s how SMBC Theater sketches AND Starpocalypse got made. We never did this for the cash.

People have a conception that online ads = big bucks. It’s bullshit. Online ads can support kids shouting into webcams, tiny groups of kids making things in their apartments, and companies that abuse the folks that work for them. Even Freddie Wong had to go outside advertising to fund VGHS and he rakes in millions of views a week. Why do you think there’s not a “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” (notoriously the cheapest professional-level show in the last decade) supported by ads online? You’d need 5 times the traffic Gangnam Style got to support it.

Ads make viewing our stuff less pleasant for our audience while fooling them into thinking they’re supporting us. At the same time it forces us to filter ourselves to be more attractive to giant corporations instead of making the most interesting stuff possible for you guys.

Love an artist? Buy their merch. Donate to a Kickstarter. Go see them in person. Or just tell all your friends about them – most indie artists don’t have a marketing budget. Watching ads supports companies – not artists.

AND THAT’S THE END OF OUR ANTI-ADVERTISING SUNDAY PROGRAMMING! Back to dick jokes tomorrow I promise!

SMBC Theater Facebook post.

In my view this says it all. I don’t need advertisement, but I do need income from donations. Thanks for the support!

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Minor earthquake swarm on Reykjanes peninsula

Donations: This year (2014) is going to start in the same way as last year (2013) did end. I am broke this month. I am working on fixing this, but it takes time until it does. My social welfare income remains low, but the exchange rate of ISK to DKK have been improving for the past few days. I hope that they continue to do so. Information on how to support me with donations can be found here. Information on why I am always broke can be found here in past post on this subject.

Yesterday (31-December-2013) an earthquake swarm took place on Reykjanes peninsula. This was an minor earthquake swarm with largest earthquakes having the magnitude of 2,5. The depth of this earthquake swarm was around 5 km.

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The earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes peninsula. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake swarm took place close to a mountain named Fagradalsfjall. I do not know (or remember) if this a cinder cone or some other type of volcano in this area. More details of this earthquake can be found here on Icelandic Meteorological Office website.

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Happy new year 2014

I wish everyone a happy new year 2014. I also want to thank the people who did support me with donation during the year 2013. Without this donations this website would not be here and my other projects that I am currently working on.

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Earthquake activity in Esjufjöll and Kverkfjöll volcanoes

Earthquake activity started again in Esjufjöll volcano today (20-Desember-2013). The largest earthquake had the magnitude of 2,9 and had the depth of 5,0 km. So far only two earthquakes have been recorded, but it is not uncommon that earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano starts slow before it picks up. Earthquake activity remains low in Esjufjöll volcano, but there is now more earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano for the past few years then in past several decades (perhaps, recording is missing in the past)

Kverkfjöll volcano

Earthquake activity continued in Kverkfjöll volcano today. None of the earthquake did reach the magnitude of 3,0. The largest earthquake had the magnitude of 2,0 and the depth of 5,3 km.

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Earthquake activity in Esjufjöll volcano and Kverkfjöll volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

I am expecting more earthquake activity in Kverkfjöll volcano. But I expect it to remain small as it currently is at least I do not expect any earthquake above the magnitude of 3,0 to take place as is.

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Fossil of a tree found in road tunnel work

A long time a volcano erupted in Iceland. This volcano spewed out basalt lava field (Hawaii style). This lava did flow over a forest that was nearby and killing all the trees in it. Few weeks ago and several million years later and few kilometres down the remains of this forest was found. Since one of the tree did fossilize in the lava. As the tree was engulfed in the lava it did turn to charcoal that was later removed by water and leaving the empty imprint of the tree in the bedrock.

The remains of the tree are now clearly visible in the road construction tunnel. The hole after the tree is full of water and part of it has been removed by the tunnel digging. Picture of it along with news can be found in the link below.

Fossil of a tree found in tunnel construction

Far eftir trjábol í Vaðlaheiðargöngum (Rúv.is, Icelandic, Picture)

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Magnitude 3,1 earthquake in Kverkfjöll volcano

Today (19-Desember-2013) at 09:30 UTC a magnitude 3,1 earthquake took place in Kverkfjöll volcano. The depth of this earthquake was 5,0 km. No aftershocks have been recorded following this earthquake.

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The magnitude 3,1 earthquake in Kverkfjöll volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This is the first activity in Kverkfjöll volcano for some time now. But overall activity has been slowly increasing in Kverkfjöll volcano for the past few years. So far however there is nothing to suggest that volcano eruption is going to take place in near future.

Update 1: Three aftershocks took place in Kverkfjöllum volcano. The largest one had the magnitude of 1,7. The other two earthquakes had the magnitude of 1,3 and 1,5. With the depth of 6,5 km to 3,4 km.

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The aftershocks in Kverkfjöll volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

It is possible that more aftershocks are going to take place in Kverkfjöll volcano in next few hours to days.

Blog post updated at 16:37 UTC.

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Quiet period continues in Iceland

Donation note: Please donate to help me continue this website. Please check this site for details on how to donate. Thanks for the support. 🙂

A new quiet period has started in Iceland, it is an extension of an quiet period that has been ongoing in Iceland for the past few months and is currently with no end in sight. I don’t know what is driving this quiet period at the moment, since quiet period are a bit of mystery and might always be that.

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Quiet in Iceland. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

For the past two weeks just around 120 earthquakes have been recording during each week (7 days) and for Iceland that is really low amount of earthquakes. This type of quiet period has been ongoing for most of the year 2013. I just hope that new year 2014 is not going to be quite so quiet as 2013 was.

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Earthquake swarm in Hengill volcano

A earthquake swarm of minor earthquakes took place in Hengill volcano today. This earthquake swarm was due to Orkuveita Reykjavíkur was pumping down water in the area.

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The earthquake swarm in Hengill volcano this evening. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

The largest earthquake had the magnitude of 1,4. Other earthquakes were smaller.

Continued earthquake activity north of Kolbeinsey Island

During the week the earthquake activity continued north of Kolbeinsey Island. Two more earthquakes appeared, they had the magnitude of 3,0 and 3,1 according to EMSC. I do not have any image of that activity since I was travelling the days it was on Icelandic Meteorological Office website.

Webicorder images still do not update

Something failed in my hardware few days ago so no webicorder images are updating at the moment. I do not know what did go wrong or what did fail and it is going to be few weeks until I know why. According to electronic usage readings from my home something powered down or was powered down (I know what normal usage should be based on what electronics where turned on when I left). I am not sure what was turned off or did go offline and I won’t find out until I get back home. Until then my webicorder images are not going to be updated. International webicorders are updating (mostly) normal now and all large earthquake activity in the world is going to appear on that website. I do not run any of the images shown there so they are unaffected by this failure.

Donations

Like so many projects on the internet. I depend on donations to keep my working ongoing here. They allow me to work on this full time. Since I am not allowed to use the “Donate” button from Paypal. People have send me the donation directly via “Send Money” option on Paypal website. Thanks for the support.