Web site news for March 2012 [Updated]

62 Replies to “Web site news for March 2012 [Updated]”

1. I think that it makes sense to lower the cost of the blog. I hope it will gradually return to more readers. Until last year there have been many discussions that were led by a few people and apparently read by many. I can’t understand until now, that this blog was abandoned within a few days from these people. The same people who praised you again and again, have disappeared with “flying flags”, because … no, I’m not writing this now, nothing more, because I’ll be so angry.
   The consequence may be, no longer rely on a “hype” and not trust that the traffic is/remains always so high. Rather confident that there are regular readers and writers and stay.

   My personal opinion: more photos and graphics are not a bad idea if they are built well.
   I think I could live with the links if they do not disrupt the flow of reading. I find annoying when the text is too much advertising and I do not know where the blog ends and comments begin.

   Now for something wonderful: Since today I have a permanent job. After twenty years working. I can finally stop fearing, if it continues after a few months. I will celebrate with a further donation and set up a standing order in the future! A tip for readers: foreign transfers are very easy!

   And I hope, that as many people as possible support and join your work. The reports are factual, clear and well informed.
   Another reason for me: now and then I read your icelandic blog and even though I do not understand everything, even your work there for me is brave and important.

   1. I am lowering the hosting cost by going back to shared hosting. I am going from $145 and down to $20, until I get an traffic that allows me to be on dedicated hosting (no less then 10.000 page load pr day). But I still have pay for this month. But that is going to be balanced out in next few months since this is an lower hosting cost. That is they subtract the cost of this hosting that I paid for and is not using from the one I am moving to and is cheaper (at least, that is what I think happens).

      I never trust any hype. Since it comes and goes as the wind.

   2. I forgot.

      Congratulation on your new permanent job!

      1. Thanks! 🙂

   3. I’ve been looking at this website since it started.

      I personally enjoyed the banter that was going on up until November as it felt like a little community, unfortunately the forums are not easy to find and it may not have been meant that way but it came across that we should never post off topic.

      So these days I only visit when I see some activity and none of the characters I used to enjoy reading have gone 🙁

      The lesson to learn is if you change things do it slowly, also only a few people were complaining most of us enjoyed the feel of the site and enjoyed the funny interchanges. Unfortunately the goose that laid the golden egg is gone 🙁

      Very few people have a successful website, when you get one you need to go with the main body of users rather than the minority (even if you feel the same).

      On the positive side I’m sure if Katla goes up you’ll get loads of volume (so you need to be prepared).

      But most importantly put an obvious link to the main website to the forum in big letters with “New Forums” or something like that.

      Just sad the old community is gone as I used to visit many times every day 🙁

      1. Hi Byz,
         I don’t wan’t discuss the old things. But I think they misunderstood. A little bit off topic and talk and greetings etc. was never a problem. I liked it too, but I don’t like the way it ended.
         I think some other people are coming and stay. 🙂
         And Jons blog is here, for “old” and “new” readers and always open!

      2. What happened in November 2011 is quite interesting thing. I do think it was in fact unavoidable what matter I did do. I do think that would have been far worse to do nothing at all.

         I have seen other blogs go trough this phase. They always survive it. I know that this did happen to the Universe Today blog. There response was to lock down the comments and ask users to register before they where able to make an comment to an article. They, as this blog did see an huge drop in comments. But Universe Today has an active forum today. While I have not.

         The traffic is sporadic on this web site. I see that clearly in the data from my counter. I have updated the blog post with the traffic data from start of this blog until today. That is from 2010 to 2012 today.

2. There are also going to be some changes to the forum soon. Not sure when however.

   http://www.volcanoforum.eu/index.php?/topic/66-this-forum-is-going-to-be-moving-soon/

3. There’s a company called Bluehost which is nearly free, and they’re one of the top recommended hosts for WordPress blogs. Might want to check them out. Also, in regards to your traffic issue, it could simply be that a lack of exciting and erupting volcanoes is impacting your site. It certainly happens to mine. Link exchanges, and SEO companies do an OK job sometimes, but they can be very expensive in the long run, increasing traffic but taking your ad revenue to pay them for the work. The best you can do organically is to push your blog’s RSS to many more websites other than say, geobulletin, or others. The more RSS feeds you’re on, the more your blog will prosper without any additional money being spent. Hope that helps, good luck on raising more revenue! Being broke sucks!

   1. I am hosting more then just my web page now on this hosting. But shared hosting is good enough for me with the same hosting company that I am now with.

      Thanks for the suggestion. It is nice. But I just need to change my current hosting an little bit.

   2. I have decided to cancel moving to an cheaper hosting. As I feel that in the long term it might due more harm then good.

      1. It could. I work for a hosting company myself so I definitely know some can be pricey but worth it. In the end it just matters what you can afford and what you need to do to make a living (or at least food/rent money!). Here’s to hoping that a spectacular (yet non-deadly) volcano erupts soon!

4. A couple quakes in Northern Italy this afternoon.
   http://www.emsc-csem.org/Earthquake/choose_correct.php?divpop=yes&l=240&t=239&c=TEUROMED.24hours

   1. I did notice this. But it was mostly less them 4.5 in magnitude and in an rather remote area. So I dedicated not to write about them at present time.

      But it is slow in geology everywhere from what I can tell.

      1. There is an interesting article I read about the Salton Sea here… guess they are having massive swarms of very shallow quakes in the region.

         http://volcanoscience.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-shallow-quake-swarming-at-salton.html

5. Maybe you should consider allowing some off topic conversations here, it might even out the amount of users when nothing is happening.
   And there are also lots of people who are only curious about volcanoes and quickly loose interest if the discussion is to technical and specialized.

   1. I do allow some off-topic discussion. It is an myth that I did ban it all. I just wanted to keep it moderate. Things where getting out of control in November of 2011.

      This is all clear in the rules, http://icelandgeology.net/?page_id=1809

6. The wife and I are both disabled on low income Jon – we know how difficult it is! Especially when you have interests that send money out the wrong direction. I wish I could help, but I cant even help my kids at the moment. Sorry.

   Regards increasing discussion (and traffic) on the site, perhaps having a lightly moderated section on ‘outrageous theories’ might help and give us an outlet for some seismic humour?

   I think any advertising you need to do is fine Jon, needs must as they say. This is the only site where people talk about seismic anomally of global concern and I think you will keep your readers whatever. There are other ‘news’ sites but these tell far too much hype stories. I always look for either data or topical discussion.

   1. I understand your status. This is no way to live in the long term and I have personally have grown tiered of it. Thankfully I am out of the interest package with debts and all that. I do not plan to go back into that path any time soon.

      I wish you all the best and hope that your income improves.

7. something’s going on under katla this morning

   1. Not that far under from this (but the quality of the Álftavatn quake is poor:

      06.03.2012 08:39:20 63.652 -19.359 0.0 km 2.4 99.0 5.5 km WNW of Goðabunga

      06.03.2012 06:48:58 63.757 -19.287 5.5 km 2.4 33.93 11.7 km SSW of Álftavatn

8. I have updated the blog post. I am not going to move off the dedicated hosting.

9. It has been a long time ago since I replied, and what I am going to say has probably been said before.

   I have a question for you Jon, why don’t you wait 2 or 3 months more untill you have more money and your move to Denmark is more safe.. You risk that you have to return again to Iceland since you can’t pay denmark anymore..

   Sander

   1. I have already collected the money I need so I can move back to Denmark. For the long run it doesn’t really matter if I collect or not. Since I always have to pay the bills and buy food.

      I can pay Denmark now. What did happen now was that the air-plane ticket did brake my bank unexpectedly. I am fixing that by cutting little bit into my saving. It is going to create 1 month delay on few things if I do not move to Denmark in April (that might happen). But if I move to Denmark in April, the delay is going to be around 5 months. As that is the time frame it is going take me to collect money for what I want to buy this time around.

10. Hi there,

    I’m one of your silent followers since Eyjafjallajökull, I come here very often but I never posted since I just have enough technical background to understand some parts of the discussions. I’m mainly interested about Iceland and the potential big volcanoes like Katla that could affect Europe since I live in France (although I was living in the UK when I discovered your blog, when I could not fly back home… ^^).

    You’ll receive a little help via PayPal, I’ve noticed that income-wise things tend to get more and more difficult..

    Also, I can only quote Mafl who advised to lower the blog cost. I would even say “all costs” to be honest.
    Anyway great job for this blog, in the last 2 years or so I’ve come here it’s always been very regularly updated with quality information. I hope you are able to go on with this work!
    Good luck man,

    idir

    ps: The “more images” suggestion sounds good to me too, and I would even add: on a quick sight for non specialists, your attention will get captured by photos or maps like the ones you showed for El Hierro rather than with those gnuplot generated tremor activity graphs (but of course when it comes to some detailed analysis I can understand relevant data has to be presented too)
    Good luck!

    1. Thanks for the support. I hope that things will improve for me when I start to publish my books. But that is just wait and see what happens when I publish my first e-book and books.

11. I personally like the short posts and quick response time to what’s going on.

    & the images / graphics that support the post are great.

    How does ad funding work? You get income from number of visits to the site, number of commnets and / or visitors following links to the advertisers?

    1. * posts

    2. Ad funding works in two ways here. By the number of visitors and by how often ads are clicked. Google Adsense forbids me and so does the other ads companies that I have to encourage my readers to click the links. So I don’t do that. If I did that, it would cost me my ad account and the income that is connected with it.

       For Amazon (all ads). It works like that I get fixed % of the item sold if it is bought trough an ad that is on my web page and connected to my account at Amazon. So I get less for cheap stuff (DVD’s and so on), and more when people buy expensive stuff (Tv, computers and so on).

       This is how this works in simple terms.

12. Engages brain further. Maybe during the quieter times, short posts describing various EQs or volcanoes might help.

    It is not easy for the novice to get much information from the net. You could use these towards the book you mentioned at one time. But keep some info back for your book.

    Personally I would steer clear of the OT posts, unless you have the time to research another topic.

    1. I often do that. But since I am in the middle stage of moving. I do not have all my data with me. As I would normally. I got some of them. But I can do my best when comes to this aspect of the blog.

       1. It’s appreciated and why I check this blog regularly.

13. I’m going to El Hierro for holidays at the End of march (one week). Unfortunatly the volcano has stopped his activities 🙁 . But I hope I will have some really quiet days in the sun.
    If somebody has a question that needs to be answered from a person there… 😉 .
    I promise nothing, but i have a camera and will take some pictures.

    1. While the El Hierro volcano has stopped erupting. There is an highly active hydrothermal area where the eruption took place. It is well worth seeing if that is possible. 🙂

14. I have updated this blog post with traffic information from the year 2010 and until today (2012). It clearly shows the pattern of how this blog is used and when.

15. The stats are interesting. They show the impact of Grimsvotn, Katla and Hierro.

    1. Yes, they are interesting. Most traffic increase is around when Katla volcano got active in July 2011. But there is also an spike around Grímsfjall volcano eruption in May 2011.

       So I guess that traffic to this web site is going to be based on traffic spikes around volcano eruptions. Rather then static flow of readers as is common on many other blogs.

16. Well we increase the traffic, it seems interesting as going down deep earthquakes in Katla, that if poor quality
    2012-03-06 18:28:21,0 63,662 -19,155 10,7 0,7 31,89 5,3 km ANA af Goðabungu
    2012-03-06 18:14:34,6 63,708 -19,267 18,3 0,8 38,18 7,6 km N af Goðabungu
    2012-03-06 08:39:46,3 63,628 -19,274 12,3 2,3 44,55 1,8 km SV af Goðabungu

    1. I have been watching this. But my laptop is so close to given up now it is actually just hard to write on it. But I am doing my best with it at the moment.

       1. is appreciated

17. Good news! It seems that I finally got an apartment in Denmark again. I just have to confirm it in writing. I am going to do that tomorrow and pay the confirmation fee in time.

    Move in day is 1. May 2012. 🙂

    1. Good news; I hope the move goes well.

18. Hi,

    I like to site because of the quality in the information you and the other contributors supply. Clearly people who know what they are talking about and without the hype seen in mainstream media and other sites.

    I think if you want more visitors in between eruptions then you will need more content. I often visit a site like, http://www.floodwarn.co.uk/iceland_katla_volcano.htm first before coming here to have a quick visual check. If it looks like something could be happening then i check the blog. None of floodwarns content appears to be their own. Maybe you could do a similar / better page that collates other sources of info and keep the traffic on your site. I would prefer to just come here.

    Thanks for the efforts. James

19. People who were traveling south of Helgafell í Vestman islands on Saturday noticed a big hole that had formed by the road. The hole is at the top of Heimaey; 200 meters from the south end of the fissure that opened up in the eruption in 1973.

    http://visir.is/holumyndavel-kemur-ser-vel/article/2012703069915

    The hole will be explored today with a camera that is used to look at Puffin holes. When that has been done it will be closed. The hole is roughly 1 meter wide and 2 meters deep where it starts to get more narrow, but it is impossible to estimate how deep it is.

    1. Interesting. Thanks for the tip! 🙂

       1. It will be interesting to see what the Puffins do this year, last year they decided not to nest in Westman island for some reason, but went north instead.

       2. The puffins didn’t build nests in the south due to the poor feeding situation, something that affected the arctic terns as well. The situation in the north (were the puffins always nested) was by far better, so there was nesting.

20. I remember a hole (of similar size) a while back appeared near a path at Thingvellier national park, anyone know what happend to it?

    1. it started off as a hole but grew much larger.
       I dont know what will become of it, i guess a bridge will be built over it so people can see what it looks like safely.

       First seen.
       http://www.dv.is/frettir/2011/3/31/djup-sprunga-myndast-i-almannagja/

       Recent pictures
       http://www.thingvellir.is/frettasafn/nr/551

       1. The President of China got a special exception to drive down Almannagjá June 18 2002 and was the last one to get permission to do that.
          It was a good thing he didn’t drop into this hole, the
          Chinese would have been furious 🙂

          http://www.visir.is/almannagja-er-eins-og-svissneskur-ostur/article/2011709169949

21. There seem to be many changes lately at Thingvellir.
    Öxarfoss waterfall http://www.flickr.com/photos/28047666@N00/405665291

    is no longer there because the river moved this winter further north, so the water now falls 10 meters into Stekkjargja where it forms a new waterfall called Nyifoss, or New falls, ca 300 meters north of Oxarfoss.

    http://www.thingvellir.is/frettasafn/nr/562
    This may change again when the snow and ice melt.

    1. meant to say Oxararfoss.
       http://www.flickr.com/photos/axsig/409844845/in/photostream/

22. Some interesting tremors going on now, at Askja, Skildringshraun, Grimsfall (as usual), and is this magma movement at Granastadir?
    http://hraun.vedur.is/ja/oroi/gra.gif

    1. …and note the tremor at vat shortly after the nearby quake. Any ideas what’s going on there? It doesn’t seem to be clear on other nearby sytions

    2. It was the storm that was passing over Iceland last night. An bad weather can wreck havoc on the SIL stations and my geophones.

       1. Wow – and they were all such abrupt changes in tremor. I expect storms to build up a little more slowly, normally. And other satations in the same area didn’t seem to notice it at all… is this due to how sheltered the locations are? But then, I thought it was recording tremor noise through the ground, irrespective of whether a storm is the origin. I think there is something I don’t understand here…

       2. The dutch weather forecast wrote the following: Yesterday, Iceland was startled by a very rapidly dropping
          of airpressure (hPa) of 10 to 15 hPa every 3 hours. This was caused by a very fast deepening low
          pressure system.
          At 18:00 hours Akurnes (southeast Iceland) reported a “freefall” in airpressure of 18,9 hPa in 3 hours
          (which is abnormally fast).
          At the back edge of this depression airpressure increased very rapidly by 10 to 15 hPA!
          These extreme changes of airpressure are normally only caused bij tropical cyclones (storms) in the region
          of Japan and the Filippines or in the Caribien.
          On the north part of the Atlantic ocean, they only occur when the temperature contrasts are very large,
          high in the atmosphere. It causes a powerful jetstream which acts as a booster for low pressure systems
          (depressions).

          Henk Weijerstrass
          Holland

       3. Interesting – thank you. So at least it was indeed unusual…

23. How about selling samples or rock from various volcanos?

    1. I do not think that is legal in some parts of the world. Might be legal in Europe and maybe in the U.S. But I am not sure on that.

24. Maybe if you paint them pink and wrap them in cellophane…….

25. New blog post is up! 🙂

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