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Donations needed for August

If there is one thing bad about being on social welfare, it is how bad my income is. I hope that my short story is going to sell when I publish it next few weeks (the story is ready, but some work still needs to be done), but I still won’t get paid until at least 60 days later after I start selling it. More information about where and when the short story goes on sale is going to be published here. Those who have donated and want a copy for that reason, just drop me a line to let me know so I can email it to you once it is published. For month of August I at least need donations, since the prospect of just eating rise and other cheap food for this month is not appealing to me and never has been.

Donations also help me write on this blog, since I need to buy food and all the normal things that people do. For the advertisements to pay off for me, I need to have at least 3 million page loads a month if I want to survive on that income alone. This aspect is well explained in a recent article on Cracked website, but since I am no-nonsense type of person I do not write sensualism blog posts in order to get traffic to website (unlike many other volcano and earthquake related websites out there), for that reason my pageviews remain rather low (300 to 1200 pr day, sometimes lower), this is applies mostly when nothing is happening in Iceland as is the currently the case at the moment. I am currently considering my own type of humor type of website. It might improve my traffic and income, but currently it is a work in process and I do not know when I might get it up and running. If it ever gets that far to start with.

I am also working on other project that is related to volcano and earthquake activity. I am not sure yet when it enters local beta (it is going to be based on MediaWiki, but I still need to learn how to use it and that is going to take some time) or when it is going to be ready for the internet.

I want to thank everyone how support me. I am thankful for the support in this hard times and it allows me to continue my work on this website and other volcano and earthquake related projects that I currently have. Other volcano and earthquake related projects that I have are Europe geology blog and Icelandic version of this website.

Blog post updated at 19:10 UTC on 8-August-2013.

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Where has all the activity gone?

It has been quiet in Iceland this summer, often with only 100 earthquakes during the week (7 days) taking place. This is normal for Iceland, since activity takes happens in jumps, with long quiet period between them. That quiet period can be from few days and up to thousands of years. This is normal for every rift and subduction zone on planet Earth, activity happens in short periods and during that time a lot of things can be going on during that period. Between it nothing is taking place, this applies to Iceland as any other place on Earth. Currently nothing is happening in Iceland and tension is building up while it is quiet, at some random point at some random day this tension is going to break and we are going to have either a earthquake swarm, eruption or both taking place.

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All quiet in Iceland. There is currently some minor summer earthquake activity taking place in Katla volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

For more information on Icelandic geology, I recommend this paper (pdf) by Páll Einarsson. It is from the year 2008, but is a good read on the tectonic settings in Iceland. It might be a surprice to many, but in Iceland there are actually 5 rift zones, they are called Western Volcanic Zone (WVZ), Central Icelandic Volcanic Zone (CIVZ), Eastern Volcanic Zone (EVZ), Northern Volcanic Zone (NVZ) and South Iceland Volcanic Zone (SIVZ). Then there is Reykjanes Peninsula Rift (RPR). This zones are not all active at the same time and there dormant time is different, some areas are just dormant for few years to decades, while others are dormant for thousands of years.

For the moment it is quiet, so I have little to write about. Since this blog mostly deals with current activity that is taking place in Iceland.

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Earthquake swarm in Tjörnes Fracture Zone

Yesterday (31-July-2013) a earthquake swarm started in TFZ, the south end of it, not far from a village named Kópasker. This earthquake swarm was small most of yesterday, but after midnight this earthquake swarm started to pick up in activity and magnitude of earthquakes. Around 07:09 UTC this morning (1-August-2013) a magnitude 3.7 earthquake took place, this earthquake was felt in Kópasker along with few magnitude 3.0 earthquake that took place after it. The epicenter of this earthquake swarm is out in the ocean, so no population is any major danger if this earthquake swarm continues as is.

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The earthquake swarm in TFZ today. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake swarm is currently ongoing and there are no signs that is going to end soon, current activity is not continuous, it drops regularly and then it resumes again. It is impossible to know for sure how long this earthquake swarm is going to continue. The largest earthquakes appear clearly on my geophone and can be seen here.

Blog post updated at 18:11 UTC on 01-August-2013.

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Infolinks has been deleted from my English blogs

Since Infolinks did disable my websites from their advertising network on the ground that I was using it on my Icelandic blog, while in fact I was not doing so, since it just would not have worked at all (since it is based on English keywords search). I did try and resolve the matter with Infolinks over a email, but no resolve was to be had over this issue, even if I only had Infolinks installed on my English blogs that are in subfolders (that is jonfr.com/volcano as an example) on this domain (jonfr.com). They also forbid people to add Infolinks to “unregistered” web sites (even if on the same domain), yet at the same time they do not accept such sites when on same domain because they have already accepted this domain already. Even if this is just one website in question. I find this behavior and level of incompetence not something that I work with and in this case, there was no resolve to be found on this issue.

Since no resolve was to be had in this matter and since I have already tested what they did suggest I needed to do (it did not work then and I do not expect it to work now). I have asked Infolinks to delete my account and refund my earnings to the advertisers in question. I guess that I just have to work with what I got now. Since Infolinks had already been disabled on this blog, I have now disabled the WordPress plugin connected to it. What is left is to just delete them from my WordPress blogs.

I won’t add Infolinks to my blogs again or any of my future blogs. Ever.

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Melting of glaciers in Iceland might mean more volcano activity

In the evening news on Rúv tonight (23-July-2013) a interesting report about possible future volcano activity was being reported. A unpublished paper (according to Rúv News) reports that with more glacier melt in Iceland, more eruptions should be expected to take place. This is mostly true about areas like Vatnajökull glacier, as it holds several volcanoes that are under heavy pressure from the glacier ice. This applies mostly to volcanoes like Grímsfjall volcano, Bárðarbunga volcano and Kverkfjöll volcano, but those three volcano are the largest ones in Vatnajökull glacier.

This might also apply to areas like Mýrdalsjökull glacier. If this study is true, there might be more eruptions in Iceland in next few decades as the glacier melts away. This like so many other things, is however something that is just wait and see seranio.

At the moment, everything is quiet in Iceland when it comes to activity in volcanoes and on fault zones in Iceland.

Rúv News about this

Auknar líkur á eldvirkni með bráðnun jökla (Rúv.is, Icelandic, video)

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Minor earthquake swarm in Katla volcano

During the night (22-July-2013) a minor earthquake swarm took place in Katla volcano. Most of the earthquakes where shallow, with the depth of 1 km, one earthquake had the depth of 12 km. This earthquake swarm took place in the central area of the caldera. I am not sure what did create this earthquake swarm, it might have been a dike intrusion, or it simply might just be a pressure changes in hydro-thermal areas in this location.

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Minor earthquake swarm in Katla volcano. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake swarm is probably just part of normal summer activity in Katla volcano, at least there is nothing that suggests otherwise at present time. It is possible to watch the activity in Katla volcano here from my geophone at Skeiðflöt farm, just outside Katla volcano.

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Strong earthquake swarm north of Iceland

Since early night there has been a strong earthquake swarm north of Iceland, around 300 to 500 km away from Iceland coastline. All of the earthquakes in this swarm (that have been detected) have had the magnitude of 4.4. More smaller earthquakes appears also to have taken place, but where not properly detected by the SIL network or my geophone network.

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Magnitude 4.4 earthquake between Iceland and Jan Mayen. Copyright of this image belongs to EMSC.

More earthquakes from this swarm can be found on EMSC web site here.

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The earthquakes on Icelandic Meteorological Office earthquake map. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

I have been having connection issues with my Böðvarshólar geophone station, it can be viewed here. The reason is poor UMTS (3G) signal in the area where the station is. I am going to resolve that issue in December by installing a external antenna to the 3G modem that I am using, it should give me a stronger and more stable signal. For the moment there is little that I can do, other than just to hope the signal improves and gets more stable then it has been today.

Donations

I wanted to remind people that donations help me. Currently I have less then 60DKK to live what remains of July. That is not a good status for me to have at present time. Thanks for the support.

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All quiet in Iceland at the moment

It has been quiet in Iceland, so quiet in fact that for 7-July-2013 there was only one earthquake recorded on the automatic SIL system. There were more earthquakes recorded on the manual review system that Icelandic Meteorological Office has.

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

I do not know how long this quiet time is going to last. Currently it is counting on around 4 weeks at the moment and it appears that the peak is today (so far). When this might change I do not know. I am using this quiet time to enjoy little bit of summer, even if I am broke (little to no money to use) at the moment.

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Update on server, website and donations

There is little to nothing currently to write about in Iceland when it comes to activity in geology. What little activity is currently taking place in Iceland, I am going to write about after few moments.

Update on my local server

I now have a new server computer. I had a unused computer in Iceland and it was sent to me with the post. It was at my parents place where I had left it. It is now running FreeBSD-9.1 64-bit. I have set-up most of it, what is going to be completed later this evening is to set-up mrtg counters and properly configure it. It is a newer computer and it supports SATA har drives, the older computer was from the year 2003 (yes, I use really old hardware) and did not support SATA drives.

Thanks to a donation, I can buy a small Uninterruptible power supply for my earthquake monitoring computer and the ethernet hardware that I use. It is not meant to keep the computer up for a long time if the power goes out in a thunderstorm. Rather just to keep the computer running during the short period of power issues during a thunderstorm. The UPS that I am buying only costs 78,95€ so it is rather cheap. But as it stands, I am broke so buying hardware like this becomes expensive for me. I need at least three more, two for my computers (Desktop + server) and one for my ethernet hardware ( switch + router/wan box).

Hardware donations

I have been asked if I can take hardware donations. Since I am living in Denmark I can do so, but you have to email me first in order to see if the hardware you have is something that I can use. I cannot use everything out there and that is just the way it is. So if you want to donate a hardware for me, please let me know. I can accept hardware from other EU countries. I might be able to accept hardware from the U.S if it runs on 230V/50Hz (and there is no customs duties on it during import). Since that is the voltage standard in Europe.

As always I am looking for donation since I need to make living somehow. I get something from advertisements, but when things are quiet in Iceland traffic drops as expected and I get less advertising income from Google Adsense.

Website

In order to get more comments. I have removed the register requirement for people commenting, it might increase spam. But I have also added new spam protection in order to keep spam down. There is also the risk of comments being falsely identified as spam, if you think that has happened. Just let me know. I have comment moderation on, that increases the work for me a little bit. But it helps in keeping the spam down.

I am also going to add infolinks back as a advertiser. This also applies to my other blogs in English (with the exception of my stories web site). I need to increase my income and this is my only way to do so without constantly asking for donations. I am going to try and have the advertisements as convenient as possible on my blog sites.

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Minor earthquake in Hekla volcano

A minor earthquake was detected in Hekla volcano on 21-June-2013. This earthquake was at north-east side of Hekla volcano, it had only the magnitude 0.6 and depth of 8.3 km. This is not at good detection according to Icelandic Meteorological Office person that I did speak to about this earthquake today.

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The earthquake in Hekla volcano to the north-east side. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

This earthquake is just one earthquake in series of earthquakes in Hekla volcano. While this earthquake was poorly located due to almost not being detected, I am sure that the only reason this earthquake was recorded is due to more SIL stations around Hekla volcano that have been set-up in the past two years.

There are no signs of eruption is about to start in Hekla volcano.

Blog post updated at 00:22 UTC on 22-June-2013.