The following 3 posts were among the most popular and give a good summary of what the blog is about:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn eruption – frequently asked questions<\/a>.\u00a0 This post, written at the onset of the May 2011 eruption, explained why the eruption was unlikely to cause as much disruption as Eyjafjallaj\u00f6kull 2010, even though it was bigger.\u00a0 The post got lots of hits because is was quoted by a number of news websites.\u00a0 It is worth re-reading, because the same will most-likely apply to the next Katla eruption.<\/li>\n
- Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn 1 – Crossing the glacier<\/a>.\u00a0 In August, I was lucky to join an expedition to the crater of Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn to study the newly-erupted material.\u00a0 It was an adventurous journey involving monster-trucks, crevasses and a crazy landscape of ice and tephra.\u00a0 This post describes the journey and explains what we found.<\/li>\n
- All the software a geoscientist needs. For free!<\/a> This post explains how you can replace packages such as Microsoft Office, ArcGIS, Matlab, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw with free and open source alternatives.\u00a0 Not just because it is cheaper, but because it makes your workflows portable and easy to automate.\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/volcan01010\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/P1010026.jpg\")
<\/a>Crossing the tephra-covered glacier on the way to the crater of Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn. Click the image to read more.<\/p><\/div><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Volcanoes, software tricks and general musings<\/h3>\n
There were a number of other Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn posts, explaining how to collect samples of falling ash<\/a> in the UK and why it is so difficult to map the ash plume<\/a> from a volcano.\u00a0 There were also posts about the deposits of the huge Hekla 4 eruption<\/a> and the massive floods from Katla<\/a> that make her eruptions so serious for Iceland.\u00a0 Outside of Iceland, there were videos of lahars at Volc\u00e1n de Colima<\/a> and an animation of the globe-spanning plume from Puyehue Cordon-Caulle<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Need to chop\/rotate\/annotate\/join some images in a hurry?\u00a0 There was a post on ImageMagick<\/a> to show you how.\u00a0 There were also general musings on the striking similarity between piles of grain and the shape of mountains<\/a> and wondering why people insist on using Imperial units to measure babies<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The site now has an archive page, Every post ever<\/a>, which you can browse other posts that might grab your interest.<\/p>\n
Coming in 2012<\/p>\n
![\"Van\"](\"http:\/\/all-geo.org\/volcan01010\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/CarImage.jpeg\")
<\/a>My home for the summer in Iceland: a VW Transporter T4 Syncro van.<\/p><\/div><\/h3>\n
From the end of March, I am off to live in a camper van in Iceland until the late autumn.\u00a0 I will driving round the country digging holes and sampling prehistoric tephra (pumice + ash) layers.\u00a0 I will be working with the Icelandic scientists responsible for monitoring their volcanoes, so if there is an eruption from Katla (who is still rumbling<\/a>) or Hekla or anywhere else then I will be able explain things with the best information, direct from the scientists themselves.<\/p>\n
On the computing side, it is a longer-term aim to post an introduction or quick-start guide to each of the programs described in the All The Software<\/a> post.\u00a0 The Image Magick <\/a>post is an example of this.\u00a0 Many of these will form part of a series called Quit wasting your life with Excel<\/em>.\u00a0 Watch this space.<\/p>\n
Subscribe, then tell all your friends<\/h3>\n
The best way to follow volcan01010 is to subscribe to the RSS feed<\/a>.\u00a0 If you’ve never heard of RSS, read this guide<\/a>.\u00a0 It lets you keep track of posts that you have read and tells you when a new one is out.\u00a0 You can also follow me on Twitter (@volcan01010<\/a>).\u00a0 This way you get updates with other news and links that I think are cool, but if you follow lots of people then it can be easy to miss announcements of new posts.<\/p>\n
Volcan01010 now has 201 followers on Twitter, and in the last year the blog scored 21,679 page views from 10,049 unique visitors in 149 countries (with the vast majority in the UK and USA).\u00a0 It has passed an important psychological barrier of at least 100 reads per new post, which means that the total time spent reading an article is now more than the time it takes to write!<\/p>\n
If you find the blog interesting or useful, then please tell all your friends.\u00a0 Then tell them to tell all their friends, too.\u00a0 It’s going to be an interesting year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week is the first anniversary of the volcan01010 blog.\u00a0 With this post, I want to pick out some highlights from 2011, and to whet your appetites for some things to come in 2012. Top 3 posts: The main aim … Continue reading
- Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn 1 – Crossing the glacier<\/a>.\u00a0 In August, I was lucky to join an expedition to the crater of Gr\u00edmsv\u00f6tn to study the newly-erupted material.\u00a0 It was an adventurous journey involving monster-trucks, crevasses and a crazy landscape of ice and tephra.\u00a0 This post describes the journey and explains what we found.<\/li>\n