Category: 地震 / Earthquake

Youtube Popularity

I don’t really understand how videos manage to get popular on Youtube. At current count my videos have been watched a total of 7,293 times. I’ve made no effort to promote them and have only posted links on my blog and a couple of times on Forumosa. Three of the videos are of the English version video explaining the driver’s license test in Taiwan which have been up for a while and are actually useful, so I can understand why they’ve been viewed a lot, as they are actually useful.

But the most popular of my videos is a not terribly exciting video showing a bit of surveillance video from my restaurant during an earthquake. It has no editing, no sound, no titles, and to be honest the it’s far from the most interesting earthquake video on Youtube (see my favorites for some better ones). I don’t mean to sell it short; I do think it is interesting and worth watching. It’s just that I’m boggled that it currently has been watched 3,255 times. And all it shows is some ads and lights swinging gently for a minute.

The only external link that shows up other than my own stuff is a link from taggy.jp which seems to be some sort of Japanese version of Digg or Delicio.us. Apparently the video currently has 8 points there. Other than that the only thing it has going for it is a good subject and tags in both English and Chinese and a decent description (only English though; my Chinese doesn’t do well at long stuff). But still, 3,255 views. Wow!

twquake 1.5.1

We had a couple of quakes today, including one that woke me up at 6:54 am this morning:

M 5.0 46.0 km ENE of Yilan City 2007-11-08 06:54 #074 (1108065450074)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE1108065450074.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE1108065450074.txt

A smaller one this afternoon which I didn’t feel brought to my attention a few minor bugs that I hadn’t resolved in a while in my twquake perl script which fetches earthquake data from the Central Weather Bureau. That led me to other bugs and cosmetic issues and eventually spawned a new version of the script. Behold: twquake version 1.5.1. (I also noticed that I never posted version 1.5.0 which fixed a major bug. Well, actually the bug is in LWP::Simple but I had to convert to using LWP::UserAgent instead to avoid the bug.) If anyone actually uses this program besides me, please download the new version!

For those who are interested, I also run two mailing lists which send out alerts with the information on each earthquake reported in Taiwan. There’s an English version and a Chinese version:

Sign up for Taiwan earthquake alerts:
English: http://lists.jameslick.com/mailman/listinfo/twquake-alert-en
中文: http://lists.jameslick.com/mailman/listinfo/twquake-alert-zh

Earthquakes and Typhoons

Today we had a bit of a wiggle:

M 5.0 34.6 km SSE of Yilan City 2007-09-22 14:27 #062 (0922142750062)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE0922142750062.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE0922142750062.txt

M 5.0 宜蘭南澳地震站東偏北方 11.5 公里 2007-09-22 14:27 #062 (0922142750062)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5/seismic/Data/quake/EC0922142750062.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5/seismic/Data/quake/EC0922142750062.txt

I haven’t updated about typhoon Wipha yet but basically because, *yawn*, it was pretty boring. So boring that we opened both restaurants and I was out and about at the supposed peak of the storm and it was nothing. It wasn’t even raining half the time I was out.

YouTube: Taiwan 2007-09-07 Earthquake 台灣2007年9月7日地震

On September 9, 2007, a magnitude 6.6 quake (according to the Central Weather Bureau; 6.5 according to USGS) struck off the east coast of Taiwan. This is video from the security camera in my restaurant in Taipei about 115km/70mi from the epicenter during the time of the quake. You can see our advertisements and globe lights swinging during the quake.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=Y35QjKwLSMw

OK, so it’s not terribly exciting. *shrug*

Big Quake

Tonight at 1:51am we had a magnitude 6.6 quake off the east coast followed by a magnitude 5.7 aftershock four minutes later. The first one had a shake intensity of 3 in Taipei which is pretty strong. Shake intensity and magnitude are entirely different scales and systems of measurement so you can’t compare them, but it was plenty enough to get doors rattling and cups and dishes banging into each other.

Main quake:

M 6.6 87.3 km ENE of Hualien City 2007-09-07 01:51 #058 (0907015166058)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE0907015166058.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE0907015166058.txt

M 6.6 宜蘭南澳地震站東偏南方 74.6 公里 2007-09-07 01:51 #058 (0907015166058)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5/seismic/Data/quake/EC0907015166058.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5/seismic/Data/quake/EC0907015166058.txt

M 6.5, Taiwan region 2007-09-06 17:51:27 UTC Z=62km 24.3336N 122.3239E
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007gybt.php

Aftershock:

M 5.7 94.5 km ENE of Hualien City 2007-09-07 01:55 #059 (0907015557059)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE0907015557059.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/seismic/Data/quake/EE0907015557059.txt

M 5.7 宜蘭蘇澳地震站東偏南方 81.6 公里 2007-09-07 01:55 #059 (0907015557059)
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5/seismic/Data/quake/EC0907015557059.gif
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5/seismic/Data/quake/EC0907015557059.txt

Earthquakes

It’s been a busy night down in southern Taiwan. We had a 7.1 quake followed by a 7.0 quake, both of which were quite noticeable way up here in northern Taiwan 300 miles away. They’ve since had a 5.2, another 5.2, and a 5.4 down there, all of which were too small up here. At one point Japan issued a Tsunami Alert for the Philippines but fortunately that turned out to be a false alarm. Currently there is at least one collapsed building and several fires reported.

This brings my magnitude 7+ tally to four.