7 days of earthquakes in japan

Recently I have been in continuous contact with my friends in Japan, who are all living in Tokyo. Fortunately, they are all fine. The big Sendai earthquake and the following tsunami did not harm them directly. But – besides the nuclear danger – there are many aftershocks happening all the time. A friend told me that Tokyo feels like pudding, another one told me on saturday that the earth is shaking every 30 minutes, and earthquakes are regularly occurring in the middle of skype conversations. For me, and especially for my friends in Japan this is a tremendous psychological challenge – even if those earthquakes are not as strong as the big one. But you never know…

Well, yesterday night this led me to the idea of trying to visualize that feeling – a timelapse of 5+ earthquakes from the past 7 days. What you see is a screencapture of a program that I wrote overnight. Thanks to the XML feed of the US Geological Survey, the program is running live and updates automatically.

Many thanks go to Mahir M. Yavuz, Ritornell and mimu merz for their immediate help and support.

Software: processing.org/​
Data: USGS earthquake.usgs.gov/​earthquakes/​catalogs/​eqs7day-M5.xml

7 days of earthquakes in japan

Recently I have been in continuous contact with my friends in Japan, who are all living in Tokyo. Fortunately, they are all fine. The big Sendai earthquake and the following tsunami did not harm them directly. But – besides the nuclear danger – there are many aftershocks happening all the time. A friend told me that Tokyo feels like pudding, another one told me on saturday that the earth is shaking every 30 minutes, and earthquakes are regularly occurring in the middle of skype conversations. For me, and especially for my friends in Japan this is a tremendous psychological challenge – even if those earthquakes are not as strong as the big one. But you never know…

Well, yesterday night this led me to the idea of trying to visualize that feeling – a timelapse of 5+ earthquakes from the past 7 days. What you see is a screencapture of a program that I wrote overnight. Thanks to the XML feed of the US Geological Survey, the program is running live and updates automatically.

Many thanks go to Mahir M. Yavuz, Ritornell and mimu merz for their immediate help and support.

Software: processing.org/​
Data: USGS earthquake.usgs.gov/​earthquakes/​catalogs/​eqs7day-M5.xml