Alain Michaud's web page

    Welcome to my personal web page. I put the daily updates at the top. However this approach makes it very difficult to maintain a proper table of content, since the page has no structure. Then I try to keep the page short and it should be easy to scroll all the way to the bottom and if necessary follow one of the links. At this time there are only three topics: Seismology, Amateur Radio and Radiation monitoring. The introduction is located at the bottom. Have a good reading.

Recent Seismogram

This is the recent raw output of our seismograph station. please see the Seismology section for a list of earthquakes detected earlier. Please note the date is indicated on the top left of the graph and the time is the universal time UTC.  

Most
          recent seismogram    


Amateur Seismology

Seismology logo     I am located in Quebec city, Canada. (FN46IS)  Recently I built a seismometer,  which I operate in the basement of my house. It took 22 months to design and build the instrument. Not a geologist, I had to read documents and make many choices for my first design. The instrument is in continuous operation since February 2021.  It has captured some vibrations from distant  earthquakes as well as one "local" event (M3.7). See below the seismograms for some events that I could identify using USGS Wilber.

2025-02-08 Mww7.6 North Of Honduras (B: 2025-02-09).

2025-02-08 Mww7.6 North Of Honduras (A).

2025-01-12 mww6.2 Near Coast Of Michoacan, Mexico.

2025-01-07 mww7.1 Xizang.

2024 Archive

2023 Archive

2022 Archive

2021 Archive

AM1 Seismometer

Introduction


Radiation monitoring

Radiation
        monitoring logo

I have a Geiger counter in continuous operation. Its output is periodically reported to the radmon.org surveillance network. You can see the background radiation level on the map. My station is labelled amichaud in the list. However you can go directly to my (hourly) report and graph on their site by following the link here.

A Count rate below 20 CPM is normal for my station.

Unlike other stations in this network, the numbers that is upload from my station represent the number of counts per minutes (CPM) that has already been averaged over a period of one hour. I only upload one number every hour in order to save network bandwidth. I believe this is the reason why the long time plots have a different look for this station.       


2025-02-08 Mww7.6 North Of Honduras (B: 2025-02-09)

Activity for 2025-02-09

COORD: 17.7016 °N, 82.4564 °W, 2025-02-08 23:23:14 UTC, 10.0 km Mww7.6 North Of Honduras.

2025-02-08 Mww7.6 North Of Honduras (A)

Activity for 2025-02-08

COORD: 17.7016 °N, 82.4564 °W, 2025-02-08 23:23:14 UTC, 10.0 km Mww7.6 North Of Honduras.

2025-01-12 mww6.2 Near Coast Of Michoacan, Mexico

Activity for 2025-01-12

COORD: 18.5249 °N, 103.3158 °W, 2025-01-12 08:32:50 UTC, 34.0 km, mww6.2 Near Coast Of Michoacan, Mexico.

2025-01-07 mww7.1 Xizang

Activity for 2025-01-07

COORD: 28.639 °N, 87.3608 °E, 2025-01-07 01:05:16 UTC, 10.0 km, mww7.1 Xizang.


AM1 Seismometer


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AM1/pictures/DSC08345.JPG


This is the completed seismometer. It was put in operation in january 2021. A description will be posted here.



AM1/AM4.gif



Introduction

This is just one of the quazillion personal web pages that nobody reads. I know what I am talking about. For ten years I had a similar page and I cannot remember having it refered to.

This was the "good old days" when you hide a list of keywords in the html script so the search engines would find your page. Soon a pair of students had a trick to defeat that and they put the browser industry to bankrupt. Their browser would now be the reference.

I had a deal with a friend: I would include a link to his page, and he would include a similar link to mine. Very thoughtfull. Together, we would crack the algorithm and we would finally have our place on the browser page...

Well, not quite. The search engine got even better, the students got even richer and our pages vanished never to return. What seemed a good idea, allowing people to find a page regarding a subject of interrest has become the world biggest cash pump of all times, that it seems, is about to swallow our civilization.

The bottom line is if you expect fame and wealth from a personal web page, then you should consider instead jackass videos or conspiracy theories. You get nothing of that sort in this page.

This page is a personal web page related to SEISMOLOGY as a HOBBY.  This means that  this page has not been peer reviewed, as well as it is not endorsed by any official or commercial organization. In effect, it has no scientific value!

I am a retired electrical engineer, and my skills are related to building and using high precision measuring instruments, building atomic clocks, and tunable lasers. I also participated to fundamental research in laser spectroscopy, a physics science called "laser cooling and trapping", and also "Bose-Enstein Condensation". I also designed and built "Atomic Clocks". These are high performance time-keepers. I built several prototypes of those. Finally I was responsable for a Microwave Metrology Laboratory. I also published my research in scientific journals.

As I just explained, I had no formal training or experience in geology or earth sciences.  I am only an AMATEUR in this field! If you are uncertain, please do not use the information presented on this page.

On the opposite side, I should mention that I do not receive any amount of money and I do not comment on any organization, any other result  or any comercial product. If you find any indication of the opposite please accept my apology and let me know so I can quickly correct the mistake.

My objective is show that it is possible to build  functional measuring instruments using modest resources, while having fun!