GEE (Global Earthquake Explorer) Tips

In an effort to help those that are just getting started with GEE, here are some quick tips that will help save you some time in learning the program. They may also help you to avoid thinking you have the greatest earthquake ever known to man on your screen quickly and easily. This thread is only for the REAL TIME VIEWER portion of GEE. In other words, for those that want to actively monitor incoming information from seismic stations over the internet in close to real time.

GETTING STARTED

1) Immediate Don't

Once you click the REAL TIME VIEWER (RTV), do not try to reset anything or play around in GEE UNTIL THE BLUE AND GREY STATION ICONS HAVE LOADED ON THE MAP. Reason: you may likely crash the program. Yeah, it is a bit buggy, but not too bad. Often times, and especially lately, it can take a long time for these icons to load. In some cases up to 30 minutes or more. Likely Reason: overloaded servers- a lot of people have gotten into this program, and so the load on the servers is often very high. If you don't want to wait, about the only thing you can do is shut the program down, and then restart it, hoping that the station icons reload on the map quick. I have found it's better just to load the program, click on the RTV, and then minimize it and do something else for a bit. When the stations finally load, GEE will pop up usually from being minimized on its own when the station data is received. Patience is your friend, especially with GEE.

2) So wow, the station icons finally loaded, you see the world map, and a bunch of blue and gray triangles finally appear. Now what? Well, the blue triangles mean that you can select those stations under your current channel selection, and the gray ones mean that either the station is not available- or that you don't have the right channel selection for that station. More on that later, but just know for now that when the program loads, you are by default selected to load only broadband channels, and the blue triangles represent those stations which are broadband, and that you can select to monitor right now.

3) Point to any station, and it's network and location are displayed in the status bar, bottom right. This way you can tell what station you are about to select, and where it is located. Very handy, especially in congested areas where there are lots of stations.

4) So choose any blue triangle station and click on it. It will get a white triangle around it, meaning it is selected for loading. Yes, you can select more than one. To deselect all, hit the deselect button on the toolbar (the one with triangles on it). Once you have a station or two selected, hit the "Load Realtime Data" button on the toolbar, and you are in business! The realtime viewer tab opens up with three channels per station being displayed. Give it a minute or two to load the actual seismic waveform data from the station(s). Once you see this data come in, you are now live monitoring the stations you have chosen. Yippee!


THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

1) RealTime Viewer Description and Use

A) Let's work our way from left to right. On the far left of each channel is a scale that keeps changing as the displayed waveforms are received. The scale for each channel is dynamic in the sense that it adjusts itself constantly to accommodate the maximum peak of any given waveform in its channel at any time. In each channel's box you will notice it says "Amplitude" and then it has a zero in the middle of the scale and positive numbers above, and negative numbers below. Some critical things about this scale you must know:

1) You will usually, and almost always, see either nm/s (nanometers per second) or microns/sec in the box. In rare cases you may get to see mm/sec (millimeters per second) if you happen to catch an event (quake) that pegs the waveform beyond the microns per second scale. And in extremely rare cases, you may actually get to see centimeters per second, in which case no matter what station you have chosen, that will be a whopper of a quake. As in 8+ or more in Richter scale magnitude. Very rare, and a scale which so far personally I have never seen.

2) Understanding what this scale is measuring: ground velocity, not magnitude! Oh no! Bummer. But but I just wanted something that would give me immediate Richter scale magnitude! Sorry, no can do. Why? The most likely reason is the program has no way of knowing how close it is to the epicenter of a quake. It just measures how fast the ground moves at the station you have chosen. The more intense an event (possibly a quake), the faster it causes the ground to actually move, and the more it will stretch the dynamic scale. But through monitoring various stations in the area, you can get a rough idea, with a little experience, of if it is a quake and if so how roughly big it is. More on this later. Patience.

3) So when you see a bump on your screen on a channel, the VERY FIRST THING YOU DO IS LOOK AT THE AMPLITUDE SCALE, to determine roughly how big this is. If you see the scale stretch to 900 nm/sec, it's tiny tiny tiny, and not even worth thinking about. If it is reaches 50 microns/sec or more however, that is worth taking notice of, and then trying to see if other stations close by have registered it too.

4) Understanding what you are up against here, by example. Let's say you check your GEE, and see a pretty good size spike, or bump, or thick triangle looking thing in the waveform of a channel. You immediately check the amplitude and you see, whoa, 900 microns/sec. That's probably a quake, but not necessarily. An animal may have inadvertently hit the thing. So you need to corroborate this by getting another station close by. And this is one reason I always, where possible, monitor in a triangular, three station pattern for any given area. But let's move on. So you check another station close by, within 200 miles or so, and you see nothing. All other stations you check as close by as possible show nothing out of the ordinary. Well, you have your answer. It was probably an animal, and not a quake.

5) In the interest of saving you time, I am going to list amplitudes of events and some suggested actions:

0 to 1000 nm/sec- Nothing, don't even think about it. Note, 1000 nm=1 micron

1 to 20 microns/sec- most likely nothing, but worth a glance around other stations. Many man made events occur here.

20-50 microns/sec- could be a quake, but check other stations. Many man made events fall into this category.

50 to 100 microns/sec- could be a quake, may be a mine blast, check other stations.

100 to 300 microns/sec- always worth looking into, probably small quake somewhere, but it could be an indicator of a larger quake much further away. Rarely do man made events fall into this category, although some mine blasting can reach here if it is close enough to the station.

300 to 800 microns/sec- 90% chance this is a quake, and immediately seek corroboration from other stations.

800 + microns/sec and ANYTHING into the MM/sec is almost sure it's a quake, and likely a bigger one, 5+ magnitude. Note: 1000 microns=1 millimeter

CRITICAL NOTES TO THESE GUIDELINES:
Remember that the distance from the epicenter to the station plays a critical role in determining what the ground velocity at the station will read. The problem is of course that GEE is roughly 30 seconds to 2 minutes behind realtime, and while you have the data on a quake, you don't know exactly, just from watching GEE, where it is located. But you can get an idea if you are monitoring multiple stations in the same area, because doing this will also give you a direction by simply looking at which stations received the strongest signal. And don't worry, you won't have to wait long before you find out. The USGS will be publishing the quake within minutes, depending on size.

Example: 5.0 mag quake strikes 50 miles from your monitored station. You might see GEE read 900 microns/sec or more on this at that station, that close. But get this: If this same quake strikes, same place, but your closest monitored station is 500 miles away, you may only see this register at 150 microns/sec. This is why monitoring multiple stations per area really helps.

[edit on Sun Oct 4th 2009 by TrueAmerican]

Sorry man.

Trying to get the mods to pull this out.

[edit on 4-10-2009 by KSPigpen]

[edit on 4-10-2009 by KSPigpen]

Realtime Viewer Description and Use (Continued)

B) Middle Top Scrolling Timeline.

At the very top of the RTV tab window is a scrolling timeline, always moving from right to left on its own (unless you stop it or FF or Rewind from the toolbar). This displays what is known as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). It is much like regular time, but is a world accepted (universal) time in use by all scientists everywhere so that a single time means exactly the same thing to everyone. More on this here:

en.wikipedia.org...

You will notice that the USGS (US Geological Survey, you know, those guys that report on earthquakes and much more) also will display the time of earthquakes in UTC. The fact that GEE uses UTC is very helpful in cross-referencing events to quakes and so forth. Otherwise, we'd have to calculate this every time- yuk!

At the far right of this timeline is the actual point of realtime (the now moment). This is indicated by the all the red flags that say "CURRENT TIME" on each channel. You will notice that incoming data on each channel never quite reaches this line, because the data received is slightly behind realtime. This is due to internet latency, seismograph methods of uploading this information, and the overall system overhead of getting this data to your computer. Expect delays of 30 seconds to 2 minutes behind realtime, and sometimes longer. Also, the more stations you monitor, the higher the load you put not only on your computer, but the GEE servers as well.


C) The Middle Screen Waveform Data and Channel Description

So what in the heck is a channel, and why are there three of them per station?

For most users, understanding that you are monitoring "broadband" seismic stations will probably be enough for simple quake watching. But all this goes way deep for the more serious quake watcher, let alone for a real seismologist.

In a nutshell, there are many different types of seismographic stations. And these stations use different types of seismometers (which all have their own intended specific uses.) Before you try to understand any of the more technical ones, it is probably best you simply get a grip on what Broadband seismometers are first, and how they are used in GEE. And not that broadband ones are simple, either. But since that is what GEE comes up with first, and what you are likely to use most, if not all the time, we should start there.

Broadband Seismometers

Broadband seismometers can detect motion over a wide range (or band) of frequencies and usually over a large range of amplitudes (the dynamic range). Broadband sensors respond to most frequencies from 0.01 Hz to 50 Hz. For regional seismology, the frequency range of interest is from 0.05 to 20 Hz therefore; broadband sensors are most useful for recording regional earthquakes and teleseismic events

www.pnsn.org...

When an earthquake happens, there are generally speaking three main components to the way the earth moves. You have east/west, north/south, and up/down motion- and any combination thereof.

Seismometers in general are designed to measure these movements on those three axis. And there is usually a separate meter, one for each of those directions of movement, contained in a single seismometer. Each of those meters outputs its data on a separate channel, and these channels are usually labeled with the last letter of the channel name meaning which one it is.

An E, as in the "BHE" channel means it is measuring movement on the East/Weat axis. An N, as in the "BHN" channel means it is measuring movement on the North/South axis. A Z, as in the "BHZ" channel means it is measuring movement on the up/down (vertical) axis.

More basic information here:
en.wikipedia.org...

So, knowing this now you can look at those three channels per station in GEE and have an idea of what you are looking at! As you might have guessed, any waveform on the BHE channel that goes above the zero line (positive) represents movement in an eastern direction, and any below the zero line (negative) in a western direction. The same applies respectively for the BHN and BHZ channels: Positive movement is north and up, negative movement is south and down on each channel respectively.

The other two letters in the names of these channels mean B for a"Broadband" type of seismometer, and H for "High Gain".

But who really wants to know all this technical stuff? Oh, you? Then hit Google my friend and read all about it, cause I've barely scratched the surface here. It is enough however, to get a general clue of what is going on, and how, more importantly, you can apply it to quake watching in GEE.

[edit on Mon Oct 5th 2009 by TrueAmerican]

Thank you so much for this. I have made most of the mistakes that you are trying to help noobie's from making. Very frustrating when you finaly get one screen up and find you have no idea how to read it.

Installing GEE in Ubuntu Linux 9.04+ (gnome desktop)

Be sure you have sun-java6-jre package installed using the synaptics package manager (approx 30M)

Click on “Places”
Click on “Home”
Create a new folder called “gee”

Download tar.gz from www.seis.sc.edu...
Extract and put folders “bin” and “lib” in your newly created “gee” directory

Make a new text file called GEEstart in your home directory (the same directory you have your new gee folder in) and edit it as follows:

#!/bin/bash
cd gee/bin
export GEE_HOME=/home/lernmore/gee
./gee

(be sure and replace lernmore for your own name/account)

open a terminal, (Applications, Accessories, Terminal) type the following

chmod +X GEEstart

(that makes it executable)

Click on the new GEEstart file in your home directory and select Run


note: There may be an easier way to get it to run, but I couldn't get it to work "out of the box".

Realtime Viewer Description and Use (Continued)

C) The Middle Screen Waveform Data and Channel Description (Continued)

Understanding Seismographic Networks and Channel Naming

There are many networks of seismographic stations run by different entities. Some are private, and some are public. One of the biggest of course is maintained by the USGS, and many sub networks feed data from their own stations to it.

Since you will often encounter stations from this network, you may want to read more about these networks here:

earthquake.usgs.gov...

Another popular network you may encounter is the Transportable Array network, which is part of the EarthScope Project. Read more here:

www.passcal.nmt.edu...
www.earthscope.org...

When you see a channel in GEE in the RTV, there is always a name to each channel in the upper left of each channel's space. The two initials you see identify first the network, and then after the period, the individual station on that network.

So when you see CI.CWC. .BHE for example, this means you are looking at the BHE channel from the CWC station, which is on the CI network. Just remember it goes network.station.channel.

TOOLBAR USAGE IN THE RTV WINDOW

In the upper left you have the toolbar, which gives you a cursor tool, a zoom plus and zoom minus tool, a hand tool, and timeline movement controls.

Cursor Tool- Looks like a big PLUS SIGN +. Click on this when you want to close just one channel in the RTV window by clicking on the X directly to the left of each channel's name.

You will also be able to point to peaks in the waveform data with the cursor tool, and when you do, you will see a new display of text in the channel come up over on the bottom right of the channel your cursor is in. This displays additional information about the waveform you are pointing at.

Zoom Tools- Looks like a magnifying glass. Click on these to either zoom in (+) or out (-) in the RTV window. As you do this, note that YOUR AMPLITUDE SCALE ON THE LEFT ADJUSTS ITSELF TO ONLY WHAT IS CURRENTLY DISPLAYED IN THE CHANNEL. So if you zoom too far in, and leave your computer for a minute, you might possibly miss an event on that channel, because due to the high zoom selection the event went by too fast and you never saw it. The default zoom is usually fine for monitoring until something happens. At that point then it is useful sometimes to use the zoom tools to inspect things closer. But it is also important to note that you may need to adjust the zoom on the RTV window depending on what size window you choose to display the entire GEE program. Play around with this and soon you will get it. I often will actually zoom out further than the default when I am monitoring many stations and channels, because when something happens you can still see it- but it lets me look at many more channels at once.

The Hand Tool - Click on this when you want to move the entire RTV window either right or left in your display. You do this by positioning the hand anywhere in the channels area, holding down the left mouse button, and then dragging either right or left, and then releasing the left mouse button. This is useful when you want to go back in time and see what happened if you were not looking at the screen for a while. Also, I forgot to mention that you won't see the red "CURRENT TIME" flags on each channel on the far right until you click the hand tool and drag the entire RTV display to the left. Unless I am zooming on something, I usually drag it to where I can just barely see the red flags of the current time over on the far right of the RTV display. Anything to the right of the CURRENT TIME flags is not usable, because there is no data received yet AFTER the current time.

The Timeline Transport Controls - Generally you will not need to use these until an event happens. But these provide a way to stop the timeline or fast forward or rewind the timeline. GEE only holds each channel's data for a little while, and then it actually disappears off the screen on the far left, never to be seen again. So if an event happens and you want to inspect it, you might want to stop the timeline so that GEE won't erase it before you can look at it further. Or for instance, you might want to capture a screenshot of an event, and stopping the timeline temporarily is useful for this.

The next posts to come will deal with more in depth usage of GEE.

[edit on Mon Oct 5th 2009 by TrueAmerican]

I've just downloaded the GEE program and I've been playing with it. Trying to educate my eye as to events and your explanations have been really helpful. One thing though. Can you explain how to set the seismographic display so that more than the last 20 minutes is available? I thought I caught one of the 5.1 episodes at the Santa Cruz location this afternoon, using IU.HNR.00.BHZ, but when the notification from eQuake came through and I went to check, the seismograph display only scrolled back 20 minutes.

There has got to be some easy way of setting the display to scroll back for the entire period that I have been watching. Isn't there?

Thanks

Oops - please disregard - I just read the last paragraph in your first post carefully. Serious brainfart in progress.

[edit on 8-10-2009 by tangotemper]

Special Notes for Yellowstone Park

Monitoring Yellowstone Park has become a pastime for many of us, since it is one of the most active areas in the Unites States.

So here are some more notes useful for watching this park particularly.

Networks to Watch
The seismic networks that you can add in GEE that are positioned in and around the park are:

WY- Yellowstone Wyoming Seismic Network- Extremely Short Period
For a map/list of stations see:
www.quake.utah.edu...

This network requires you to select "Extremely Short Period" FIRST before adding the network if you want to see them light up in blue for real time viewer loading. This network is usually available, but lately has not been available in GEE.

Note that this network displays in nanometers (nm). NOT nm/sec. The difference being the first is actual ground displacement, and the second (nm/sec) is how fast that displacement occurred using what are known as accelerometers. You will see this second type of display on other networks like the PB network.

For this network (WY), most stations will saturate out at either 300 or 600 nanometers when a larger quake (above 2.0 Magnitude) occurs. You will see that the waveforms get cut off when that happens. These are generally used to monitor microquakes, and may be very useful in the event a harmonic tremor occurred somewhere in the park. As of now, no one here has ever seen a harmonic tremor on any webicorder graph at Yellowstone. If you believe you have found one, please post it for review.

PB- Plate Boundary Observatory- Extremely Short Period

Applicable stations:
PB.B205
PB.B206
PB.B207- nearest the January-Feb Western Caldera swarm
PB. B208
PB.B944

Here are specific instructions for adding this network which you can use as well for any other networks that won't come up as broadband:

1) Edit>station chooser, while displaying the map.
2) Add network
3) While you wait for networks to come up, select vertical only and "extremely short period"
4) When networks load, add network PB. (Plate Boundary Observatory)
5) Scroll down and find PB.B207 in the list, and it should be lit up in blue, showing you have the right channel selections for that station.
6) Simply select it in the list to light it up on the map, as well as any others nearby, and then Load Real Time Data.

See above notes under WY for how this network displays in nm/sec. Note that these stations on this network will not saturate out so quickly like the other Extremely Short Period stations. Exactly where their saturation point is is unclear, but so far they have handled everything I've seen up to 3.2- and that's real close to the quake.

To see webicorder graphs of all stations in this network, here is a very useful link:

wiggle.unavco.org...

IW- Intermountain West- Broadband
This like other broadband networks displays in nm and microns per second.
The next step up in case of real large quakes close to the station would be millimeters/sec. and CM per sec. after that. Broadband accelerometer networks can generally handle the bigger quakes without much problems, and some are rated to be able to display magnitudes up to 10.

Applicable stations:
IW.FLWY
IW.MOOW
IW.LOHW
IW.FXWY

TA- Transportable Array- Broadband

www.iris.edu...://www.iris.edu/earthscope/usarray/ALL-OpStationList.xml

Zoom to Yellowstone to see the stations in the area

Applicable stations:
TA.H17A
TA.I17A
TA.H18A

Other stations in this network to the east of Yellowstone are useful for picking up mine blasts coming from Gillette, WY. Some of these (the bigger ones) can be picked up at Yellowstone, and continually cause confusion because they can look quite like harmonic tremors. Watch out during daytime hours MST.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are a couple of other networks, but generally these will cover most of Yellowstone Park, and will usually be available in GEE. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes they go down. Sometimes one station goes down. Some networks are not accessible to GEE no matter what channels you try.

Estimating Magnitude in GEE at Yellowstone
References:

For the current Western Caldera swarm (Jan-Feb 2010), station PB.B207, close to the quakes registered around 27 microns/sec on the Vertical EHZ channel alone for an early 3.1 mag quake. I did not see the EH1 and EH2 channels for that one.

If you are also going to monitor EH1 and EH2 channels, another 3.1 quake registered around 14 microns/sec on the EHZ channel, but near 50 microns/sec on the EH1 channel.

Remember to take into account distance to the epicenter, but of course since you will get these in GEE before the USGS publishes them, and then revises them, you do not know where they are coming from unless it's obvious that PB.B207 is registering them soonest. Then it's likely they are coming from the swarm location.

After a while of seeing them in GEE, and then seeing what the USGS says from Equake alert or alternatively this RSS feed (what Equake alert uses to source from):

earthquake.usgs.gov...

you will get a sense of roughly what magnitude a given spike generates. Just beware of all the possibilities, locations, times on the RTV, and more.

As if all that wasn't enough to worry about, also bear in mind that at Yellowstone a lot of different things can happen. Like the forming of new mud volcanoes which can shake the earth violently. Or a hydrothermal explosion which can destroy geysers.

A very interesting read here on previous events at Yellowstone, which can affect your GEE readings:

www.volcano.si.edu...

[edit on Tue Feb 2nd 2010 by TrueAmerican]

reply to post by TrueAmerican

Hi TrueAmerican, I am not sure this will reach you since this is
an old post.

In the section on using the zoom tools you mention changing the
size of the whole window so you can see more channels at once.

I cannot figure out how to do this. When I use the + and - zoom
it only expands or contracts the time. I cannot find a way to change
the size of the boxes. I am using this on a Dell D620 laptop
and the version I am using is 2.1.4 CVS Version Revision 15781

I downloaded the program a week ago on a different computer and even though it is the same version it no longer allows two
instances of the program to run concurrently, which I like to do
to view SAC files from VASE without shutting down the real time
window. I just looked and it is the same CVS Version Revision
so maybe the problem is the latest Java virtual runtime. Or
could it be memory? I have 1 GIG on that machine and 3 GIG on
the Dell.

Any help would be appreciated
thanks



[edit on 10-3-2010 by EngTech36]

Originally posted by EngTech36
In the section on using the zoom tools you mention changing the
size of the whole window so you can see more channels at once.

I cannot figure out how to do this. When I use the + and - zoom
it only expands or contracts the time. I cannot find a way to change
the size of the boxes. I am using this on a Dell D620 laptop
and the version I am using is 2.1.4 CVS Version Revision 15781

There is no way that I have found either to make the channels smaller, once you reach their minimum size. But by maximizing the overall GEE program window, you can display the maximum numbers of channels at once. For me, at 1440 x 900 resolution, I get at max 5 channels I can see, and beyond that I have to use the scroll bar to see more.

I downloaded the program a week ago on a different computer and even though it is the same version it no longer allows two
instances of the program to run concurrently, which I like to do
to view SAC files from VASE without shutting down the real time
window. I just looked and it is the same CVS Version Revision
so maybe the problem is the latest Java virtual runtime. Or
could it be memory? I have 1 GIG on that machine and 3 GIG on
the Dell.

Any help would be appreciated
thanks

Yes, I noticed this too, that two instances of GEE are not allowed, and that's not because of your amount of memory. GEE doesn't take up all that much (less than 500k), and I have 4 gigs on this machine. Still can't do it- so clearly it is a coding change of some kind, either in the program executable or as you say, in the java runtime environment. Nothing we're gonna do here, unless you are a serious programmer and can make coding changes. And of course that is not allowed, as per the license agreement.

Best option for you might be to run one instance on each machine, for each purpose.

[edit on Thu Mar 11th 2010 by TrueAmerican]

Thank you for responding so quickly, wow. I have the same
resolution as you do, and get the 5. On the desktop I get 6.

Well thankfully on the Dell I can still run 2 instances of the program.

Do you know if the university is still supporting GEE? The last time
I checked, the contact button was inactive.

Thanks again for the help.

reply to post by EngTech36


Hmm, that's curious. Is the same Operating system and service pack (if applicable) on both machines?

reply to post by TrueAmerican


I am running XP service pack 3 on both machines. On the laptop
I just click on the GEE program icon and when the splach screen
comes up I click on file, then click load SAC, MSEED or PSN file
and a message comes up "switching activity" which brings up a
window that lets me go to my VASE download directory.

I just tried it again to be sure and found that I can load 3 instances
of the program. One difference I know about is that on the laptop
the latest java I have is 1.6.0_07, but in the GEE directory there
is a jre\bin directory, and I don't know which javaw.exe is actually
running.

Relative to current events in Arkansas, namely the earthquakes- this is how to gain access in GEE to station AG.WHAR which is within 5 miles of most of these quakes:

1) Open GEE, and click Real Time Viewer, let stations fully load and turn blue.
2) Zoom in around the area in Arkansas
3) Edit menu...Station Chooser....then Add Network... Let the networks list load.
4) In Station Chooser window, select ALL CHANNELS
5) In right side of that window, you will see a bunch of new channel types load. Carefully scroll down through it, looking for these three channels:
HHN
HHE
HHZ

And select them by using Ctrl Key for multiple selections

6) Now go to your Add Network window, and scroll down until you see the AG network and click it.
7) Bingo, the stations on AG network come up in blue and are now selectable and will load. Find AG.WHAR station on your map and select, then click "Load Real Time Data".

8) Observe!

Oops, forgot to mention that you will need to select AG.WHAR station first to in order to get the "All Channels" option in the Station Chooser to actually list the HHZ, HHE, and HHN channels. So be sure to add the AG network, then click on the WHAR station, even though it will be in gray at first. This lets GEE sense what channels it has, so that it will then list them under the "All Channels" selection.

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Like Wow! Thanx for the link to the GEE. Totally DoubleThank to the instructions You took the time to put Down for us to see/read/use. Just a Quick Thanx once again! Later, Syx.

WOW! Thank you for this thread, which I found doing a GEE search here on ATS. This information helps so much in learning what to look for on GEE and makes it much easier to do so quickly. Should re-post so others are aware. Very valuable contribution here!

reply to post by lernmore


A quick update to my previous post for installing GEE in Ubuntu, (tested and working in 11.04) I had forgotten about this thread.

The sun-java-6 packages are no longer in the main repositories since they switched to an open source version.

The new package to install from the synaptic package manager is openjdk-6-jre instead.

Sun's version is still available in old repos and on their website if you prefer using that.

Thanks you guys.

Another general tip:

I have experienced an occasional crash running this on a 64-bit Windoze 7 Pro machine, as well as some other anomalies. GEE will sometimes just close. *poof* gone. Restart it.

One thing that happens is GEE might not load the map icons sometimes when you first open the program. If after a minute or two you don't see map icons (triangles), close GEE, wait about 15 seconds, and start it again. Then select Real Time Viewer again, and they should load right away. Happens a lot when opening the program after it has not been run in a while.

I also get another occasional error in station chooser, where Vertical Only or other options are completely blank. No choice but to restart program on those instances.

Also, here is a bit more info on monitoring:

Especially starting out, please only monitor vertical (Z) channels. You do this by simply selecting "Vertical Only" in the Station Chooser Window.

The reason I ask please to do that for those just starting in GEE is that the other channels often display bizarre wave patterns (often from digitizer errors) which may cause you to assume things that lead to too many people asking too many questions about things that don't really matter.

By monitoring vertical channels only, you avoid all that, and yet still pick up the quakes, PLUS you can get many more stations in the window. AND it also taxes the GEE servers much less by 2/3!!! In other words, by monitoring only the vertical channels, such as BHZ channels for example, you use 2/3 less- that's 66.66%- LESS bandwidth than if you monitor all 3 channels for every station. So you help keep it smooth for all of us that way.

If an event hits then you can open up the other channels for that station to take a look if you need to...

Also, there is a caveat to this section in the OP:

5) In the interest of saving you time, I am going to list amplitudes of events and some suggested actions:

0 to 1000 nm/sec- Nothing, don't even think about it. Note, 1000 nm=1 micron

1 to 20 microns/sec- most likely nothing, but worth a glance around other stations. Many man made events occur here.

20-50 microns/sec- could be a quake, but check other stations. Many man made events fall into this category.

50 to 100 microns/sec- could be a quake, may be a mine blast, check other stations.

100 to 300 microns/sec- always worth looking into, probably small quake somewhere, but it could be an indicator of a larger quake much further away. Rarely do man made events fall into this category, although some mine blasting can reach here if it is close enough to the station.

300 to 800 microns/sec- 90% chance this is a quake, and immediately seek corroboration from other stations.

800 + microns/sec and ANYTHING into the MM/sec is almost sure it's a quake, and likely a bigger one, 5+ magnitude. Note: 1000 microns=1 millimeter

THIS ONLY APPLIES TO BHZ CHANNELS AND BROADBAND STATIONS

If you get into monitoring other networks such as the PB network or WY network, those are EHZ (Extremely Short Period) stations, and all those rules change. 300 nm/s on those stations can mean a 3.0 quake or so, if corroborated on other stations. Some of those stations saturate out (max out) at 600 nm/s. Some don't, and keep going into the microns/sec range. Yes, this is complicated. *sigh*.