Nekresi Monastery Complex in Georgia

19 April, 2014 | Churches and Monasteries | 39 seen

Nekresi once was a town in Kakheti, Georgia. Nowadays Nekresi is a monastery complex located high up in the hill offering breathtaking views to surrounding plateau, not to mention that monastery complex is really interesting by it self. Located close to Kvareli town.

The church was recently restored, stone masonry repaired, roof rebuilt, windows put in place.

For the first time I visited this place back in the Spring of 2014, during a short day trip around region of Kakheti, offered by a hotel we stayed (Royal Batoni). Second time I paid a visit here in Autumn 2015, when I was taking my mom on about the same day trip around region of Kakheti. 

Visitors of Nekresi should buy a round-trip ticket for a bus which will take you up in the hill. Price per ride about 1 GEL.

Bus taking tourists to the Nekresi monastery complex

Nekresi monastery complex in Georgia

The town was established by king Pharnajom (around 2nd-1st centuries BC). In the 4th century AD, king Thrdat built a church in this place. This church became a refuge to one of the Assyrian fathers, Abibus, in the late 6th century. Around this time Nekresi Episcopality was established, which existed until the 19th century. Read more on Wikipedia: Nekresi

Marani / Wine Cellar at Nekresi monastery

Georgians are famous of their wine making traditions, so it' s not an expectation to find a marani here as well.

Nekresi monastery complex in Georgia

Tower at Nekresi monastery complex

At Nekresi monastery complex in Georgia

Inside Nekresi Church

Bones at Nekresi church

No idea to whom they might to belong. Probably some archeological discoveries.

Nekresi monastery complex in Republic of Georgia

Easter holidays with Putin and Valeriya

18 April, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 1 seen

<p>We made a holiday booking at Royal Batoni, Kvareli.</p><p>For me it is a great pleasure to just lay down and lazy watch satellite television shows with Vladimir Putin and pop singer Valeriya.</p><p>Great holidays.</p><p>I will add some photos from the Royal Batoni when will be back in the Tbilisi.</p>

My first mobile post

16 April, 2014 | Drupal Development | 3 seen

<p>My first mobile post using Drupal powered blog.</p>

GEL to USD exchange rates Mid - April 2014

14 April, 2014 | Macroeconomics | 6 seen

It has been awhile since I last time examined GEL/USD exchange rates. Last time I did that, I was pretty worried about hidden devaluation of Georgian national currency Lari.

During the past 4 years, GEL has lost its value against USD by -27.51%

What are historical exchange rates (January - April 12th, 2014)

(Screenshot from National Bank of Georgia)

In last 3 and a half month, period Gel continues to lose its value against USD.

1.7366

1.7515

Doing quick math we can easily find out that GEL has loosened another 0.0149 from its value at the start of the year. Doing another math we will find out that if we had 1000 GEL at 01.01.2014 it was equal to $575.83 but if we are doing math today, then for 1000 GEL we can buy just $570.93. We have loosened $4.9 for each 1000 GEL we had.

If you will look a screenshot above you will easily find that at the end of January 1 USD sky-rocketed above 1.780.

I'm calling this a hidden inflation. What do you think?

Boris Grebenshchikov and Aquarium @ Tbilisi Concert Hall

13 April, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 18 seen

Yesterday Boris Grebenshchikov and his band Aqurium performed at Tbilisi Concert Hall. Although I'm not huge fan of him I must admit, he is so called Russian Rock Grandfather and it would be a crime to waste an opportunity to visit his concert right next door, here in Tbilisi.

About concert:

Since I was not very familiar with his creation, first part of concert I just listened, to determine, do I like him or not. His music is really eclectic, so I found something from Visotsky and Tsoi (Kino), then Russian Rock Grandfather turned to reggae, I found both Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, even some Irish folk music was found in his creation.

By now, I can tell you this - Boris Grebenshchikov is an Artist with the big letter A. His is true master.

About Tbilisi Concert Hall:

There was some problems with organization entrance into hall, nobody is left inside, 10 minutes before start of concert, and then there is huge mess and queue.

Overall feeling - It was great evening, learning more about Russian Rock music in pleasant company. 

About Boris Grebenshchikov and his relationship with Tbilisi:

From Wikipedia

BG's big break (or, in retrospect, his and the band's "watershed" moment), however, came in 1980, when Artemy Troitsky, the first public Russian rock critic and theenabling figure in many a Russian rock musician's career, invited Aquarium to perform at the Tbilisi Rock Festival.

The festival was a state-sanctioned attempt to channel the then-burgeoning Russian rock music movement into a controllable ideological vessel. It featured a laundered line-up of government-approved rock bands, but also Kraftwerk, whose performance was accompanied by frisbees being launched into the public. Members of the jury (the occasion was officially an artistic contest) were not amused. A covert KGB-bound report pinned the shenanigans on Aquarium, which caused BG to lose his day job at a backwater design bureau (of a kind that employed the majority of technical specialty graduates in the Soviet Union; Russians called them P.O. Box (Pochtoviy yaschik) because their street addresses were never revealed), and membership in Komsomol, the Young Communist League, which was a career kiss of death for a Soviet citizen in 1980.

Caucasus Tourism Fair 2014

12 April, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 6 seen

Every year in start of April, in Tbilisi, Georgia tourism fair is held. I'm visiting it already third time. This time I got some emptiness feeling, it doesn't looks like organizers has made any promotion both to attract visitors and companies.

As usual at fair you could meet some hotel representatives, trying to give you some crappy brochure, rather telling their unique story. There are few international companies, which seems there are just to make a check box in their long long fairs list. This year seemed one of that kind was TAV airports. 

For example - There was a Geocell stand. Geocell is local large Georgian mobile operator company - but they are offering just some brochures, I was hopping for more, like to touch some cell phone at least. 

As usual there was local hunting and fishing companies, some selling some stuff, some giving more information about their services. Good example of this is Jomardi rafting company.

As usual there was local craftsmen selling their work, like bronze replicas and wool knittings. 

My favourite from those few represented this year was some Ukrainian girls selling coffee, and Mestia Tourism board. 

Once you have seen all inside, take a brief walk across the Expo territory, it's even more inspiring.

North Korea - Crossing the line

11 April, 2014 | Documentaries | 3 seen

The film is about a former U.S. Army soldier, James J. Dresnok, who defected to North Korea on August 15, 1962.

The film was directed and produced by British filmmakers Daniel Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, and was shown at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The film, which was narrated by actor Christian Slater, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the festival. The film was first screened in 2007 on the BBC. The film centred around Dresnok's history, highlighting his unhappiness in America, and particularly his desertion from the United States Army in 1962 to the DPRK.

It also showed Dresnok in the present day in Pyongyang (where he now lives), interacting with his North Korean family and friends. Dresnok spoke exclusively to the filmmakers about his childhood, his desertion, his life in a country completely foreign and quite hostile to his own, his fellow defectors, and his wife and children. Dresnok is also shown with fellow defectors, including Charles Robert Jenkins, who returned to Japan to be with his wife, Hitomi Soga (a victim of kidnap by the North Koreans), while filming was taking place. Dresnok felt hurt by Jenkins' allegations of physical abuse by Dresnok and the North Korean regime and angrily denied them. Towards the end of the film, a North Korean doctor discloses to the BBC that Dresnok is in failing health, mainly due to heavy drinking and smoking.

In April 2017, a Western news organization that focuses on North Korea reported that Dresnok had died the previous year.In August 2017, Dresnok's sons confirmed that he had died of a stroke in November 2016

Drupal 7 Archive Drop Down Menu

11 April, 2014 | Drupal Development | 10 seen

In this tutorial I will show how to create Drop-down menu for your monthly archives using Drupal 7 and views.

At first, please read this Drupal 7 tutorial on how to create Drupal archive page. By following this guide, you will learn how to create monthly archive page using views, and we go to add one minor change to change it to drop down menu.

Open that views page, select contextual filters, and change settings from unformatted to jump menu:

That's it, so easy.

For more Drupal tutorials please visit: Drupal development

P.S. If you are considering a hosting for your Drupal website check out Bluehost, their shared hosting starts as low as $3.95/mo or read more about cheap Drupal hosting.

Auto blog to Twitter using Twitterfeed

11 April, 2014 | Blogging | 3 seen

You are managing your blog, not some social media agency, right? Although you have created your profile in different social media, like Twitter, Facebook or Google+? As time goes, you are notifying your social accounts seems dead, what to do in such situation?

Time is money, and you know that perfectly

Automate your posts by using some tools.

There are many options how to syndicate your content over different social media sites, this time I'll explain how to auto re-post your blog posts to Twitter by using Twitterfeed.

Your CMS should have came with enabled RSS. Find that RSS and submit it to TwiterFeed.

Go to TwitterFeed login/signup and start creating your feed:

Continue:

Enter your Feed name and RSS Feed, in this case I'm using Feedburner service, but you can stick with your default feed.

Continue to Step 2:

Click on Twitter, you will need to authorize your Twitter account:

From dropdown menu Choose your Twitter account and press to Authenticate button

Once your Twitter account has been authorized, click on Create service button, and you are done. Now every time you will publish a new article on your blog it will be auto submitted to twitter as well.

You can investigate some options in Twitterfeed, to customize frequency how often it should submit, as well you can add some pre-tags and other.

Hope this helped you.

Add Menu Classes In Drupal 7

11 April, 2014 | Drupal Development | 24 seen

In this Drupal tutorial I'll show how to add menu classes to your Drupal 7 website using template.php file.

Original of this tutorial has been found here.

Add this function to your template.php file:

P.S. If you are considering a hosting for your Drupal website check out Bluehost, their shared hosting starts as low as $3.95/mo or read more about cheap Drupal hosting.

Redirect non www to www - Apache .htaccess

10 April, 2014 | Servers | 4 seen

It has been years since I last time used .htaccess file available in Apache. I'm using Ngnix servers for 99.9 of mine work.

But today I had an opportunity to work on Apache environment, which uses .htaccess file.

So in order to rewrite non www to www in Apache I added following rulles to .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]

For Ngnix please read this article:

http://www.reinisfischer.com/ngnix-www-non-www

Da Vinci's Demons Season 2

10 April, 2014 | Worth to Watch | 12 seen

<p>Da Vinci's Demons season 2 aired on March 22, 2014.&nbsp;</p><p>I really enjoyed first season and was inpatient to see Season 2.&nbsp;</p><p>Maybe of very interesting ending at finale episode in season 1.</p><p>In this season you will meet new characters like Amerigo &nbsp;Vespucci, which in Da Vinci's Demons is portrayed as an alcoholic and con.</p><p>Good, interesting and popular SCI-Fi. Don't rely on this film to much, do your investigation more about Leonardo Da Vinci's work,as I did after watching first season.</p>

Add Viewport in the <head> in Drupal 7

10 April, 2014 | Drupal Development | 13 seen

In this Drupal Tutorial I will show how to add a new HTML in Drupal 7 head section.

I'm using responsive design to enable my blog work pretty ok on mobile devices, but yesterday looking through Google PageSpeed Insights suggestions I found that there is no viewport defined, so it might not render CSS as I might want, but instead to scale webpage to device.

Your page does not have a viewport specified. This causes mobile devices to render your page as it would appear on a desktop browser, scaling it down to fit on a mobile screen. Configure a viewport to allow your page to render properly on all devices.

What is the solution for Drupal 7?

I did a quick Google search, and found webomelette article with solution.

I added to my Drupal theme template.php following function:

Change YOUR_THEME to name of your theme, save the file, clear the cache and you should have viewports defined in your Drupal 7 <head> section. 

You can go check it with Google PageSpeed Insights, to see if it is working.

P.S. If you are considering a hosting for your Drupal website check out Bluehost, their shared hosting starts as low as $3.95/mo or read more about cheap Drupal hosting.

A Time Lapse of green wall - Day 1

9 April, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 6 seen

There is a one really nice looking wall located in Tbilisi, I would like to show it to you, that building is left from the brick wall building opposite to me, and I'm seeing it every day, for the last one year. 

The wall is grown with some greens, and in Summer it looks cool green, in Autumn it turns red, in Winter it's naked, and now I'm looking to make a time-lapse of this wall turning from naked into the green.

Here is a Day 1 photo:

I'm not sure how many days I will need, to see that wall completely green, but I promise that at the end I will create a Time-lapse video, like some 30 seconds or like that.

Georgia - Day of National Unity

9 April, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 6 seen

25 years ago, on April 9th, 1989 in Tbilisi, then Georgian SSR tragic events took place, what later were named as Tbilisi tragedy, Tbilisi Massacre or April 9th Tragedy. 

Nowadays April 9th is marked as public holiday and called a the Day of National Unity.

Basicly Soviet Government turned against it's citizens and sent tanks out in streets to dispress opposition. Tbilisi events later turned to Vilnius events and other.

Prelude of Tbilisi tragedy

The anti-Soviet movement became more active in the Georgian SSR in 1988. Several strikes and meetings were organized by anti-Soviet political organizations in Tbilisi. The conflict between the Soviet government and Georgian nationalists deepened after the so-called Lykhny Assembly on March 18, 1989, when several thousand Abkhaz demanded secession from Georgia and restoration of the Union republic status of 1921–1931. In response, the anti-Soviet groups organized a series of unsanctioned meetings across the republic, claiming that the Soviet government was using Abkhaz separatism in order to oppose the pro-independence movement. The protests reached their peak on April 4, 1989, when tens of thousands of Georgians gathered before the House of Government on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. The protesters, led by the Independence Committee (Merab Kostava, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Giorgi Chanturia, Irakli Bathiashvili, Irakli Tsereteli and others) organized a peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes, demanding the punishment of Abkhaz secessionists and restoration of Georgian independence. Local Soviet authorities lost control over the situation in the capital and were unable to contain the protests. First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party Jumber Patiashvili asked USSR leadership to send troops to restore order and impose curfew.