Saint Dimitri Tesalonikeli Fathers Moanstery near Mtksheta

This is a little monastery near Mtskheta, best reached via Mtskheta-Shiomghvime monastery road.That's how we actually discovered this place at the end of May 2020 - during a random drive to the Shio-Mgvime monastery, we looked for some nice picnic areas to dine outdoors, we did a few stops here and there until noticed this place.We didn't picnic here, but in the nearby forest after a brief trip to the monastery.Probably not as impressive as the Jvari monastery or Svetistkhoveli cathedral in Mtshekta this place has some magic.Little wooden roadside in Georgian The monastery complex is at the end of the road. Next to the monastery, there is a forest park and some horseback…

Georgia |

Oskars Kalpaks Museum and Memorial Place "Airītes"

Oskars Kalpaks Museum and Memorial Place "Airītes" is a branch of the Latvian War Museum established in memory of the hero of the Latvian War of Independence Colonel Oskars Kalpaks in "Airītes", Zirņi Parish, Saldus Region.On March 6, 1919 during the liberation battles of Latvia, colonel Oskars Kalpaks, commander of the First Latvian Special Battalion; Nikolajs Grundmanis, the First Commander of the Battalion's Special Company; Peteris Krievs, Lieutenant-General of the Cavalry Squad and Johans-Hans Srinders, Lieutenant of the Baltic Home Guard Artillery died near Airites.AirītesFrom 1922-1933 monuments in remembrance of the four heroes were unveiled here, and the Oskars Kalpaks Memorial was…

Latvia |

Church of the Archangels of Mchadijvari

Mchadijvari Archangels Church is an architectural and historical monument in Georgia,  in the center of the village of Mchadijvari. We discovered this church when searching for the poppy fields in Georgia, at the start of June 2020 (hint poppy fields are next to the church, some 5000 meters on the right.Church of the Archangels of MchadijvariThe above picture is made from the Dusheti - Mchadijvari-Odzisi highway site. This time we actually didn't visited the cathedral, but here is what I was able to find out from Georgian WikipediaThere is a construction inscription on the church. According to the inscription, the church was built in 1668…

Georgia |

Khatsiri Forest Park

Khatsiri Forest park is a nice recreational area next to the town of Tianeti in Georgia. We discovered this place by accident after spending a day at Kuzh Park in Tianeti (sometimes we love to drive to the Tianeti town to walk in the Kuzh park with our baby girl).Way back home to Tbilisi we decided to make a stop here at Khatsiri Forest Park - let me say in one word - WOW. I was impressed.Picnic area at Khatsiri Forest parkWe are planning to come here often and make a picnic quite often. Also this is yet another addition to our picnic places around Georgia.View to the town of TianetiLocal farmers are grazings cows and sheep in these meadows.There is a little church a top of the hilli…

Georgia |

Eat For Fit - Healty Food Home Delivery in Tbilisi

Eat for fit is my favorite healthy food home delivery service here in Tbilisi.

Recently these loss-weight / dietary food delivery companies have started to pop up like mushrooms in the forest after the rain here in Tbilisi. We have tried a dietary menu from Eat for fit twice - and both times the result has been excellent. 

One thing should be added - we are the gym goers - and the great weight-loss results comes both from the physical activities and well-balanced food. Eat for Fit are great with calories counting and they cook really delicious food. There has not been a day I felt starvation. All was well calculated and prepared individually. 

We paid about…

Expat in Georgia |

Tsilkani cathedral

The Tsilkani cathedral of the Mother of God is a Georgian Orthodox church in the village of Tsilkani, Mtskheta Municipality, in Georgia's eastern region of Mtskheta-Mtianeti.Originally built in the 4th century, the church was repeatedly remodeled in the Middle Ages. The extant edifice is a domed cross-in-square design, contained in a walled enclosure with corner towers. It is inscribed on the list of the Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance.We discovered this church in early June 2020, when traveling the Natkhtari - Tsilkani - Mukhrani highway (we were in the searches for poppy fields, which we later found…

Georgia |

How to Install Drupal with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.4, MySQL, phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04 - Linode Guide

In this article, you will learn how to setup webserver for serving  Drupal  websites running with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.4, MySQL and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04

For the following tutorial, I used very much the information from my previous guide with Ubuntu 18.04, but I decided to rewrite it for Ubuntu 20.04 version as it is shipped with php7.4 version and will work for Drupal 7, Drupal 8 and most probably for Drupal 9

Prerequisites


Ubuntu 20.04 
Root privileges.


You can get a cheap VPS starting just $5/mo from Linode. That's what I did - bought a new nanode from Linode



Deploying server with Linode

Literally in a couple of seconds, the new server was up…

Drupal Development |

File Permissions for gmap_markers.js

Time after time I'm facing this issue with gmap markers. As mostly this happens when I'm doing something on the server side with file permissions, I decided to keep the notes

here is the problem


GMap is unable to save the marker bundle, so the markers will not work. Please check file system permissions of the public://js/gmap_markers.js!

Here is the solution


sudo chmod 755 /sites/all/files/js/gmap_markers.js

Drupal Development |

Simple CSS trick to Make Table Responsive

Working on the OptionsBrew.com project (website is powered by Drupal 8) I faced the following responsive table issue while browsing content with a table on smaller screens (phone)Broken Table on a smaller screenLuckily there is a simple CSS workaround:in the .css file add the following to table properties: display: block;
overflow-x: auto;like this:table{
border-collapse: separate;
border-spacing: 0;
width:100%;
margin: 25px 0 40px;
display: block;
overflow-x: auto;
}here is how it looks nowResponsive tableYou can see a live example here: Top 20 Most Active Stock Options May 2020

Drupal Development |

Poppy fields near Marneuli

We love poppy fields, we have featured them a couple of times here at the Piece of Life seriesBeautiful Poppy Field Near P104 (Jaunpils-Tukums) Road (Latvia)Railroad crossing in Skrunda municipality, LatviaToday we are going to share a brief photo story with poppy field near Marneuli, next to the Милена Оптовый Магазин (Milena mall)It was one of the first days when travel restrictions between Georgia's inner cities were lifted and we decided to head to the Marneuli side looking for poppy fields (my partner have seen online some beautiful photos of poppies the day before). I love these wandering around days.We didn't find the special poppy field, instead we found poppies.…

Georgia |

Drupal 7 Fix: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1231 Variable 'sql_mode' can't be set to the value of 'NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER'.

I was migrating Drupal 7 website to a newer infrastructure (PHP 7.4) and during the migration process when tried to connect to the MySQL database  I faced following error - SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1231 Variable 'sql_mode' can't be set to the value of 'NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER'.

Here is the error code:


Resolve all issues below to continue the installation. For help configuring your database server, see the installation handbook, or contact your hosting provider.

Failed to connect to your database server. The server reports the following message: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1231 Variable 'sql_mode' can't be set to the value of '…

Drupal Development |

May 2020 Dividend Income Report - $225.17

Welcome to the thirty-seventh (#37) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks and peer to peer lending in May 2020.Just like the previous month of April, in May we also spent in a self-isolation (because of Covid-19) here in Georgia. Some of the strict lockdown measurements were lifted (like using a private vehicle and going from city to city)  we did a few road trips here in Georgia.  Baby girl is doing her online class, learning about animals, shapes, continents, and even planets. Quite fascinating what a 22-month-old can do. Development is very rapid.Saint Dimitri Tesalonikeli Fathers Moanstery near…

Dividend Income |

How To Swap / Transfer IP address with Linode VPS

Recently I was rebuilding a compromised VPS on the Linode - this was a small web server serving some 3 established websites. It took me a few hours from A-Z  - launch a new Linode, install a new webserver on it, then transfer data from one host to another.Once all migration works were done, there was an option to change DNS entry to point to the new server. Nothing complicated. But there is a neat feature from Linode called - Swap IP (IP Transfer). That's a little perk from Linode and quite good for SEOYou can get a cheap VPS starting just $5/mo from Linode. That's what I did - bought a new Linode just for $10If you have two Linodes in the same…

Servers & Config |

How To Block IP Address in Drupal 8

Unlike in Drupal 7 version where IP banning is enabled by default, with Drupal 8 version, there is one more step added - IP banning must be enabled from the extend section.

Here is how. (source)


Log into your Drupal 8 admin interface.
From the top menu bar, click on the menu tab and then the Extend tab from the second menu bar.
You are now on the modules list page. The Ban module is listed under the Core category. To enable it, simply click on the checkbox to the left of the module.
Once selected, scroll to the bottom and click on the Save Configuration button to enable the module. Now that you have the Ban module enabled,…

Drupal Development |

Under The Georgian Sun / King Davids Tower (s)

It was on the evening of April 27, 2020, I decided to switch glass (from the kit lens to telephoto) and make some photo for the month of April to put in the description in the monthly dividend income report.The photo of the month turned out to be a sunset in Tbilisi with skyscraper in the foregroundKing David Towers in TbilisiFrom the KDR websiteTwo landmark towers King David Residences and King David Business Center are harmonically united in an exclusive multifunctional complex King David.King David creates a five-star lifestyle within exceptionally elegant residential and business towers with beautifully designed amenity spaces organized enticingly as a multistory urban resort and…

Expat in Georgia |

How To HTTPS Secure Drupal 8 Running Nginx with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu 18.04

Let's Encrypt have done some very good job, providing SSL certificates that everyone can use absolutely for free. Encrypted HTTPS websites should be default in 2020.

I have been implementing HTTPS secure websites for years. Until now I mostly worked with Drupal 7 websites and for securing them I have been using this guide, back from 2016 - Linode: How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt on Ubuntu 12.04

Now, in 2020, working on a new, Drupal 8 powered, website after then initial web development was completed,  I was looking for an easy way to implement a free SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt.

And here comes this tutorial from Digital Ocean in help: How To…

Drupal Development |

How to Install Drupal 8 with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.2, MySQL, phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 18.04 - Linode Guide

In this article, you will learn how to setup Drupal 8 with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.2, MySQL and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 18.04

For the following tutorial, I used very much the information from my previous guide with Ubuntu 16.04, but decided to rewrite it for Ubuntu 18.04 version as when I tried to setup my latest project about stock trading 0dtespxtrading.com  with Drupal 8.8.5  on Ubunut 16.04 machine an error from Drupal that PHP version shipped with Ubuntu 16.04   was outdated and instead of upgrading that box I decided to go with a new server from scratch, 

Prerequisites


Ubuntu 18.04 
Root privileges.


You can get a cheap VPS starting just $5/mo…

Drupal Development |

April 2020 Dividend Income Report - $78.40

Welcome to the thirty-sixth (#36) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks and peer to peer lending in April 2020.Last April we spent in a self-isolation (because of Covid-19) here in Georgia. Baby girl is doing her online class, learning about animals, shapes, continents, and even planets. Quite fascinating what a 21-month-old can do. Development is very rapid.King Davids Tower (s) in TbilisiIt was on the evening of April 27, 2020, I decided to switch glass (from the kit lens to telephoto) and make some photo for the month of April to put in the description for the monthly dividend income report.From the perspective of…

Dividend Income |

Rundāle Palace and Garden

Rundāle Palace  is one of the two major baroque palaces built for the Dukes of Courland in what is now Latvia, the other being Jelgava Palace. The palace was built in two periods, from 1736 until 1740 and from 1764 until 1768. It is situated at Pilsrundāle, 12 km west of Bauska.The palace and its garden are among the top 10 destinations to visit in Latvia. We have been heading to Rundāle once in a while, when in Latvia, preferably in Summer.Rundala palace and its gardenIn 1735 Duke of Courland Ernst Johann von Biron bought land in Rundāle with an old medieval castle in the territory of a planned summer residence. The old…

Latvia |

Guest House Old Wall in Lagodekhi

Offering a barbecue and children's playground, Guest House Old Wall is situated in Lagodekhi.Property is set within the historic walls of the old castle Lakuasti. Guests can enjoy the on-site bar. Free WiFi is available throughout the property and free private parking is available on site.This was our first stay in Lagodekhi, during a recent trip to the region (September 2019), we arrived here after a nice and comfy stay at Akhasheni Wine Resort near Gurjaani. Guest House Old Wall in LagodekhiIt was decided to use this guesthouse as a base to reach the Ninoskhevi waterfall. And seems the guest house is one of the top choices for travelers from all around the World to get…

Georgia |