Eden Beach Hotel Review in Agia Marina
| Hotel reviews | 10 seen
During our about a month-long trip around the island of Crete back in 2017, we stayed at Agia Marina twice - for about 2 nights at trips start and about 5 days at the end of the trip. For the start, we chose Vergina beach hotel which was good and for the end, we stayed at Eden Beach hotel apartment - which was amazing.
Eden Beach Hotel is set in Agia Marina Nea Kydonias and provides air-conditioned accommodation with free WiFi, as well as access to an outdoor swimming pool.
Top 20 Apartments in Agia Marina Beach, Crete (Aparthotels, Villas & Hotels)
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to Booking.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a reservation on Booking site, I might earn an affiliate income from that at no cost to you.
Our apartment at Edem beach Hotel in Agia Marina
Instead of a hotel room, we got a nice 2 bedroom aparthotel with a kitchenette.
All units include a fully equipped kitchenette, allowing guests to prepare their own meals. Some units include a dining area and/or a terrace.
The aparthotel offers a terrace.
View from a balcony
It was on this balcony I first decided to opt in for a crypto game, also I traded stocks here. Lovely.
The living room at Edem Beach Hotel
Plenty of space here
The Great Kemeri Bog Boardwalk
| Tourism objects | 20 seen
The Great Kemeri Bog Boardwalk is a popular tourist destination in Kemeri National Park, offering visitors a chance to explore the bog and its inhabitants.
As we have been relocated to Latvia's Jūrmala for some time, we decided to explore nearby vicinity, and we started with nearby hiking trails. Ķemeri has many attractions to offer, sure The Great Ķemeri Bog Boardwalk probably is the most popular, but there are other routes as well, for example, Hiking Trails in Kemeri National Park (Near Forest House)
Now, it was a sunny April's Sunday morning and here we go:
Start of the Ķemeri bog hiking trail
The boardwalk takes visitors to the world of moss, small pine trees, deep pools, tiny dark lakes, and the smell of wild rosemary.
Turquoise blue ponds in the bog
The pretty rare scenery in Latvia
Bird observation deck in Kemeri bog
The astute visitor will notice the carnivorous plant of sundew, and a variety of birds – wood sandpipers, white wagtails, tree pipits, and also hear cranes further away. Those who prefer shorter strolls can take the small boardwalk arc (~1.4 km), while those who choose the great arc (~3.4 km) will be rewarded with the opportunity to climb an observation platform that offers a magnificent view of the bog from above.
Aerial view of Kemeri Bog
Would love to come here during golden hour, might be great HDR photography.
La Playa Taverna Cafe Ouzeri Near Rethymno
| Restaurant reviews | 20 seen
And again I must say - strange how it works - I almost missed coordinates for this place but with a little investigation from pictures and help with Greek transliteration and even Greek car plate registration table I was able to locate this place finally on the map.
Meet La Playa Taverna Cafe Ouzeri Near Rethymno
Discovered during our latest trip to the island of Crete back in Summer 2017
Beach near La Playa Taverna Cafe Ouzeri
Palms near La Playa Taverna Cafe Ouzeri
Beautiful scenery
Interior at La Playa Taverna Cafe Ouzeri
If I remember correct, we actually didn't offered any meal here, instead enjoyed just a cup of coffee during our little break
Postcards from Talsi
| | 3 seen
Talsi is a city in Latvia, I have discovered just lately. During the Summer of 2017, I had to spend here some time.
During my stay, I discovered some amazing places, and have returned here for a couple of times more. In today's Piece of life series - postcards from Talsi.
Postcards from Talsi
Reminds me panoramas from Germany's Mossel Valley, see: 3 day leisure trip to Germany (The Mossel Valley) or Andernach - A Lovely German Town On The Banks Of Rhine
View towards Talsi town
Early Spring 2018 in the Yard
| | 1 seen
Since early 2018 we have been relocated to Jūrmala resort town in Latvia. It was in early April 5th morning I decided to run my second 365 days photo challenge. I didn't sleep that night, I thought about making a cool sunset photography at Jūrmala beach. I actually did.
Once we returned from the nearby sea to our yard - I decided to make a panoramic photography of the yard we have spent so much time. Piece of Life.
Our yard for 2018 (panoramic photography)
Restaurant Istabas In Talsi Review
| Restaurant reviews | 15 seen
Restaurant Istabas in Talsi is among the best restaurants I've tried in Latvia lately, located on Liela street 31 in Talsi city, the restaurant offers great views of Lake Talsi .
Istabas restaurant serves great European/American cuisine.
First visited back in the Summer of 2017, since then have returned here for a couple of times.
Restaurant Istabas in Talsi
Located in a three-storey building, seems there is a hotel available as well.
Lovely patio (during Summers)
Salmon tartar
Well made, great looking and tasty
Burger menu for hungry men
Galaxy Iraklio 5-star Hotel Review (Heraklion, Crete)
| Hotel reviews | 11 seen
Located in Heraklion's elegant district, this 5-star hotel offers 2 gourmet restaurants, a free wellness centre and a large freshwater pool. Luxurious rooms feature balconies with pool and city views.
We booked this hotel for a one night stay back in the Summer of 2017 and paid about EUR 100.
Top 5 star and Luxury hotels in Heraklion
Disclosure: this article contains links to Booking.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a reservation on Booking.com site, I might earn an affiliate income, at no cost to you.
All accommodation in Galaxy Iraklio offers work desks, satellite LCD TV and free Wi-Fi access. Air-conditioned rooms are equipped with pure Egyptian cotton linen and pure wellness or hypoallergenic rooms are available. Some units feature whirlpools.
Breakfast at Galaxy Iraklio Hotel
Vetri Restaurant serves an American buffet breakfast prepared with fresh, local ingredients and Cretan cuisine. Per Se Lounge offers casual meals, wines and cocktails. The Pool Deck serves light meals and drinks. 24-hour room service is available with additional in-room dishes. Galaxy also includes a state-of-the-art conference centre, with 9 fully equipped halls and a total capacity of 800 persons.
Our hotel room at Galaxy Iraklio
Galaxy Hotel’s Wellness Club is open 24 hours a day and its use is free to all guests. It includes a state-of-the-art gym and an all-marble steam room.
Guests of Galaxy Iraklio Hotel are within a 10-minute walk from the city centre and shopping and historic attractions. Knossos archaeological site is a 10-minute drive. Heraklion International Airport is at 5 km. Staff at the 24-hour reception can arrange tickets and car rentals. Free public parking is possible on site.
How To Fix "gzip is failing for js files" Nginx
| Servers | 28 seen
From Drupal Reports status page I noticed gzip is failing for js files error
The web servers configuration will need to be adjusted. In most cases make sure that the webroots .htaccess file still contains this section "Rules to correctly serve gzip compressed CSS and JS files". Certain default web server configurations (nginx) do not gzip HTTP/1.0 requests. If you are using cloudfront you will have to add metadata to the .gz files. There are some other options if using cloudfront.
For Nginx web servers there is an easy fix, adding just a few lines of code to the server block
here is the fix (source: Enable GZIP for CSS and JS files on NGINX server for Magento)
sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.comcopy following under the server config
gzip on; gzip_http_version 1.0; gzip_disable "msie6"; gzip_vary on; gzip_proxied any; gzip_comp_level 6; gzip_buffers 16 8k; gzip_min_length 256; gzip_types text/css text/javascript text/xml text/plain text/x-component application/javascript application/json application/xml application/rss+xml font/truetype font/opentype application/vnd.ms-fontobject image/svg+xml;Restart Nginx
sudo service nginx restartJune 2018 Dividend Income Report - $147.44
| Investments | 8 seen
Welcome to the #14 dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from the dividend-paying stocks (Baltic and European) and peer to peer lending (both fiat and cryptocurrencies).
Last June turned out much better than I thought before, more precisely it turned better $40 thanks to the bitcoin lending on Poloniex.com
The total income generated in June was the highest so far for 2018.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to mintos.com peer to peer lending website, by clicking on links on this page and by making an investment on mintos.com, I might earn affiliate income at no cost to you. Also, I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds, bonds or cryptos are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset.
Interest income in June 2018
From the stocks, Mintos.com peer to peer lending and from cryptocurrency lending on Poloniex.com I got following income last month:
Name Ticker June 2018 Poloniex.com: €41.02 Mintos.com: €36.76 Nordecon: NCN1T €21.60 Kauno Energija: KNR1L €10.60 Tallinna Vesi: TVEAT €9.72 Volta Finance: AMS:VTA €9.28 Total €128.98 / $ 147.44In total there were 6 great companies paying me dividends in June. As the biggest surprise comes interest made on Poloniex, in June I made in interest 0.007 BTC, (equals to about EUR 41.02) which is somehow strange, as usually, I don't make more than 0.00015 BTC. per month with bitcoin lending.
After the great month of May, when interest earned with Mintos peer to peer lending cracked EUR 50, this June looks humble, there are two reasons why - there were no cashback payments in June, and one of the biggest lenders on the platform - Mogo group stopped paying late payment fees (whatever that means).
There is one more thing what happened with Mintos last month - they removed/stopped or most probably get banned from Georgian bank and stopped to accept direct deposits in Georgian National Currency Lari. Lari is the reason I started to invest with Mintos, now not being able to deposit lari directly on the platform - platform doesn't look interesting for me anymore and I'm not planning to invest here anymore
Me: Hi guys, just noticed there is no more an option to deposit GEL via Paysera (Liberty bank) is it a temp glitch or no more direct GEL investments on mintos platform?
Thanks for looking into this
Mintos Support: Hello Reinis! Currently there is no possibility to transfer funds in GEL, but we are looking for other opportunities and will inform investors once there will be some news.
ME: Ok,thanks for the information
Mintos Support: You are welcome!
In June I decided to accumulate whatever amount I can from Mintos and reinvest in European or US stocks.
Speaking of them, June was the first month I got dividend payment from European stock (Volta Finance) and actually, I was looking to get another European dividend from Atrium Real estate, but seems will get it at the start of July.
- Latest European Stock Buy: AMS:VTA
- First European Stock Buy: VIE:ATRS
The YoY growth rate for my dividend income in June is 189.61%. Awesome that's exactly USD 96.53 more than a year ago.
Monthly income to the date
The cumulative earnings for 2018 are $599.98 which is about 50% of my goal for 2018 ($1200)
2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018
Monthly Income chart as of June 2018
On the average, I should pull about $100 each month for the next 6 months to reach my $1200 goal for 2018. Right now it seems I'm on the right track, but it might get complicated, as there are both higher end months with forecasted income up to $200/mo and unfortunately there are a couple of months left in the year when income could be lower than $100/mo. I hope it will even out at the end.
Dividend Income Meter June 2018
Goals for June 2019
This is my favorite part of the reports - trying to forecast/set goals for the next year. Before setting goals for June 2019 dividend income, let's see what I forecasted for this June
In next June, I'm looking at dividend income at $150. For sure, that will ask to invest much more, one of the things I'm looking to do next year - to buy and hold US stocks, for that I'm looking to open a discount stock brokerage account and deposit at least $10,000.
Well, almost made it to $150. Though I still don't have any US stock in my portfolio, I do have opened a discount stock brokerage account with less than $10.000
My goal for June 2019 is dividend income of $200. Should be easy.
Postcards from Crete
| | 6 seen
It has been now over a year since we visited the Greek island of Crete, during the past months I've already documented many stories from this trip. In today's Piece of Life series - one of the last days on the island back in 2017.
Town in Crete
The town is most probably Argiroupoli, as somewhere in this area we enjoyed a cup of coffee, see: Palios Mylos Restaurant Review near Argiroupoli Springs, Crete
Rural Crete
See: Discoveries in Crete - Rough Road To Balos Beach
Narrow roads in Crete
See: Crazy, Stupid, Love - Tranquil Rough Adventures in Crete
Mountainous Crete
Talsi Evangelical Lutheran Church
| Churches and Monasteries | 6 seen
On the top of the abrupt Baznīcaskalns (Church Hill) stands the white masonry Talsi church – the dominant of the old town.
It was built in 1567 and later rebuilt for several times. A transept and sacristy are attached to a rectangular, elongated building.
Talsi Evangelical Lutheran Church
The square bell-tower is attached on the west side of the church, it has a pyramidal spire with a sphere, rooster and a cross. The church spire, the rooster, the tiled roof, the façade and the interior were renovated in 1996 – 1998. The relics of the church witness its history.
The most brilliant among them are the epitaph of Fishers’ family (1794) that was carved in limestone and have some Classicism style features, and the altar painting “The Ascension of Christ” (1876) by K. Šēnherts (C. Schönherr).
Two stained-glass windows by Ludis Bērziņš adorn the church (1986, a present by Mirdza Kangare-Matule). There are two bronze bells in the church tower (The oldest of them -1601). Many eminent priests have served in this church. Karl Ferdinand Amenda is the most popular because he is linked to the name of the musician and composer Ludwig van Beethoven.
Talsi Regional Museum
| Museums | 17 seen
Talsi has been on my radar since the Summer of 2017. One of the first tourism attractions I discovered here is Talsi Regional Museum.
For a long time, I thought it's probably some manor house or something, but doing a Google search I learned I was wrong. Well, as I have never been inside the museum, instead I love wandering in the nearby park.
Talsi Regional Museum
There are storage, history, art and nature departments in Talsi Regional Museum. In 2006 a new building of museum collections with an exhibition hall was unveiled, which provides an opportunity to hold two new art exhibitions. Schoolchildren are offered educational programs and a program for newlyweds with their witnesses and wedding guests.
Park at Talsi Regional Museum
Another Year, Another Barbeque
| Home Remodeling | 5 seen
It has been already a tradition to feature the first barbeque of the year at our rural country house in the blog. See First Barbecue Festival in Our Newly Inherited House
2018 is no exception, and it today's home remodeling series a few photos from the early Spring 2018
Grilling season has just started
Last year we bought an extra huge grill
Cat enjoying such activities
Grilling 2018
How To Embed YouTube video in Drupal 8 (CKEDITOR)
| Drupal Development | 86 seen
Now, there is one more reason I'm starting to enjoy Drupal 8, embedding YouTube videos in articles now are super easy, thanks to the simple and neat Drupal module - Video Embed Field
In this article, I will guide you through how to configure Drupal 8 built-in CKEDITOR to work with this module.
For another interesting YouTube module for use in Drupal views see Display YouTube videos on Drupal site with YouTube field module
Video Embed field creates a simple field type that allows you to embed videos from YouTube and Vimeo and show their thumbnail previews simply by entering the video's url.
Features
- Responsive out the box, optionally make your videos scale proportionally to their container.
- Large contrib ecosystem of video providers supported.
- Easily pluggable, write simple plugins to support any video platform or provider.
- Robust URL matching to support an array of possible inputs.
- Display videos in a modal window, with Colorbox support.
- Display thumbnails with image style support.
- Role based autoplay override, allows configured roles to suppress video autoplay.
- Easily overridable embed markup.
- A direct WYSIWYG integration, provided by the video_embed_wysiwyg sub-module.
- Integration with the media_entity module for websites using the media suite of modules.
- Migrations to D8 from D7 as well as the D6 emfield module.
How to configure Video Embed field to work with CKEDITOR in Drupal 8
Download, install and enable Video Embed field, as we are going to use YouTube videos in the articles (and not in the views), enable Video Embed WYSIWYG (integrates video_embed_field directly into ckeditor. Useful for websites not using the media suite of modules that need WYSIWYG support.)
Visit "Configuration" > "Text formats and editors" > "Configure" your chosen editor. Then drag the video icon onto the ckeditor toolbar and make sure the "Video Embed WYSIWYG" input filter is enabled.
An example here: Hashflare releases Data-center video
Video Embed example
How To Configure Trusted Host settings for Drupal 8 Website
| Drupal Development | 40 seen
In today's Drupal tutorial series I will talk about Trusted host settings, what they are and how to configure them.
In short, Trusted host settings protects against HTTP HOST Header attacks (prevent your site from thinking it is someone else).
Drupal 7 added a new feature into the core that is not user-facing directly but is sometimes called poor man's cron. The feature triggers the periodic tasks of a Drupal site like emptying log files, sending e-mails, and clearing out caches. This feature, when combined with dynamic detection of the "base url" (added in Drupal 4.7), can lead to some screwy situations.
Let's start with the oblivious, first noticed a warning in a Drupal 8 website, saying:
The trusted_host_patterns setting is not configured in settings.php. This can lead to security vulnerabilities. It is highly recommended that you configure this. See Protecting against HTTP HOST Header attacks for more information.
Warning about Trusted Host Settings in Drupal 8
in case you are running a single website, the solution is simple, open settings.php file and add following code:
$settings['trusted_host_patterns'] = [ '^www\.example\.com$', ];For more complicated use, please see following article: Trusted Host settings
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