Mintos.com Review after 3 month investing in Peer to Peer loans

5 May, 2017 | Peer to Peer Lending | 77 seen

April 21st marked 3 month anniversary since  I've been actively investing on Mintos.com marketplace. In today's article I will share some of my key findings on how much some can earn here with little money. 

Update: See my latest Mintos review: Mintos.com Review 2020 (36 Month of Investing in Peer to Peer Lending)

In short - my earnings here are very humble, with last April setting personal interest payment record at EUR 25.83. Depending on your investment strategy - that's from little to a lot. For me, this seems a decent start, and I'm looking to double monthly interest payments here by the end of the year. In general, if things (interest rates) continue to be as they are, it would ask to double my investments here.

Both individuals and entities can invest through Mintos. Individual investors must be at least 18 years old, have a bank account in the European Union or third countries currently considered to have AML/CFT systems equivalent to the EU, and have their identity successfully verified by Mintos. At the moment, US citizens or taxpayers cannot register…

Postfix Send Only SMPT Mail for Drupal 8 on Ubuntu 16.04, Nginx

4 May, 2017 | Servers | 24 seen

If you have recently installed a fresh Drupal 8 site on Ubuntu 16.04 with Nginx running on it and you are getting Unable to send e-mail. Contact the site administrator if the problem persists notice after submitting contact form, you are missing an important element for your site to functions properly.

You could be missing important information about available updates, as Drupal uses cron to sends notification e-mails once updates are available. The following written applies not only to Drupal sites, it basically applies for Nginx and Ubuntu 16.04. Since I was working with a Drupal 8 project when faced unable to send e-mail, I'm mentioning Drupal. 

Inspired by: Email not working with fresh Drupal install on Ubuntu 14.04

Anyhow, here is a simple fix, how to quickly enable mail send for your server.

You will need to have access to your VPS, login with user with sudo priviligies​

Follow on screen instructions, leaving defaults 
Then, edit /etc/postfix/main.cf and set inet_interfaces to loopback-only

10 Day Business / Leisure Trip to the United States (New York & Philadelphia)

3 May, 2017 | Travel guides | 8 seen

A short 10 day trip to the United States, visiting 3 states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) 

Long story short - I had to fly to the United States for one reason - opening a bank account (see: How To Open A Bank Account in the U.S., As A Non-resident Non - citizen, Wells Fargo Bank), for the flight, we decided to go with Ukrainian airlines from Tbilisi via Kyiv to New York City (see: About Tbilisi - Kyiv - New York Flight by Ukrainian Airlines) 

Unplanned flight delay in Kyiv happened for 10 hours, during which I managed to craft a short day trip to Kyiv (see: Short Day Trip To Kyiv, Ukraine) 

Once in the States, on the second day's evening, I was able to handle my financial-related things and it was time for leisure. For the first day's stay, we booked a cheaper hotel in Secaucus, offering a fast and convenient connection to downtown Manhattan reachable in about 20 minutes ($6 per ride in a public bus).

Did some shopping and sightseeing around Manhattan (bought lovely leather shoes from Aldo store)

On January second we bought a bus ticket to Philadelphia (again, traveling in the US by…

How To Override Drupal 8 Frontpage Title

2 May, 2017 | Drupal Development | 9 seen

Recently I've started a new Drupal 8 website for a personal project tour listings in Georgia.  As I've been a core Drupal 7 user since 2011, Drupal 8 involves a new learning curve even for me. In this short article I will provide a quick setup how to override Drupal's 8 frontpage title tag using metatag module

In general frontpage of your website should include main keywords for SEO, by default Drupal 8 shows Home | [site:name], which is not very SEO friendly in fact, as what we would love to achieve is to have Your Keywords | [site:name]. 

For example: Best tours in Georgia and Tbilisi - Tourgeorgia.

It took me some time to figure it out, as I didn't find any place in site configuration where I could play with these settings, and ended with installing a very useful module - Metatag, which is good both for SEO and Social Media sharing (as here you can define your custom settings for Facebook, Twitter and even Google SERP results)

For the ease of this simple tutorial let's stick with overrding site name more SEO friendly.

• Download and enable Metatag…

Postcards from New York City

1 May, 2017 | | 6 seen

That time have come, and in today's Piece of Life photo series, we are very exited to list postcards from New York city, if you have been following for a while our photo project, you have already noticed that we have featured postcards from many cities around the world.

New York city has a lot to offer, it's dynamic, calm, strange but let's agree - very interesting for photography and inspiration.

Not to speak more, here are some interesting shoots from New York city, made at the end of 2016 / start 2017.

Always busy 5th avenue in New York

As we arrived just shortly before the New Year of 2017, at start we had a plan to greet New Year at Times Square, but when heard that some 2 million people are planing to attend, and we should be ready to wait in lanes for at least 16 hours, and taking into consideration that about a year ago we did something similar in Venice at St Marks Square in Italy, we opted to stay at our hotel room, pre-order pizza. Yes, kind of best way to meet the New Year.

Always tranquil Central Park

Central Park is very nice place for photography. See more: Central Park, New York City

Famous Tbilisi Restaurant Review

30 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 13 seen

Famous restaurant in Tbilisi is another so called high end restaurant located in the quiet are of old town on Abo Tbileli street (Puri Square)

Famous restaurant is one of the best places to enjoy European & Georgian cuisine in Tbilisi in a pleasant music and a special atmosphere of comfort and playful romance.

During our latest visit here (February 2017) we learnt that a chef we already knew from master class in Asian cuisine - gourmet chef from Russia Natalia Chvileva runs this kitchen and it was real pleasure she come out from the kitchen just to say hi!

Restaurant Famous in Tbilisi

This is a unique crossroads of thoughts, feelings and sensations of taste, which is located on the first floor of an old 19th century mansion. At one time, Georgian intelligentsia lived in this house and in the basement of this building was an underground casino, which gambling bohemia enjoyed visiting.

In addition, Mikhail Lermontov lived in the house next door. Here, in the heart of the capital, 200 meters from Freedom Square, the silence of Lado Gudiashvili Square protects our guests from the noise of the city. It’s easy…

John F. Kennedy International Airport

29 April, 2017 | Airports | 11 seen

John F. Kennedy International Airport (IATA: JFK, ICAO: KJFK, FAA LID: JFK) is a major international airport located near South Ozone Park in the borough of Queens in New York City, United States, 12 miles (20 km) southeast of Lower Manhattan. It is the busiest international air passenger gateway into the United States, the fifth busiest airport in the United States and the busiest airport in the New York City airport system, handling 58,956,288 passengers in 2016.

Over ninety airlines operate out of the airport, with non-stop or direct flights to destinations in all six inhabited continents.The airport features six passenger terminals and four runways. It serves as a hub for American Airlines and Delta Air Lines and is the primary operating base for JetBlue Airways. In the past, JFK served as a hub for Eastern, National, Pan Am, and TWA.

For most of the times, when traveling to the United States for transatlantic flights, I've been using this airport at least for one direction. 

See: About…

PAUL Depuis 1889 Bakery & Restaurant in Tbilisi

28 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 41 seen

I'm glad seeing more good dinning places and restaurants popping up in Tbilisi, there is huge demand for a good place, and worldwide known French Paul bakery & restaurant brand seems have made a good decision opening a branch in Tbilisi on Abashidze street.

At Paul bakery you could get freshly baked bread and other French pastry goodies,in this article I'll stick with restaurant review. I love Paul because of salads and desserts. I've tried other things, like burgers here, though they are decent, there are better places to order burgers. Once at Paul stick with what they are best - pastry and damn good salads and entrees.

An appetizer plate

Smoked salmon, duck breast.. really good choice for appetizer.

Salads with mussels and shrimps

One of the rare places in Tbilisi, you could get goodies like this.

Pancakes with orange syrup

The Empire State Building & Observation Deck Tour

27 April, 2017 | Tourism objects | 36 seen

OK, this finally is off from my bucket list. Here is the tip I would give to myself - buy "skip the lines" tickets to avoid long hours waiting in the lanes.  it started to remind me my dear Georgia after the second hour of waiting in the lanes and hugging with Italian family to sing Bella Ciao. Amazing. Paid a visit to the Empire State Building, January 5, 2017

The Empire State Building is a 102-story skyscraper located on Fifth Avenue between West 33rd and 34th Streets in Midtown, Manhattan, New York City. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet (381 m), and with its antenna included, it stands a total of 1,454 feet (443.2 m) tall. Its name is derived from the nickname for New York, the Empire State.

It stood as the world's tallest building for nearly 40 years, from its completion in early 1931 until the topping out of the original World Trade Center's North Tower in late 1970. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Empire State Building was again the tallest building in New York, until …

Khinklis Sakhli / Khinkali House on Moscow Avenue, Tbilisi

26 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 70 seen

I usually don't hang out in this area of Tbilisi, just recently we returned by marshrutka from Hiking Route in Georgia - Norio Village - Martkopi Monastery and were really starving, and agreed to leave the minivan as soon we will notice some restaurant, that's how we ended up here in Moscow avenue (somewhere between Samgori and Isani metro stations) and found this interesting Khinkali house.

Now, I must admit I had a feeling I've traveled back in the time to the early 90-ties, a disco scene, music from late 80-ties and fish aquariums. Though the food here, and especially khinkali was delicious.

Interior at Khinkali house on Moscow avenue, Tbilisi

It is a really spacious hall with separated seats,pretty surreal but cool

Georgian khinkali

Now, I love khinkali and here they were just delicious. I've decided to prepare khinkali at home, could be a cool experiment for food blog series.

Grilled meat

Now this is one of the rare places in Tbilisi you can order whole tenderloin steak

Q1 2017 Online Income Report - $5,886.46

25 April, 2017 | Blogging | 9 seen

First quarter of 2017 has been very interesting, tried and applied some new ideas, launched two separate websites and started to generate first real passive income from peer to peer lending. 

As there have been a lot of changes in the past three months, this year's online income reports will be different from previous quarter reports, they will cover not only earnings from this blog, but will include earnings from other websites and earnings from investments.

In short first quarter of 2017 (January, February and March) earned $6,335.20 what is an awesome more than double growth if compared to the first quarter of year before (see: Q1 2016 Blog Traffic and Online Income - 136,784 Users / $2,467.48), though if compared to previous quarter that's a little decrease (see: Q4 2016 Blog Traffic & Income Report - 197,850 Users / $6,921.16) 

Now, I've already mentioned that in the past 3 months I've started two new websites, I decided to include all of them in this report.

Main blog, the one you are currently reading - First quarter of the…

How To Insert Node Reference in Content Using Views

24 April, 2017 | Drupal Development | 11 seen

I this article I'll cover some details on how to programmatically reference nodes in content using Drupal views.

Such behavior I've already implemented in this blog, see for example 83 reasons to Visit Georgia This year article to see it in action. Today I was working on one of my side projects - a laptop buying guide - laptop500.com and decided to implement a new feature - best selling items of the month, by programmatically referencing laptops (nodes) from archive.

Here is how - at start you will need to download and install references module, then visit Content type you would like to add such behavior and under manage fields (admin/structure/types/manage/article/fields) add a new Node Reference field

Node Reference field

I will set widget to Auto complete text field as later it will be much easier to enter just first letters of title to find and reference nodes.

In the next window (Field Settings) select Content types that can be referenced, articles for example

In the next window, under REFERENCED…

Average Salary in European Union 2017

23 April, 2017 | Macroeconomics | 251 seen

For the fourth year in a row, I'm publishing my humble observations on average salary changes in the European Union. In this article, I've decided to compare average salary in 2017 with 2014. 

Update: Average Salary in European Union 2018

For previous archives see: Average salary in EU: 2016, 2015, 2014

I wouldn't call bellow written a scientific research, as most of the data in this article are taken from Wikipedia's article List of European countries by average wage. To make it more interesting I've added the year of 2014  as a reference and made some simple calculations in Google Sheets. Data provided below might not be 100% accurate but they should give an overall insight on average salary levels across European Union member countries.

If compared to 2014, average median salary has increased by about 2.02% during the past three years. The average salary in EU as of 2017 stands at EUR 1,520 monthly what is up from EUR 1489 in 2014

Now, there is a new leader with the …

12 Dividend Stocks to Invest to Get Payments Every Month

22 April, 2017 | Investments | 16 seen

The other morning I read an article on Kiplinger - Great Stocks to Get Dividends Every Month, and I decided to make some calculations and speculations, as right now I'm looking to invest some money in dividend paying stocks and idea of getting dividends every month seems a very good option to make a living.

My goal for 2017 is to invest $8,561 throughout the year, not mandatory all money should be invested in stocks, in fact I have already invested about a quarter of that money in Latvian peer to peer lending marketplace - Mintos. See: Review of Mintos Peer to Peer Lending After One Month of Investing

Another, again about a quarter of my money, goal  for 2017, I'm planing to invest in dividend paying stock in Baltic NASDAQ Market, see: Dividend Paying Stocks In Nasdaq Baltic Market By Yield.

And right now, an option to invest in the US dividend stocks, though with much lower yields than Baltic market, seems a good way to diversify my investment portfolio in 2017.

Hiking Route in Georgia - Norio Village - Martkopi Monastery

21 April, 2017 | Outdoor Activities | 177 seen

Hiking from Norio village to Martkopi monastery is about 10km long distance (forth and back), best done in Spring, Summer, or early Autumn. The route is pretty steep, though covered with asphalt, there are parts of the damaged surface and some agility is needed. 

Update: We originally did this hiking path back in 2017. in 2020 there is a new asphalt road built reaching the monastery complex

The route offers a kind of Wilderness in Georgia views, with ruined bridges, tumble asphalt, and livestock with a really nice Martkopi monastery at the end of the route.

Tip: You could get to the Norio village just for 1.5 GEL in about 30 minutes from  Samgori metro station in Tbilisi

We decided to take this hiking route at the end of February 2017, here are a few shots from our route

At the start of route in Norio Village

It was a nice and sunny Saturday in February 2017. With help of Google Maps we started our route just after left marshrutka

First obstacles - mud puddle 

It was a good test for my Aldo leather shoes I bought in NYC few month before.

It also reminded…