Connecting The Dots - Water Pipe And Pump Installation

9 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 12 seen

This day marks a huge milestone - for the very first day, since house was originally built in 1896 - house will have a fully automatic water supply. 

This day also marks the end of the planned major tasks for Summer 2016. Gosh, that was a mad ride - let me explain, in order to get water supply inside house, at start we had to drill a bore hole, see:Drilling Borehole , then we had to completely rebuild some walls for house and construct both pump room and bathroom. As it might sound straightforward, it involved a lot of planing, managing, constructing a of course money,

Now was the day we could connect the dots, and it started with an excavator arriving in our yard:

Excavator arrives

The magic will start right now.

Excavator in work

Now, that a hell good way to dig a trench, instead of shovel

Trench for water pipes

There is planed to have an automatic water system from one pump both inside house and outside (in future garden oven area), kind of reverse water supply system is built

Pipes inside the house

As you can see, at start it was all about to build rock…

Darbnīca Cafe Liepāja

8 March, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 15 seen

Centrally located on Lielā street in Liepāja, Darbnīca Cafe is another nice addition to my Liepāja restaurant reviews (they are few, I know).

We travel to Liepāja once in a while, during our Summer's in Latvia, mostly for buying some construction materials for our home remodeling works or handling some financial tasks (banks and so on).

It was on early September morning I had to handle something a bank, and we agreed to have some brunch after that. While looking for a parkin spot, we noticed Cafe Darbnīca and agreed to go there after bank,

Unfortunately at 9:30,when we entered Darbnīca brunch was still not available (seems they are serving it from 11:00) and instead of brunch we had a chance to enjoy croissants and some cafe late.

Darbnīca cafe on Lielā street 8, Liepāja

From outside looks like another hipster place, but hey - I love hipsters, they are bizarre and fun. 

Croissant and coffee late

Demolishing Inner Walls To Build AAC Block Walls

7 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 12 seen

In today's home remodeling series a story how I continued to build a bathroom and how we demolished an inner wall to later rebuild it from scratch, again with aac blocks.

Let's start with what we got:

Wall to be demolished

All major tasks for this Summer (2016) have been done, what's left - to rebuild two inner walls, one for bathroom, second for pump room. In above picture - pump room.

Demolishing guy

Edgars helped a lot this Summer, he is my demolishing guy today.

Wall being demolished

A very spacious space actually. If at the right - it's planned to store all auxiliary equipment, like water pump, washing machine and boiler, then at this room it's planned to build a kitchen in future.

View from loft

At the left corner - pump room, on the right - bathroom.

Panoramic photography of inside view

I can only agree - a lot of work is still asked.

Preparing works to build aac block wall for bathroom

See: Preparation Works For Bathroom - Breaking Ceiling, Demolish A Wall, Pouring Foundation

…

Preparation Works For Bathroom - Breaking Ceiling, Demolish A Wall, Pouring Foundation

5 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 6 seen

Ok, it took a long, but here I'm returning to the building bathroom from scratch works

Here is what we are going to do today:

At first we will need to break ceilings or floor at the loft, then we will remove existing inner wall and then we will pour in foundation.

Following works were actually carried out during two days, but for the ease of this article works from both days are featured here in one article.

Loft

Here you can see loft for our house, flooring (if we can call it so) is completely damaged. A year ago, while replacing roof we removed a few tons of sand from here, see: Unloading Few Tones of Sand from Loft

As you can see from image above, outer walls for upcoming bathroom have been already replaced, now it's time to construct inner walls, for doing that we are going to remove a part of ceiling to have a free acess to remove wall which is downstairs.

Wall to be demolished

A lot of hand power and in about and hour it looks like this:

Wall removed

Nicely! Now, we are going to rebuild this wall from aac blocks, but prior to that I'm going to pour in…

Reading Terminal Market Philadelphia

4 March, 2017 | Shopping Venues | 22 seen

Reading Terminal Market is an enclosed public market found at 12th and Arch Streets in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Over one hundred merchants offer fresh produce, meats, fish, artisan cheese, groceries, ice cream, flowers, grilled cheese, baked goods, crafts, books, clothing, and specialty and ethnic foods. Every space in the market is rented out; three of the vendors are descendants of original market merchants. The market is open every day of the week. The Pennsylvania Dutch merchants (a small but significant minority) generally do not operate Sunday through Tuesday.

I've been 3 times to the United States, three times I've been to Philadelphia and three times I've been to the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. Reading terminal market should be on very travelers bucket list - it's just awesome.

Reading Terminal market in Philadelphia 

The Reading Terminal Market occupies the ground floor and basement levels of the Reading Terminal's former train shed, now part of the Philadelphia Convention Center. Market stalls occupy the ground floor with entrances on Filbert Street to…

Top 20 Best Touch Screen Laptops

3 March, 2017 | Laptop Reviews | 22 seen

Are you researching your options for a brand new touchscreen laptop? Look no more, in this article I've listed top 20 best-selling touch screen laptop models on Amazon.

Touch screen devices seem have just started to take a throttle, though I remember I had a chance to see first touch screen laptop in action already back in 2012. A brand new or certified refurbished, in 2019 a touch screen laptop can be acquired for as little as under $100 (Galileo Pro 2-in-1 tablet with detachable keyboard). If you prefer some more known brand names, you will find HP, ASUS, DELL and LENOVO among popular touch screen devices in 2019.

A quick note: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on Amazon site, I might earn an affiliate income from that. Prices for laptops listed on this page are retrieved using Amazon Product Advertising API and is updated daily. For actual prices please refer on the product page on Amazon.

Rock Garden Extended

3 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 11 seen

It was at the start of the September (2016) - we were finishing wall replacement works and already had installed first bearing beams, there were still some things left on home remodeling works, but all the major tasks were done, and everything was done to preserve house for the winter (as we will be absent)

It was good day to spend some hours in garden and continue shaping our rock garden, please see:

Shaping trail in the rock garden

Gravel and soil from pond is used to form trail and on the sidewals soil for the plants.

Would you believe, if I told you, there was actually a dump bellow the rock garden just a few months earlier? See: The Big Spring Territory Cleanup

Second strawberry harvest at the start of September 2016

We lost out harvest in June to the corvine's, while we were on the trip around Spain, see: 7 days in Spain (Region of Andalusia)

Also see how we built a veggie garden in the boxes: Our First Veggie Garden: Planting Plants in Boxes

…

5 reasons why Batumi is better than Moscow (or other big city)

2 March, 2017 | Living in Georgia | 64 seen

This article was originally written as a guest post by Ms. Irina Nikolaeva (written back in 2017)

Last 10 years I was living in big cities.

At that time I moved from a small town in Belarus thinking that I need to live in a city with more people and more opportunities.

I started from St. Petersburg. After 5 years in the cultural capital of Russia, I decided that 5 million people is not enough for me and moved to Moscow. But last year everything changed.

I came to Batumi for the holidays, without a back ticket, thinking that it would be only for 2 weeks or 1-month maximum, but I couldn’t leave this place. There are some reasons why.

Batumi Real Estate Crypto Investment

The cost of life. I’m a freelancer. Last year I was working remotely from Moscow. In a month I earn about 1000$. My rented room costed 350$ per month (and it was a cheap price for Moscow), the rest of money I spent on food, transport, health and beauty stuff etc. So in the end of the month I always had only 10$ to buy something to eat. That was really nervous to count each coin choosing what I can buy for food.

Life in…

Outer Walls from AAC Blocks + Installing Bearing Beams

1 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 6 seen

As Summer of 2017 is approaching really fast, and I still have so many not post processed images from home remodeling works performed during Summer 206 in Adobe Lightroom library, I decide to extend articles and feature more info in fewer articles.

In today's article I'm sharing a two day construction works performed at the start of September 2016. In day one I continued to construct walls from aerated concrete blocks, and in fact continued to install new rows in the day two + we finally installed two bearing beams, and it's just a matter of time and glue hardening to finish construction works for the so called "pump room" and start thinking of  how to get water supply inside the house from the bore hole we made at the start of Summer (June 2016). 

As Summer is approaching to the end, we have already bought our return tickets back to the Tbilisi - we should keep moving really fast. Unfortunately for the most of the leftover works I was left completely alone. It was stressful, but it was worth of it.

Installing aac blocks

It took me about two weeks to prepare this part of the…

Philadelphia Greyhound Terminal

28 February, 2017 | Railway / Bus / Ferry | 15 seen

There is a super cheap way to travel across the United States using intercity buses. Back in the Summer 2013 I made a long journey from New York to Houston, Texas for about USD 200 per 2 persons using MegaBus. 

Last time I was in the US, we decided to go to Philadelphia from NYC using Greyhound, the ticket price was very cheap some 24 USD, again for two persons. When we traveled back to NYC, we bought even cheaper - USD 10 tickets for return way. 

Either you are on the budget or you just love to travel by buses, greyhound and megabus are great choice. 

The Philadelphia Greyhound Terminal is the primary intercity bus station in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is located at 1001 Filbert Street in Center City Philadelphia, immediately north of The Gallery at Market East shopping mall and the SEPTA Jefferson Station, a few hundred feet east of the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Reading Terminal Market, a few hundred feet south of the Trocadero Theatre and the south edge of Philadelphia's Chinatown district, and within 1/2 mile of …

Night Office 2016

27 February, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 4 seen

It's in the far future I will build a fancy working space in our rural country house, for now we are still busy of replacing log walls with aerated concrete blocks.

For now to perform digital nomad activities I'm left with what I have a laptop and high speed internet - and I cannot complain.

See: My Outdoor Working Place During Last Summer (2015)  and My Summer Office 2016

It was on the cold September night, I had to finish some works online, and I opted to enjoy one of the last Summer evenings outside.

It was planed to build a nice outdoor summer terrace for evenings like this, but we didn't managed this year, though it's among top priorities for next home remodeling year.

Night Office 2016

For getting warm I made a small fireplace inside grill. For making long exposure night photography had to use a tripod and really enjoyed light coming out from headlight.

Working scene 2016

Isn't just lovely?

Blog Income: 63% YoY Increase in Google AdSense Revenue

26 February, 2017 | Blogging | 14 seen

Learn how I increased revenue from Google AdSense by 63% Year over Year and how you could too. 

For a prelude: I have been using Google AdSense for already seven and a half years by now, from whom first four and a half years have generated a really modest sum of EUR 100 from many low traffic and let's be totally honest - thin content websites (I had installed AdSense ad units on dozens of sites).

Earnings from Google AdSense 2009-2016

By accessing my Google AdSense reports today (02/26/2017) I noticed that my lifetime revenue from this channel has reached EUR 1305.68 for a time period Sep 4, 2009 - Feb 26, 2017. It is for a seven and a half years. Nothing much, right?  About EUR 174 per year, on the other hand the real increase have started from 2014.

How I Made $1,000 with Google AdSense in 7 years

If compared year over year, during the past year, it has been a whooping 63% increase. 

There was a time when I took a pause from any attempts to build new or maintain existing low value websites for about two years, as they…

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Secaucus, NJ

26 February, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 11 seen

Once in the Burger bar - order burgers. That's how in short I could describe my experience at Red Robin Gourmet Burger in Secaucus, NJ.

Located in the some building were La Quinta Inn & Suites Secaucus Meadowlands, in which we stayed during my latest US trip Red Robin was an oblivious choice for meal. They indeed have gourmet burgers and super delicious milkshakes. 

Red Robin Gourmet Burgers in Secaucus

No wonder it's called Red. Everything is so red around you.

Fish & Chips at Red Robin

I wouldn't order them once more. Yes they were eatable, fur far from fish & chips IMHO. Remember - once in a burger place, order burgers and not fish & chips. That's a life lesson I feel I have finally learnt.

Milk shake and shot of Vodka

Yup a strange combination. Let me explain, at that day I felt a bit ill, and a shot of Vodka usually helps :)

First Rows of Aerated Concrete Block For Pump Room

25 February, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 9 seen

Let's keep building walls from aerated concrete blocks - the material I really love - it's easy to install, it's durable and it should be cost effective in combination with proper insulation.

Today I was left alone, no handy hands, completely on my own - at start I was worried, but result turned out really good.

Walls from aerated concrete blocks

Yesterday I did the soil grading, and this part of the house starts looking decent. A couple of days later, we will dig another trenches and for the first time in house's lifetime water will be inside the house. Amazing. But, not so fast, there are still a lot to do, like to finish this wall at first.

View toward house

How To Install GlobalSight Translation Management System on Linode VPS (Ubuntu 14.04)

24 February, 2017 | Servers | 56 seen

There are plenty of translation management systems available on the market, some are better, some have features that other's don't have. And some are paid while some are Open Source (free)

In today's servers article series I will share my configuration I used to install Open Source GlobalSight translation management system on Linode VPS running Ubuntu 14.04

It took me about 8 hours to get it finally runing, but using following tutorial you should be able to manage it under 2 hours (including some testing).

GlobalSight is an open-source Globalization Management System (GMS) that manages and streamlines all of the tasks involved in the translation process - from requesting a new translation to quoting, project management, translating, reviewing, Desktop Publishing (DTP), reporting and so on.

For this test I will purchase a brand new 10$/mo VPS server from Linode and will deploy Ubuntu 14.04 on it. Read Getting Started with Linode guide.

After you have successfully purchased a VPS from Linode, deploy  Ubuntu 14.04 on it and…