Dzintari Concert Hall

22 July, 2015 | Entertainment | 18 seen

Dzintari concert hall is popular throughout Latvia as a place where concerts and other events are held, where outstanding artists have been performing for almost for 70 summers now.

I discovered this place by accident during my cycling Jūrmala ride. I stopped my vehicle in front of this place just to rest and decided to photograph this venue site as well.

Here is what I got:

Water fountain in front of Dzintari Concert Hall

Entrance gates at Dzintari Concert Hall

Dzintari concert hall

I really enjoy its wooden architecture

Cultural monument - Dzintari concert hall

According to the inscription on the plate - in this building back in 1986 happened a USSR - USA delegate meeting - Chautauqua at Jurmala: Since I had no clue what that actually means I found following. An excerpt from When Stars and Stripes Met Hammer and Sickle: The Chautauqua Conferences on US-Soviet Relations, 1985–1989

​..The second meeting, in Jurmala near Riga, Latvia, was put in jeopardy twice: first when the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) arrested a U.S. journalist, Nicholas…

Cycling in Jūrmala (Bicycle Tourism)

21 July, 2015 | Outdoor Activities | 11 seen

Welcome to another cycling series post - this time about cycling in Latvian beach resort city Jūrmala. Actually it has been a while when I last time sat on my bicycle back in Tbilisi, Georgia.

We headed to Jūrmala city just shortly after the 3rd Eastern Partnership Business forum which was held in Riga. We stayed overnight at the lovely hotel Dzintars in Jūrmala and got a free bike rental at our hotel. 

Bicycles we used back there in Jūrmala were more some hipster style (not professional) but it was a fun. I didn't used any tracking devices to track my route, but instead I made some great pictures of Joma street, white sand beaches and a stage of beach volleyball.

Sculpture "Rose of Turaida": Sculptor : Valtis Barkans

A very interesting sculpture in Jūrmala

Jomas street in Jūrmala

Jomas street in Jūrmala

Cycling in Jūrmala - a hipster bicycle 

Tried my best to capture this photo

White sand beach in Jūrmala

Beach Volleyball stage in Jūrmala

Beach Volleyball

…

Average Salary In European Union 2015

20 July, 2015 | Macroeconomics | 309 seen

My previous post about average salary in European Union for 2014 generated some buzz on social networks (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter) and on other websites, in total it has generated more than 15,000 page views.

I decided to compare how does average salary have changed a year later.

Update: Average Salary in European Union 2018

And I found following; Average median salary has decreased for about -1.3% in European Union in 2015, resulting in EUR 1470 / USD 1631 down from EUR 1489 / USD 1861 in 2014.

Blog Monthly Online Income Report - June 2015 - $602.96

19 July, 2015 | Blogging | 7 seen

Welcome to the 18th online income report. In this post I will speak about earnings I have made in month of June solely with my blog (www.reinisfischer.com). I like to call this phenomena - a smart passive online income. 

In case you are wondering why should someone publish online his/her earnings - the answer is pretty simple - I like transparency and these reports help me to observe my progress or bounces. Hopefully they can inspire you as well.

In June I earned in total $662.96 what is an increase for 52.90% if compared to previous month (May) when I earned in total $433.59. I really enjoy to compare my earnings to average and minimum wages across the globe. And so in June my earnings qualifies for a pretty solid minimum wage in Portugal, and gives me pretty average salary in Lithuania. 

My daily earnings last month: $22.10

When looking on these numbers I'm always thinking of a great documentary film - Overpopulated - In this documentary is shown a beautiful story about African family living with less than $1 day and dreaming to…

How To Setup CKEDITOR For Drupal Website

18 July, 2015 | Drupal Development | 42 seen

In this tutorial you will learn how to setup a CKEditor for your Drupal website + how to enable a few very neat modules - like IMCE for Image upload, Spell checker and Word count.

Since the beginning (almost since) I created my blog (www.reinisfischer.com) I have been using TinyMCE text editor for creating and editing blog posts. But lately I have found that CKEditor might be somehow a bit better text editor for my blog. I'm not against TinyMCE, just CKEDITOR seems a bit better text editor.

CKEditor is the far superior successor of FCKeditor. The editor has been rebranded and completely rewritten. It is now much faster (the code has been optimized), loads faster (the number of files has been reduced, so the browser will perform less HTTP requests) and developers friendly.

I like it for it's many out of box features, you don't need to install a single additional library, just download CKEditor module, enable it, and fine tune it a little bit. All libraries are loaded from CDN.

The simplest way to have the editor running is to use CDN, to use it set: //cdn.ckeditor.com/4.4.3/full-all

Georgia Expat Photography Club

17 July, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 16 seen

Recently Johann contacted me with his idea to create a photography travel club in Georgia. Since I have been into a photography for the first day I got my first personal digital camera (it's some 6 years probably) - and for the last 4 years I have been living in amazing, very rich of spectacular views, country of Georgia which I have traveled around a lot (See my Georgia travels map) - I was just eager to promote his idea, to make a fun and entertaining community, fuelled with beautiful pictures of Georgia.

The Bridge of Peace in Tbilisi, photo by Johann Kritzinger

I quickly come up with the idea to create a community on Facebook and made my offer for naming such organization - Georgia Expat Photography Club. We invited a few of our friends (both expats and photographers) and ... first step accomplished.

Johann has some wonderful ideas to do next - like to make some city (Tbilisi) photographing tours - everyone is welcome to join. We are planing to do some longer trips (perhaps with overnight stay)  - one of the closest destinations we are looking to…

Blog Traffic Report - June 2015 - 22,569 Users

17 July, 2015 | Blogging | 10 seen

Welcome to the 21st blog traffic and statistics report. Since the very first month of my blogging career I have created a monthly blog statistics and starting January 2014 a blog income reports.

June was the absolute best in traffic numbers yet. For the third time I managed to crack the 20,000 user milestone and did set a new personal record (yet) - 22,569 monthly users. I first cracked 20K milestone back in March and May (2015). Technically speaking my traffic numbers have been around 20K since the start of 2015.

Blog Traffic Report June 2015 Source: Google Analytics

• June comes with a 8.29% traffic gain if compared to month of May. Average daily user count: 752.33.

Now - at the end of my May traffic report I expressed hopes to reach modest - 5% growth in June. Well, I reached more than 8% growth last month. Great!

An medium traffic spike to my blog happened at the start of June, when my post about average salaries in European Union got posted on Reddit. That day traffic to my blog accounted to 2,071 users. 

This was a third major traffic spike to my blog in it's short 21 month…

Responsive Learning Web App - sales.wilsonlearning.lv

16 July, 2015 | Drupal Development | 21 seen

Recently I was contacted by a long-term customer (Wilson Learning Baltics) with a request to build a responsive web learning application for their business needs. This was quite an easy task for me, in fact I have been built a similar web app for this customer some time ago already. I was provided with an example site on global learning portal, see it here CSP Mobile APP and asked to localize this app into Latvian. In fact all the localization task was already done and I was provided with one large .docx and .pdf file (.pdf just a mirror version) with all texts translated, so it was my turn to build this app from scratch and add content on it.

In short this web app teaches 4 very important steps in customer relationships - how to establish trust, how to identify needs, how to present your solution, and how to assure satisfaction, in case a user don't know were to start he/she is provided with a simple questionnaire form, answering on a few questions user can start exploring is there some ways he/she could improve his/her sales process.

To perform this task I took Drupal as content management system (Drupal is…

Hotel Dzintars Review in Jūrmala, Latvia

15 July, 2015 | Hotel reviews | 24 seen

Dzintars hotel is located in Latvian beach resort city Jūrmala - very close to the nations capital city Riga (some 30 minutes drive).

The reason I chose this hotel is plain simple - my brother works as a concierge here (family ties) and this hotel is among cheapest available in Jūrmala (and by saying cheapest I mean - it's a value deal)

I first visited Dzintars hotel back in 2014 or 2015 and since then have stayed here several more times.

Hotel Dzintars in Jūrmala

Guest can enjoy a free parking on site

Meal at Hotel Dzintars restaurant

A really tasty and affordable meal here 

Bike rental at hotel Dzintars

I don't know about rental prices, we got a free ride (thanks to my bro) - but I believe you can enjoy a free ride in Jurmala city as well

Breakfast menu at Hotel Dzintars

Pine forest near hotel Dzintars

Outdoor patio at hotel Dzintars

We enjoyed our breakfast here

Mansard room at hotel Dzintars

Flat screen TV at hotel Dzintars

Mansard room at hotel Dzintars…

What's Aperture And How To Control It

14 July, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 6 seen

With this post I'm starting a new and hopefully very interesting blog category - Digital Photography School on my blog (www.reinisfischer.com). The reason that made me to create such new category is simple - some time ago I bought my first DSRL camera - Canon 1200 D (in US it's marketed under Canon Rebel T5 brand), read my first impression of this camera: First Impressions Of Canon EOS 1200D Camera With 18-55mm Lens

[amazon:B00IB1BTWI:full]

Prior to that for many year I have been using a bridge camera Sony DSC-H7 and I was pretty pleased with result what I got. Although that bridge camera offers some control over picture you take, for 99% of time I have been using program A (auto). Before I bought a new DSLR camera I thought - the only difference between bridge camera and DSLR camera are that with DSLR camera I can take better quality pictures, it has more megapixels and yes, there is some lens attached. 

[amazon:B000M4J2PI:full]

After making a few shots with my brand new DSLR camera I realized that with program A I can make photos look worst than taken with bridge camera and I decided to investigate what's wrong…

St. John's Church in Saldus

14 July, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 15 seen

Some time ago I visited a lovely town Saldus (located some 100km from capital Riga), one of the main sights here is a church - St. John's Church of Saldus. As usual I took my camera and made a few shots here.

The altarpiece at Saldus St. John's church

Author of this altar painting is made by J. Dering (19th century). Read more: Churches in Saldus 

Saldus St. John church

This church building is the oldest building of the town and the first stone made church in Saldus built in 1615, but re-designed by Wilhelm Neumann and rebuilt at the end of 19th century.

Marketplace near church

During my short visit here  - Saldus city festival were held

Saldus St.John's church, in Latvia, was officially dedicated on August 27, 1900, after a long history of use and centuries of reconstruction. The first wooden church was built in 1461. The second, also made of wood, was built in 1530 and then renovated in 1567. The masonry church was built between 1614-1615 and financed by Wilhelm Duke. The fifth church in Saldus was built in 1737 on the hill where the present church…

What Is Minimum Wage In European Union 2015

12 July, 2015 | Macroeconomics | 90 seen

A year ago I created a blog post about minimum wages in European Union in 2014, that post generated a lot of views (more than 20,000 page views) and some buzz (got shared on Facebook, Reddit, and many other websites)

Update: Minimum Wages in European Union 2018

I decided to look back and compare how does minimum wage has changed in European Union member countries a year later (2015)

Minimum wage in European Union 2015

In short - minimum wage has been increased almost in every country, with the exception - Ireland and Germany. Germany is a newcomer to the minimum wage list this year.

The fastest growing minimum wages have been recorded in Romania 14% growth (+33 EUR/monthly), Latvia 11% growth (+40 EUR/monthly), Lithuania 11% growth (+36 EUR/monthly), United Kingdom 11% growth (+152 EUR/monthly) and Bulgaria 10% growth (+21 EUR/monthly)

Now - at first I was surprised to see the United Kingdom among fastest growing minimum wages, but then I realized - it's all about currency exchange rates (the United Kingdom is not part of Euro…

Best Recommended 9 Ordino Hotels in Andorra

11 July, 2015 | Hotel reviews | 10 seen

Ordino is a small and the most northerly parish in the Principality of Andorra located very close to the nations capital city Andorra la Vella. I discovered this place by accident about a year ago. Back then I was looking for Andorra la Vella hotels, but I even didn't noticed that we have been already left Andorra la Vella and were located in this charming province. We booked on site a lovely and very cheap hotel Gaspa. Read: Hotel Gaspa Review in Ordino, Andorra

Since I'm planing to return here someday I decided to list some of the most recommended hotels in Ordino, Andorra, according to Booking.com

This apartment hotel is located in the quiet town of Ansalonga, only one kilometer from Ordino, and within 8 km of the cable car to La Massana and the Arcalís-Vallnord ski resort.

These spacious apartments are an excellent option for groups of friends and families who wish to enjoy both winter and summer sports. Some apartments can accommodate up to 8 people. Conveniently located among the Andorran Pyrenees, this complex will allow guests to relax, explore the local area, and…

How to Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header Nginx

11 July, 2015 | Servers | 58 seen

The other day I visited tools.pingdom.com to test performance for my blog (the one you are currently reading) and I did fine I have a two bottlenecks:

• Remove query strings from static resources
• Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header

I managed to handle query string issue for static resources and then I headed to find a solution for the Specify a Vary thing. Since it's not a Drupal related issue I did some search regarding Nginx and I soon found excellent solution on stackoverflow.com

Inside the server { of the domain/subdomain that you want to set it, add

sudo nano /path/to/domain/sites-available/yourdomain.com

Save the file (CTRL-O and CTRL - X)  and restart Nginx (sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart)

I managed to improve my performance score from 82 to 88 on tools.pingdom.com after this.

How to Remove query strings from static resources Drupal

10 July, 2015 | Drupal Development | 16 seen