My Experience with Wirex Visa Card (Virtual/Plastic) Convert BTC/Altcoins to USD/EUR or GBP

9 January, 2018 | Crypto | 65 seen

I first heard about bitcoin Visa cards back in the Summer of 2017, when opted into crypto craze (strong buy and hold here). Back then I discovered Bitpay VISA card and decided to order one at the start of 2018.

Now, as January approached and my existing crypto holdings have grown more by 320%, I decided to take another quick look at Bitcoin Visa card offer before ordering Bitpay card.

Soon I found an interesting article on Steemit: Best Bitcoin Debit Cards! Bitpay vs Wirex vs CryptoPay

As the author of the article concluded that Wirex seems a great option for EU/UK I decided to give it a try.

From Wirex promo materials:

• Immediately after registration, you will have instant access to your first virtual debit card
• Get it in less than five minutes. After you apply for the Wirex virtual Visa card online, it will be issued and delivered to your email inbox instantly
• The Wirex virtual Visa card does not require a verification process before being issued. All we need is your name, date of birth and address
• For just a few cents, you can transfer…

Filenia Cretan Restaurant near Triopetra

7 January, 2018 | Restaurant reviews | 34 seen

Filenia restaurant was a really nice discovery after we checked in at Triopetra Notos Hotel  - traditional Cretan lamb (and not only) dishes.

We were just driving around the area after caught a very beautiful sunset at the Libyan sea, see: Catching Sunset Photography at The Libyan See (Crete, Greece)

Another lovely roadside restaurant in Crete

Traditional Cretan lamb with pasta

Specialty of house - honey filled pies

Catching Sunset Photography at The Libyan See (Crete, Greece)

6 January, 2018 | | 14 seen

The Libyan Sea is the portion of the Mediterranean Sea north of the African coast of ancient Libya, i.e. Cyrenaica, and Marmarica (the coast of what is now eastern Libya and western Egypt, between Tobruk and Alexandria).This designation was used by ancient geographers describing the southern Mediterranean, but the term is also used by modern travel writers and cartographers.

The southern coastline of Crete which borders the Libyan Sea includes the Asterousia Mountains and Mesara Plain; this area is the locus of considerable ancient Bronze Age settlement including the sites of Kommos, Hagia Triada and Phaistos.

It was in mid-June 2017, we were on about a month long road trip across the island of Crete and were just checked in at Triopetra Notos Hotel, as there were still plenty of time until the super, we decided to explore nearby vicinity driving our rental Opel car. 

Car parked for sunset photography

I just adore evenings like this - see other adventures from Catching the sunset…

Triopetra Notos Hotel Review in Crete, Greece

5 January, 2018 | Hotel reviews | 14 seen

Triopetra in Crete is among the most abandoned places I've traveled lately, if they wouldn't have a sea and a lovely beach, I would compare this place to the remote and almost abandoned desert village in Georgia, Udabno.

During our about one-month road trip around the island of Crete, we stayed at Triopetra Notos hotel for one night on June 11, 2017 and spend about EUR 50 for a hotel room. According to Booking.com website, there are not many hotels located in Triopetra, but during our short visit here, I did found a few new construction sites in the area, which might mean - Triopetra could gain some popularity in the future.

See: Top Hotels and Apartments in Triopetra, Crete

It's said that this property is a 1-minute walk from the beach, in fact, I doubt some could actually reach the sea just walking. Situated 1 km away from Triopetra Beach, Triopetra Notos Hotel offers tastefully furnished rooms and studios with views of the Libyan Sea.

Surrounding views at Triopetra Notos Hotel

In the background, you can see the Libyan sea

Featuring a furnished balcony, rooms and studios at…

2017 Blog Income & Traffic Review - Goals For 2018

3 January, 2018 | Blogging | 5 seen

Another year has just passed, and it's time to take a look back on previous 2017 year of blogging, and no doubts -  take a quick glimpse at 2018.

In today's article, I will reveal some data behind the blog scenes - both traffic and income for the whole year of 2017. But before we dig into the numbers, here is the brief background - blog now is more than four years old, and for the last four years it has gone a very long way,

Make sure to check out my previous yearly blogging reviews:

• 2016 - Blog Traffic and Income Report 2016 - 635,048 Users / $18,586.41
• 2015 - Blog Traffic and Income Report for 2015 - 347,035 users / $9,819.71
• 2014 - Blog Income Report 2014 - $3,334.20

• In total blog have reached 1,049,975 (that's more than a million) users in 2017
• On average it is 87,497 monthly users or
• 2,876 daily visitors

2017 was kind of steady in terms of traffic, there was a growth, but it seems to starts slowing down (if compared to the previous years). It was…

2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018

2 January, 2018 | Investments | 20 seen

I'm 32 now and I have a goal to save one million dollars by the time I will turn 60. That's 28 years to go.

In today's article, I will review the past year and take a quick glimpse at the New Year. 

For me, 2017 was a year of peer to peer lending, dividend-paying stocks and starting with the second part of the year - cryptocurrencies.

Investment Portfolio 2017

At the start of 2017, I planned to invest about 31% of my annual net income, the planned amount for 2017 was $8,561, I made it up to $12,057.41 at the end of the year. Isn't that Awesome? In 2017 I was investing at the pace of about $1,000/mo. 

You know what's even more awesome than that? I ended 2017 with a 33.34% value growth, putting the net value of my investment portfolio at $16,077.05. I should mention that most of the value growth happened in December and because of cryptocurrencies. Soaring prices for bitcoin, litcoin, ripple, and ethereum being the main driven force behind.

Here is what I said a year before:

Now, I…

Happy New Year! Fireworks Photography from Tbilisi 2018

1 January, 2018 | | 7 seen

We wish you a very great and prosperous 2018!

Here at Piece of Life photo series we canceled our planned trip to Sri Lanka and stayed in Tbilisi to capture following firework photography from Tamar Mephe bridge (ahh we have made dozens of great photos from this place).

Just before the midnight left our apartment with a tripod and few spare batteries

Tbilisi just a few minutes before New Year 2018

Fireworks have always been an interesting object for me to photograph, I remember how I prepared for great firework photography 2 years ago in St. Marks Square (Venice, Italy) in 2015/2016 but missed great images because of buildings covering the objective.  I got my first successful firework photos the same year from our balcony in Tbilisi, see: Old New Year's fireworks in Tbilisi

As a lot of time has passed, it was hard to recall how to make a proper fireworks photography tonight

2018 Tbilisi fireworks

Tonight I made about 90 long exposure night photographs, just a few survived final editorial review (you can see them in this article)

Happy New Year - Tbilisi 2018…

Simple GPU Overclocking Boosts Ethereum Mining Profitability by 20.65% - Now Making $2.66 Daily

31 December, 2017 | Servers | 14 seen

Welcome to the last post of 2017, and no surprise but today I will speak about increased Ethereum (and Siacoin) mining profitability by overclocking GPU cards.

Those of you following my blog lately already know - in December I decided to build 12 GPU mining rig and ordered goodies from Amazon. In total spending about $1,147.  The total investment right now covers just the core minimum - motherboard, power supply, PCI risers, RAM, processor and just 2 graphics cards.

At the start, I ordered just one graphics card from Amazon, but while still waiting for equipment to arrive I decided to set up a test environment at one of our office spare computers and installed a cheap Radeon RX 560 card. 

Top 14 Best Selling GPU Cards 2018

The first result with RX 560 card gave me about $0.98 profit daily, see: I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!

I was pretty happy with results I got from this card, though felt kind of surprised seeing hashing power just about 10 MH/s - it didn't sound good (as I have read that others are getting about 14 MH/s…

Taverna Plateia in Mirthios, Crete

30 December, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 30 seen

Ok, this is just another roadside cafeteria, discovered by accident - meet Taverna Plateia in the village of Mirthios, on the island of Crete.

At least I believe it is located in Mirthios village, as we did our trip to Crete back in June 2017, now browsing through the huge photo archive at Adobe Lightroom, I might be wrong. Though it's worth to mention this place as we had a nice dinner here.

Taverna Plateia in Crete

My one and only reference point - signboard - Taverna Plateia. If looking through my Crete discovery map, this might be the right location

Quick dinner at Taverna Plateia

Cretan dolma​

Lake Kournas in Crete

29 December, 2017 | Lakes | 15 seen

Lake Kournas is a lake on the island of Crete, Greece, near the village of Kournas. It is in the Apokoronas municipality of Chania regional unit close to the border with Rethymno regional unit, 47 km from the town of Chania. Kournas is a fairly large village perched on a hill overlooking the lake.

We headed to the Lake Kournas in June 2017, just to spend a nice afternoon here and enjoy a mild swim in the lake water.

It should be noted that Lake Kournas is Crete's only freshwater lake

Lake Kournas in Crete

Lake Kournas, is relatively large, with a perimeter of 3.5 km. Although almost all touristic leaflets say that it is possible to walk around the lake, that is not true. At least not at the end of the rain season (winter). There is a nature preserve on the Southwest of the lake. But there is a rustic road from the North of the lake to the Hills on the West of the lake too.

Catamarans for rent at lake Kournas

Seems a very popular tourist attraction here, as we didn't try one this time I'm not sure about pricing, but…

Learning Crypto Currency Mining The Hard Way

28 December, 2017 | Servers | 21 seen

It has been a couple of days since my first GPU mining rig is set up and running, making me a couple of extra dollars every day. In these past couple of days, I have learned a lot, mostly tech stuff how to install different components on a motherboard and to connect to the mining pool.

In today's article, I will share a few photos and notes what helped to get me here.

It all started with ordering details for 12 GPU mining rig from Amazon. It sounds bit insane but I spent about $1,000 just for the core minimum + about $200 additionally for getting these goodies to Tbilisi (transport and cost). As the estimate shipping time for all details from US to Georgia is about 3 weeks (I've received almost all components, except a few) and I had FOMO for crypto mining, I rushed and bought a cheap Radeon graphics card here in Tbilisi to set up and test on one of the free office computers.

Brand new Radeon RX 560 graphics card

The cat seemed very interested in this business. Once I took this card to the computer, I learned the first couple of lessons:

I'm Making $2.44 Per Day By Dual Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I'm NOT HAPPY YET!

26 December, 2017 | Crypto | 13 seen

This is a quick follow up post after previous and initial I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!. It has been first 24 hours since my core mining rig have been set up and running.

Well, more precisely, yesterday I finally received details ordered from Amazon at the start of December - motherboard, processor, power block, graphics card and other, see: Building a 12 GPU Ethereum Mining Rig From Scratch - Part 1: Ordering Details

By now all mining operations are run from my living room (instead of office) on a separate mining rig. The total investment as of day: $1,147.00 (not counting in transportation and customs tax, which is about $200).

As of writing this, the total time of ROI is 468 days, which is the reason I'm not happy yet with the results. 468 days is more than one year. And that makes me worried as we don't know what will be the future for gpu mining in next 6 months, no to speak 12 months or 468 days. Right now this seems a bit of gambling to me.

Thanasis - Cretan Taverna in Stavros

24 December, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 54 seen

Thanasis is a typical Cretan taverna located in the town of Stavros. We visited this place during our stay at Kavos beach apartment in June 2017.

Friendly staff, amazing food, affordable prices and amazing sunset views.

Outdoor deck at Thanasis taverna

While waiting for our Cretan cuisine to be served made some HDR sunset photography here:

Sunset photography

One of the rare handheld HDR's

Octopus

Dolma

Contact info Taverna Thanasis Cafe bar in Stavros, Crete

Works of Georgian Painter Nino Jikia

23 December, 2017 | Living in Georgia | 21 seen

Nino is a friend, we have been in friends with Nino for about a year. We actually met her as a cat sitter during our 10 days trip to New York City at the end of 2016

She has cat- sitted several more times since then. In case you are looking for cat minder here in Tbilisi - without hesitation - Nino is one of the best - our boys just adore her. I know that Nino is busy with a cat sitting for many other expats in Tbilisi, and in fact, she has about 15 cats at home - she just can't let little kitties alone on the street and takes them home - helping and taking care. 

Nino is a Tbilisi Academy of Art graduate and in free time still paints and performs restoration works. She asked could I help her out and take photos of her works, without thinking I agreed - it was agreed that Nino will take some of her works to our apartment and on a Friday afternoon sipping tea and eating cake we made a lovely photo session of her works.

Poppy fields in Svaneti by Nino Jikia

This painting we actually bought from Nino and gave as a gift to my mom, while she was visiting me here in Georgia at the end of November. Now, this…

Kavos Beach Apartments & Studios Review in Stavros, Crete

22 December, 2017 | Hotel reviews | 15 seen

Kavos beach apartments are among one of my favorite hotels discovered in Crete. We stayed here for a couple of nights in June 2017, during about a month long trip to Crete.

Stavros is a village and a popular beach destination located close to the Chania town in Crete, Greece. The beach and surroundings were the place where in 1964 Michael Cacoyannis partly made the popular Greek movie "Zorba the Greek" starring Anthony Quinn.

Top Hotels and Apartments in Stavros, Crete

Set amidst landscaped gardens, all apartments and studios at Kavos are air-conditioned and have a spacious balcony or terrace. They are fitted with an LCD TV, kitchenette and fridge, and enjoy free Internet access.

Kavos beach apartments in Crete

I was so impressed with the landscape here that decided to make a couple of HDR's

Rocky bay near Kavos beach

At a quiet and beautiful location on the coast of Kavos, Kavos Beach Apartments & Studios boasts views over the Cretan Sea. It offers well-designed accommodation and a large outdoor pool with sun…