Dividend Paying Stocks In Nasdaq Baltic Market By Yield

17 April, 2017 | Investments | 54 seen

After couple of years of pause in investments I have decided to return to investing.

It probably all starts with my New Year's resolution to save in my "retirement" fund a million dollars before I will turn 60. See: Road To Million Dollars in Saving Account

My goal for 2017 is to put aside, or more precisely to invest $8,561 throughout the year, not mandatory all money should be invested in stocks, in fact I have already invested a little bit more than $1,000 in peer to peer lending, in another Baltic "start up" - Mintos. See: My Start at Investing on Mintos Peer to Peer Lending Platform: Depositing Funds

I like Mintos because of one reason - they offer to invest in Georgian loans, as I have been living in Georgia for about 6 years, I always look on perspective ways to invest in Georgia. Invest in Georgia - Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending - Mintos.com

Now, my experience on investing in Baltic stock market starte in 2001 or 2002,when I first bought stocks of Latvijas Kuģniecība using privatization certificates. Which latter in 2005 I sold for about 500 or 600 Latvian lats and bought a Canon camcorder. In 2007 I bought some Lietuvos Dujos stocks which I sold soon. 

Now in 2016, I still use Canon, but instead of camcorder - a DSLR camera, see: First Impressions Of Canon EOS 1200D Camera With 18-55mm Lens, also I feel way more mature in investing. And that's way I started to explore my options to invest in dividend paying stocks. Baltic stock market was my first choice to make an "Investigation", here is what I have found so far.

Dividend Paying Stocks In NASDAQ Baltic Market By Yield

I made following table using records from dividend payouts in 2016, stock price and dividend yield is calculated according to the February 23, 2017 trading session. The following table should be used just for informative use.

Data source: Dividends and other payouts, Google Finance and Morningstar

In 2016, there were 19 companies listed on NASDAQ Baltic paying dividends to stock owners. Yield varies a lot, starting the high 9.6% for Latvijas Gāze, ending in low 0.8% for Arco Vara. The good news there are 7 companies giving dividend yield higher than 5% - Latvijas Gāze, SAF Tehnika, Silvano Fashion Group, Olympic Entertainment Group, Tallinna Vesi, Tallinna Kaubamaja Grupp and  Merko Ehitus. 

Well, that doesn't mean they will pay such yields mandatory in 2017, 2018 or 2020, but it gives some overall understanding. 

Please remember: your capital is at risk when investing in stocks and you could actually lose some, if not all money, as stock prices might drop. invest only money you are comfortable to lose.

Speaking of me - there are 6 companies which stock I'm looking to acquire in 2017:

• Latvijas gāze - highest dividend yield and a strong dividend payment record since 1999.
• SAF tehnika - second highest dividend yield
• Silvano Fashion Group - third highest dividend yield
• Olympic Entertainment Group - fourth highest dividend yield
• Tallink Grupp - though a low dividend yield, just 2%, though the largest market gap (EUR mln 654) on NASDAQ Baltic
• Telia Lietuva - very low dividend yield, just 1%, second largest market gap (EUR mln 553)

My strategy is simple - next I will invest about EUR 2,500 to acquire stocks in above mentioned companies. Why chose 6, why not to stick with one? Simple - diversity. My goal is to build a liquid and growing portfolio using many investment strategies. My goal at the end of 2017 is to invest in stocks about 40-50% from my initial $8,561 plan for 2017. Some 20-40% for peer to peer lending and probably some 10% - 40% in mutual funds.

I feel young and energetic to take some more risk (and both stocks and peer-to-peer lending seems pretty risky to me) and not to stick with more safe, but less yield - deposits, mutual funds or obligations. Though I'm planing to have them in my portfolio over time.

What about you, are you investing in Baltic stock market? Leave a comment- readers and I would love to hear!

Martkopi monastery

16 April, 2017 | Churches and Monasteries | 25 seen

Martkopi monastery complex is located some 30km from Tbilisi, Georgia. This place is best reached by car, but some could get here by hiking too, see: Hiking Route in Georgia - Norio Village - Martkopi Monastery

We first discovered it the end of February 2017 with one goal - to make stunning photography, as I've seen some really nice shots from this place, the truth turned out to be a little bit complicated, it took us about 5km hiking (each way) from Norio village, and once on site, I did find it hard to make that stunning photography. But here is what I think could work - there is another tower atop of Martkopi monastery, take that extra mile and you could produce nice aerial photography or use a drone.

Update: We returned here again in 2020 and this I was equipped with a DJI Mavic mini drone, and I managed to take some cool photography and video

During our latest trip to the monastery, we met priest Dato, with whom we are now friends on Facebook. We have been told that the place shelters about 100 people, disabled persons, and homeless people. Now, that's the true spirit of a church.

Martkopi monastery complex

See that tower in the background? That's the place you should climb to make that special photo if you are not among lucky drone owners.

Martkopi church

That's the best I could frame this time - the object is too close, so you are left wither using a wide lens or panoramic photography technique.

Here is some information about Martkopi monastery

Martkopi monastery was founded by father Anton of Martkopi in the 6th century AD. He spent the last 15 years of his life there. He lived as a hermit, what is implied by the "of Martkopi” designation in Georgian. From this designation came the name of the Georgian village Akriani, which initially was called Martodmkopeli and later Martkopi.

The monastery itself is situated on the most beautiful slope of Mount Ialno. The main building is the church of the Divine-Made Icon. The remains of an ancient foundation indicate that on the place of the contemporary cathedral there was an ancient cathedral of greater size, but for some reason in was destroyed.

On the threshold of the XVII-XVIII centuries it was reconstructed and the belfry, which was constructed in 1629 by master Akhverd, belongs to this period. In the XVII century the ancient frescos were destroyed and in 1848-1855 under the leadership of Ivane Arjevanidze, the monastery was restored.

For a long time, a Divine-Made image brought by St Anton of Martkopi from Edessa was stored at the monastery. But in 1395 it was lost during the Tamerlane invasion. The most sacred place of the monastery is the tomb of St Anton of Martkopi, which has been preserved to this day and is considered miraculous. East of the monastery there is a tower where evidently resided the saint.

Inside church

A chamber with skulls and bones

I wouldn't say I'm a huge admirer of things like that, but I did find it interesting seeing skull and bone chamber for the second time in a short time, see: Green (Mtsvane) Monastery

The Chronicle of Georgia, Monument Near Tbilisi Sea

15 April, 2017 | Tourism objects | 374 seen

The Chronicle of Georgia, also called History Memorial of Georgia is one of the hidden gems of Tbilisi.

Not at all a popular tourist spot, but definitely one of the impressive sites I have discovered lately. Located near the Tbilisi sea (it's a water reservoir actually) this place not only tells history of Georgia, but gives really spectacular views to surrounding vicinity. And impresses of it's size.

On a lovely Sunday's afternoon I packed my camera and tripod, ordered a taxi using Taxify app and asked to take me to this place and back (with waiting time for about 30 minutes). I paid 20 GEL, and by now I can say, made one of the best day trips in Georgia during my almost 6 years presence here. See: All About Georgia

If you feel indie travel just like me, take you options get there using taxi, marshrutka or maybe walking, or see how can I save you time and money by helping to plan your itinerary to Georgia, see organized tours in Georgia.

The Chronicle of Georgia

Now I would love to put this place in one shelf together with Sameba cathedral, Yerevan cascade and Garni Temple in Armenia. Really impressive sites.

Unusual views towards Tbilisi

The Chronicle of Georgia

You will be impressed by the height of this memorial. The Chronicle of Georgia was created by Zurab Tsereteli, a Georgian born Soviet-trained sculptor. Building began in 1985. The statue is partially incomplete. Though seems a lot of improvement works have been done recently and the complex might become a popular tourist spot very soon.

See: Zurab Tsereteli Museum of Modern Art in Tbilisi

​

The Chronicle of Georgia

I'm not an expert in Georgian language, not to say I don't understand Georgian script, but it gives a feeling something medieval should be written here. Georgian Chronicle after all. 

See: www.caucasustranslations.com for Georgian translation.

Walk among Giants

See girl in the middle of picture? Now you have some idea how huge and impressive this memorial site is.

View towards Tbilisi

A small church

There is a small Georgian Orthodox church located next to the memorial.

Views toward Tbilisi sea

Norio Village

14 April, 2017 | Railway / Bus / Ferry | 30 seen

Norio village is located in Gardabani district some 50 km from Gardabani and 25 km from nations capital Tbilisi.

My travels took me to Norio village at the end of February 2017, when we decided to make a lovely hiking trip to Martkopi monastery, we decided to travel here by public transport, in our case it was a marshrutka service leaving from Tbilisi (Samgori metro station).

Marshrutka final stop at Norio village in Georgia

Ride is marshrutka cost 1.5 GEL (as of February 2017) and took no longer than 30 minutes.

Marshrutka is a fun and very cheap way to explore Georgia, in past I've done a lot marshurtka trips across the country, though lately I prefer car private transfers

Concrete blocks in Norio village

Our route (about 5km) to Martkopi monastery started here.

I believe there is something interesting to see in Norio village itself, though in this case I'm listing it as public transport end stop. If you love indie travel and have decided to get to Martkopi monastery on your own, Norio village is a good reference point in fact.

Norio

Restaurant at Best Western's Tbilisi Art Hotel

11 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 9 seen

This article is about restaurants review at Best Western's Tbilisi Art hotel located on Apakidze street 11 (behind the sports palace)

We visited this place on a Valentine's day 2017, ordered some basics, like Caesars salad, meal from fish and a dessert, also we ordered some glass of pink wine. Yeah, the basic stuff when taking your girl out.

Salmon with risotto 

Now, I wouldn't call this something special, let's say it was decent, not gourmet but decent. 

Lounge at Best Western's Tbilisi Art hotel

Chocolate fondue

Could be better, but still decent.

Hee Korean BBQ Grill in Chelsea, New York Review

10 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 14 seen

Our latest trip to the United States was accompanied a lot by visiting local Asian cuisines, a Japanese Sushi place in Financial district (Zen Ramen and Sushi House, New York City) or Chinese noodle house in Philadelphia (Spice C - Hand Drawn Noodles in Philadelphia). Now it was time for Korean cuisine.

Hee Korean BBQ Grill is located on the corner of 6th Avenue and 27th street, which was just a few blocks away from our hotel room and INNSIDE NoMad hotel.

Frankly speaking, I do believe this was the first time for me visiting a Korean restaurant, and my first impressions were really good - unfortunetly I don't remember much from the names of the dishes we ordered, but they were great.

Menu at Hee BBQ Grill

As you can see prices are pretty affordable, and though I'm not an expert in Korean cuisine it was easy get to the point, by choosing among beef, shrimp, chicken or salmon base dish. I optet for some Beef Teriyaki which was just excellent

Beef Teriyaki

Served with grilled vegetables and rice. .

How To Order Goodies From US to Georgia - Usa2Georgia.com

9 April, 2017 | Living in Georgia | 98 seen

For those of you looking to ship goodies, like electronics, clothing, perfume e.t.c. from online stores located in the United States to Georgia, there is a simple, easy and affordable service - usa2georgia.com

I've been using usa2georgia.com for years, ordering items like hinges for my laptop (see: New hinges added to my HP Compaq 6510b), a laptop, equipment for DSLR camera, kitchen tools, even some food, clothing, perfume and more.

There is a small catch still, basically all of the items received in the US before been shipped to Georgia must be declared for customs, for items which price is more than GEL 300 a custom tax must be paid. Items worth less than 300 GEL are exempt from tax.

I always try to order some small items under $100 to avoid dealing with customs, as it might get really painful - you must go to Revenue Service to get some special tax payer code and taxes you are paying at the end are really not worth all of this process. 

In fact lately things in Georgia have developed pretty good, and there is little you cannot buy here. Back in 2012, 2013 and even 2014 it was tougher with product supply, and then I used usa2georgia more often. I'm that guy who doesn't love to browse through the catalogs order online and then wait for about 2 weeks my goodies to arrive. If I want something I always try to touch it before buying, and if I like it, buy instantly. Though, for some special items I'm ready to wait and even do the catalog thing. 

Another such day arrived at the end of February 2017, when I decided to use usa2georgia service to deliver a mail from the US bank to me here in Georgia, as my previous attempts to receive snail mails from  financial institution in US, have experienced a total defeat, my mail gets lost somewhere in Atlantic, Turkey or most probably in Georgia by Georgian Post.  

The idea is simple - I will reroute my US mail to usa2georgia postal address and then using courier service will recieve it in Tbilisi. 

A neat feature offered by usa2georgia is tracking codes, so you can always see status of your package (s)

Here is how usa2georgia.com works

1. Your Address in USA - Once you register, you’ll get your own mailbox with street address in USA. Every time you shop at online stores in USA, you can use it under Shipping Address. e.g.:
FIRST LAST
8 McCullough dr, Suite U****(Your individual mailbox #, e.g.: U121212)
New Castle, DE 19720, USA

2. Receiving of Package in USA - Once you get a package in USA, you’ll receive an email notification and tracking code will appear right under your Package Control Panel.

3. Forwarding Package to Georgia - We have daily shipments to Georgia. Shipping takes about 1 week and includes free delivery service to door within Tbilisi city.

How much it will cost

Shipping fee equals to $8 per 1 kg.

Calculating of weight: Shipping fee depends on real and dimensional weight, whichever is greater. To calculate the dimensional weight, use the following formulas:
Lenght X Width X Height / 6000. (For cm and kg)
Lenght X Width X Height / 166. (For Inch and Pound)

Learn more and setup an account: www.usa2georgia.com

INNSIDE New York NoMad Hotel Review

8 April, 2017 | Hotel reviews | 30 seen

From the footsteps of mount Kazbegi in Rooms Hotel (Georgia) to the footsteps of the Empire State Building in New York city - that's how I could describe in short our hotel choice during the holiday season of 2016/2017

We booked Hotel Innside by Melia in New York city after our return from Philadelphia, for a 4 day sat and paid about USD 600.

This sophisticated hotel in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan features on-site luxury dining and contemporary accommodations. Madison Square Garden, Penn Station and the Empire State building are within 20 minutes' walk of INNSIDE New York NoMad.

Queen size bed

Though we booked a king size bed, we got a smaller queen size bed, us our room was on the 17th floor the nice view towards empire state building, especially in night - fully compensate this minor issue.

Floor-to-ceiling windows and contemporary decor are featured in every guestroom at the INNSIDE New York. A flat-screen TV, Bluetooth connectivity panel, Nespresso coffee machine, a complimentary refreshment centre including water, soda and juice, rainfall shower heads and complimentary WiFi are standard in each room as well. Guests can make free local and long-distance calls from the guest rooms.

View towards Empire State building

Or life is good - watching Property Brothers and Empire State building.

Rich and tasty breakfast 

The dining hall features a really cool wall - a green wall (see bellow)

Green wall

A 24-hour fitness centre is available for guests day or night. The 24-hour front desk is provided for guests' convenience. An American breakfast is offered for an additional fee. The NoMad INNSIDE also offers car hire.

Impero Caffe by Scott Conant will offer a relaxed atmosphere while serving elevated Italian bistro food. Dishes from the celebrity chef will focus on Italian pastas and seafood.

Speed Up Drupal site by 76% Using Image Lazyloader

7 April, 2017 | Drupal Development | 9 seen

In this article you will learn how I managed to increase load times for a Drupal powered site (the one you are currently reading) by more than 76%.

Now the following tip will apply for Drupal sites heavily loaded with images. My website, which is now more than 3 years old,  features about 80% of photo stories, over the time, I have tried to limit my picture articles to 3 or less images, posting online the best of my work, but yes, there are articles with even 136 pictures, see Keukenhof tulips gardens in the Netherlands.

For each of the posts I'm using a head photo, done by using image fields from Drupal core, to make stories more Open Graph friendly. See: How to add Open Graph protocol for your Drupal site.

Now, I have tried many image optimization solutions, starting serving thumbnails ending compressing images in Adobe Lightroom, that have helped to speed up load times a lot, well  a 16mb image uncompressed in a post and then multiply it to at least 3 - 16x3 = 48 MB for a post with just 3 images. I compress my images specially for blog to about 100-200kb each, that helps a lot.

At one time I noticed the load time for homepage is more than 10 seconds, which is not at all nice.

Load time for homepage

Using tools.pingdom.com I was able to discover that a load time for my websites front page (which is heavily image driven) can take up to 11.81 seconds if accessed from New York, USA.

Luckily I found a small and neat module, which helped to decrease load time by more than 76% - Image Lazyloader

This is a small helper module which will automatically lazyload all images for sites with multiple images, which will make the site load faster. All images will only load when it's visible to the browser window.

After downloading, installing and enabling Image lazyloader module I was able to get down load times for frontpage to 2.80 seconds, that's about 76% of improved speed delivery.

Load time for homepage after enabling Image Lazyloader

Shorter load time, smaller page size and less requests. Amazing. 

Spice C - Hand Drawn Noodles in Philadelphia

6 April, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 14 seen

I first discovered Spice C noodle house in Philadelphia back in 2013, and mentioned it on my article about streets of Philadelphia.

Now about 3 years later, re-discovered this place again, after arrived to Philly from NYC and stayed at a lovely Chinatown hotel - Sleep Inn, it turned out that Spice C Noodle House is just about a block away from our hotel.

Spice C Noodle house in Philadelphia

One of the things visitors will enjoy at this place, you can actually see how your noodles are prepared

Hand drawn noodles

It's allowed to photograph inside, but not allowed to make a video.

Shrimp noodle soup at Spice C

Mmm, yummy

Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive Review

5 April, 2017 | Gadget Reviews | 59 seen

I bought Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive at the Best Buy store in Manhattan, New York City at the start of 2017 for about USD 69. 

Now I could probably get a better price if opted to ship it online from Amazon store, see: Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0, Black (STDR1000100)

Back at the end of 2015, I bought a brand new Asus laptop with 500GB internal disk storage, the main goal for this laptop was to post-process photos taken by my Canon EOS Rebel T5 DSLR camera, after switching from JPEG to the RAW format, laptop started to run out of memory in about a year. To free up some space, I accidentally deleted some important pictures, which luckily I was able to restore. See: How To Recover Permanently Deleted Files (Canon CR2, JPG and more) on Windows

It was just the time to have a reliable backup for photos and videos. And here comes in Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive

Seagate 1TB Portable External Hard Disk

It comes with a 2-year limited warranty

This limited warranty covers any defects in material or workmanship in the new Seagate Product accompanied by this limited warranty statement. Only consumers purchasing this product from an authorized retailer or reseller may obtain coverage under this limited warranty. See more: Seagate Limited Warranty

Seagate 1TB Portable External Hard Disk unpacked

This indeed is slim, not to say tiny, external hard disk drive. It has the following dimensions 113.5 x 76 x 12.1 mm, and you should easily store it in your pocket. 1TB in your pocket, isn't it amazing? Item weight is about 6.4 ounces. 

With Seagate portable external hard drive you can:

• Create easy customized backup plans with included Seagate Dashboard software
• USB powered - no power supply necessary
• Quick file transfer with USB 3.0 connectivity

Seagate external portable hard drive connected to the laptop

It works both with Windows and MAC OS.

How To Shoot Indoor Photograpy

4 April, 2017 | Digital Photography School | 4 seen

Indoor photography covers a huge range of situations – from kids’ birthdays to high-end interior shootings. Basically, everything that is shot indoors.

Assuming that you don’t own studio lighting gear, all you’re left with is a light that’s already in your space. Because of that, indoor photography is often not-so-easy to shoot. Why? Because most of the time, the light in indoor spaces is poor and you need to learn to set your camera for low light situations.

Here, we’ll focus on some basic principles to follow while shooting indoors.

Problems disappear if there is a plenty of natural light

Manual Mode: Try to Avoid Built-In Flash

The indoor photography is a real test on how much do you understand your camera and settings that come with it. When you shoot indoors, manual mode is a must. Otherwise, in low light situations typical for indoors, on automatic mode, your camera will fire a built-in flash pretty much always. In such situations, you should avoid the built-in flash because it gives an unnatural, flat light that makes your subjects look unflattering.

Make the most out of the low light situation with aperture wide open

Camera Settings for Indoor Photography

So, you’ve chosen the manual mode and now’s the time to put your settings right. Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO – as we all know, these three settings are everything and will determine the final result of your image. The most of the time while shooting indoors, the quantity of light in a space you’re photographing in is low. Because of the low light situation, your settings need to comprehend with it.

Aperture

For indoor photography, your aperture should be as open as your lens allows you – f1.6, f2.8, f3.5. With f-number this low, your depth of field will be shallow. Pay attention to that if you’re photographing, for instance, a group of people, because not everyone will be in focus and you’ll need to close your aperture a bit.

Shutter speed

Shutter speed shouldn’t be slower than 1/60 if you’re shooting from hand. If you go below this speed, your images will become blurry because of the handshaking. The better option is to shoot with the shutter speed where no blur occurs, even if the images result as underexposed. If you shoot in raw, the underexposed images aren’t a problem because you can edit them in Lightroom, increase the exposure and compensate for the light you need.

ISO value

As for the ISO number, you can go as high as your camera allows you. Depending on the quality of a sensor in your camera, some cameras allow you to shoot with ISO number as high as 3200 or above, without getting any grain or noise in the image. But, keep in mind that most of the cameras start to get a bit of noise above the ISO 1600. 

See: ISO Settings for Night Photography

Using a Tripod: Pros and Cons

Depending on the subject you’re shooting, a tripod can be a great tool to help you in low light indoor situations. The tripod allows you to use slower shutter speeds and get clear and sharp images that look professional. It’s really useful if you, for instance, are shooting interior spaces. However, the tripod can become a bit of a burden if you need to shoot something dynamic (kids’ birthdays or any type of events). It makes you static, you don’t have a freedom of movement.

There is also one more thing to pay attention to while using tripods. In some indoor spaces, like museums or churches, it is forbidden by law to use tripods. So, if you plan on using it in a specific indoor space, get familiar whether it’s allowed or not. 

White Balance: Auto or Specific?

The difference between raw and jpeg is that the raw files contain a lot more information about the image. Raw format is great because it allows you to shoot with auto white balance and still get the correct WB later in Lightroom post-processing. However, if the light sources don’t change throughout your whole indoor shooting, you can ease yourself and set the WB on daylight, tungsten or fluorescent, depending on the light source. In such way, you’ll get to see right away how your final images will look and also cut the time needed for editing.

How I Lost 4.4 Pounds In 5 days In The Gym

1 April, 2017 | Health & Wellness | 16 seen

With this article I'm starting new blog series on blog - fitness, my first article, kind of warm up article for beginners,will cover details on how I lost my first 4.4 lbs (2 kg) in the gym after first five days of training.

For a prelude, I have been overweight for years, not obese, just overweight. My body weight have been in the range 210 - 242 lbs (95-110kg) for the past 10 years. My ideal body weight as I believe should be under 200 (90kg).

I live medium healthy lifestyle, with the biggest treat to health being smoking, which I want to get rid in the foreseen future. Though I eat pretty healthy and live medium active lifestyle including cycling and hiking in my weekly routine. See: Outdoor activities

Now, loosing body weight might be a tricky thing, I'm not into some diets, trying to starve my body in order to loose weight. 

It was bout 3 years ago, I started to think more about my health, and almost enrolled to the gym - see: Aspria -Fitness club in Tbilisi

Unfortunately I didn't enrolled back at that time, though coming years had been good for my fitness (at least in Summer months) I have been really busy with home remodeling works, carrying bricks and mortar helps burn calories.

Anyhow, three years later a new gym opened near our Tbilisi apartment (see: Champions Academy in Tbilisi) and together with my better part we agreed to take a chance and arrange our health. There is a thing I'm worried a lot, and the thing is called my heart. For me =  the gym means - heart strengthening or cardio vascular trainings in the first place, with fat burning and muscle growing the second. Though if you are doing cardio,you will start loosing weight sooner or later.

My basic training for the first five days:

Max calorie burnout on the Treadmill, starting with 5% incline ending 30% incline, for 20 minutes, 3 reps by following exercises, push ups, sit ups, squats, dumbbell workouts. I was not able being doing more than 5 push ups per rep during my first training week, though I did all the rest exercises at least 10 times per rep. 

At the day 4, at the end of the training, I added running 1km (0.621 mile)on treadmill (0% incline). My results were far from ideal - about 8 minutes and 42 seconds for 1 km. Anyway I believe they were decent, taking into account that I was running at the end, not start of the training.

On the fourth day of my gym exercises my weight was at 229 pounds (103.8 kg)

While working on te treadmill I watched closely my heart rate, and just once (at the first day of training) I reached 190 beats per minute (bmp) (which was 1 bmp more than my maximum recommended - 189). During first two days I find it hard to complete max calorie workout on the treadmill, and during last minutes I decreased incline from the 30% to -3%. Although starting day 3, I have been able to complete max calorie workout without cheating, with max heart rate averaging 176-180 bmp.

I would say treadmill took about 60% time of my physical activities during my first week in gym.

Tips:

I started to take fish oil capsules and started to learn deep breathing to keep my heart bpm rates lower. Fish oil is really good and helps strengthen your health.

The fish oil benefits include decreasing the risk of heart disease and stroke while also helping reduce symptoms of depression, hypertension, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), joint pain, arthritis and chronic skin ailments like eczema. Fish oil intake has also been associated with aiding the body in weight loss, fertility, pregnancy and increased energy. Most of the fish oil benefits are because it’s one of nature’s richest sources of omega-3 fatty acids. See: 13 Fish Oil Benefits Proven Beyond Medicine

How To Build a Drupal List Page With All Users

31 March, 2017 | Drupal Development | 20 seen

In today's Drupal tutorial series I'm going to show a simple way how to build an authors page listing all users with their profile information + some other neat features.

A few years ago I was working on a Drupal project for large media organization and I was required to build an extended user profile system on Drupal. Recently I hired few freelance writers for my own blog / website and idea of having a nice author overview page sounded a must have.  

The further written can be applied to some micro social websites powered by Drupal, but for the ease of this tutorial I will stick with an user / author overview page for multi user blogs or media organizations.

Here is the final result:

Authors overview page on Drupal

You can see a live view here: Authors

In above view I have displayed info for authors taking info from profile field, which are following:  author picture, author bio and categories author writes articles about, as well displaying total article count for each author and sorting authors on page by total article count. (No surprise seeing myself as the most productive writer, after about 3 and half years I've written more than 1,600 articles already)

Granting permission to view user profiles

I'm not going in details on how to build custom user roles, for the ease of this tutorial let's stick with authenticated users

• Make sure to enable view user profiles under People - > Permissions

Creating custom Authors view page

Now, once permissions are set,let's create a new views page displaying User, here are some highlights to adjust for your needs:

Page settings

• Path: /authors

Relationships

We are using relationships to make total article (node) count to work for each user / author. If you are not going to show total article count, skip relationships and aggregation part

• Relationships: User: Content authored

Other

See above

• Use aggregation: Yes

Fields:

• User name
• Nid (use County for aggregation settings)
• User Bio (custom field from user profile page)
• User Profile Image
• Field:Category (custom field from user profile page)
• Global:Custom text (I'm using custom text field to style and order final view result, that's optional)

Sort:

• User: Created date

Save your view and check your  custom authors overview page, which should display info from user profile fields as well using aggregation and COUNT feature you are displaying how many articles each user / author have written. 

House of Madatovi - Tbilisi Restaurant

30 March, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 15 seen

House of Madatovi is a really lovely Georgian style cuisine restaurant, located on the recently renovated part of David Aghameshabeli avenue.

See: New Life for Agmashenebeli avenue, Tbilisi

Madatovi restaurant features not only authentic Georgian cuisine with amazing serving, it's crafted of lovely details, like chandlers with paper house shades, wine bottles, shelves, more shelves. Tastefully.

Interior at House of Madatovi

Stylish places with rustic elements are popping a lot lately in Tbilisi. The interior seen here reminded a little bit something from Restaurant Barberastan

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Chandlers with paper house shades

Now, this is something nice, not seen before. I really like that and I might use this idea for our upcoming home remodeling works.

Georgian Cuisine at House of Madatovi

Now this was the biggest surprise - I thought I know a lot about Georgian cuisine, turns out - I don't. They had some great salads with baked pumpkins, which was just delicious (and I don't love pumpkins). Some really good veal meal and mcvadi served with pomegranate seeds. Not to speak about delicious Georgian shotis puri.