Blog Archive: January 2014

Plan your trip to Georgia (country)? Here is what you will need

15 January, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 3 seen

Georgia is an amazing country located in South Caucasus. If you are planing your trip here, or like I am looking to stay a bit longer, here I have created a few, but as I guess really useful guides in Georgia.

• 16 Places To Visit In Georgia And Tbilisi
• 5 Days In Georgia Itinerary List - Make Most Of Your Trip
• Gudauri - Georgian Winter Capital for skiing, snowboarding, paragliding and heli-skiing

Boutique hotel Meg - Yerevan, Armenia

13 January, 2014 | Hotel reviews | 20 seen

We stayed at this boutique hotel in Yerevan for 2 nights at the start of January 2014. This hotel is one of the best I have visited lately. It's truly a boutique hotel - apartments are clean and warm. The King size bed is awesome and Sateliite TV with more than 200 Russian (and not only) channels is all the traveler needs.

The hotel offers a really nice feature - breakfast in the room. Fruits and water are for free + plus in your fridge, you 'll find soda and wine + that's for small extra money.

King size bed at hotel Meg in Yerevan

Centrally located in the heart of the capital, Hotel Meg, Yerevan’s only boutique hotel is within minutes’ walk from the famous Matenadaran, the Cascade and the Opera.

This small hotel of only seven spacious one and two-room suites have been designed based on the simple concept of doing everything possible to make our guests feel at home.

Whether for business or pleasure, our stylish rooms, comfortable luxurious beds, modern facilities along with our friendly, courteous and professional staff, promise to make your stay in Yerevan a memorable one.

TV set

If you take a Taxi - tell him to…

A Simple Workaround to Display AdSense Ads in Drupal Views

11 January, 2014 | Drupal Development | 21 seen

Google AdSense is a popular platform for publishers to monetize their websites by displaying ads to their visitors. If you have a Drupal website and want to display Google AdSense ads in your views, there is a simple workaround that can help you achieve this goal.

In this article, we'll guide you through the steps to display Google AdSense ads in your Drupal views. 

The first step in displaying Google AdSense ads in your Drupal views is to install and configure the AdSense module. This module is available for free in the Drupal module repository, and it allows you to add AdSense ads to your Drupal website in a few simple steps.

Once you've installed and configured the AdSense module, the next step is to create a view in Drupal. This can be done by navigating to the Views section of your Drupal administration dashboard and clicking the "Add new view" button.

After you've created your view, you can add an AdSense block to it by clicking the "Add" button in the "Blocks" section of your view's configuration page. This will open a…

Record numbers of visitors visit Georgia - hoax or true?

9 January, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 7 seen

Today and yesterday I was reading some articles, claiming that record number of foreigners have visited Georgia in 2013. 

According to Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia - 5 365 356 foreigners crossed Georgian border in 2013.

Why I dont like this data?

Well in 2013, I have crossed Georgian border for some 6 times I guess. 3 times leaving and 3 times entering. So one me accounts for at least 3 times, right? It depends how to count.

Ok, lets dig deeper:

Georgian side have canceled VISA regime for Russian citizens, by knowing fact that many, I will not name the number, Georgians live in Russia, and obtains Russian passport, and since Mikheil Saakashvili is no more in office, are visiting their homeland country. By the way, Russian citizens entering Georgia, have the 4th highest rate. Turkey, Armenia, and Azarbaijan, ranking 1st. 

About Turkey side I have more questions, Sarpi - the Turkey/Georgia border some 18 km of Batumi - many Georgians do some smaller trade by entering Turkey, purchasing some goods and returning to Georgia. How many times they have been counted, and maybe as Turkish citizens…

GEL continues to be weak against USD - is it time to start get worried?

7 January, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 6 seen

At the end of December I made post about that Georgian lari continues to be weak agains USD. Today I decided to see what exchange rates are for today (07.01.2014)

And for my surprise GEL CONTINUES to be weak against USD, so much, that for me it seems like hidden devaluation of national currency of Georgia - Lari.  

In last 14 days - Georgian lari has lost 0.0299 from it's value.

Here is the screenshot from National bank of Georgia for exchange rates for GEL to USD (23.12.13-07.01.2014)

So, is it time to start get worried?

Browser wars - Google Chome 55%, IE 3%

6 January, 2014 | Blogging | 6 seen

Remember the Mosaic, early days of Netscape browser? I actually don't, but have heard of them a lot.

For many years my default choice has been Google Chrome browser - I even sometimes was so lazy, that didn't the cross-browser testing for smaller web projects I'm working with - who needs cross-browser testing - everyone uses Chrome, right? Right!

Browser Wars / Screen Resolutions 2019

I will not dig deeper in the overall use of browsers - searching the internet - you may find various data, some claim Internet Explorer still rules, but the majority will tell you that Google Chrome dominates. Hard to tell for others, but today looking into Google Analytics for one of the web projects I maintain - I found a scene like this:

Pretty impressive, right? So let's take a closer look on January 4th. As you can see from the picture above - in total there were 714 visits, of them:

• Chrome:393
• Firefox:71
• Opera:35
• Internet Explorer:23
• Other: 192

Let's convert this to percents. If 714 visits are 100%, then

• Chrome: 55%
• Firefox: 9.94%…

Blog statistics December 2013

2 January, 2014 | Blogging | 5 seen

December was quite a busy month  - I managed to post everyday, but my enthusiasm has gone away.

Top 10 blog posts according to Google Analytics:

• Christmas Charity Fair In Tbilisi
• Drupal views taxonomy map
• Ukraine vs Poland by GDP 1990-2012
• Best spent $ 5 this year
• Estonia to catch up Scandinavia in next 10-15 years
• Baltic's vs Caucasus by GDP 2012
• Fast way to acquire new fans to your Facebook fan page
• Image hover effects - how to change background on mouse over
• Transnistria - the western outpost of Russia
• CIS, Baltics and Georgia GDP 2018

Latvia Joins the Euro Zone (2014): A New Era Begins

1 January, 2014 | Macroeconomics | 4 seen

Latvia is set to become the latest member of the Eurozone when it joins on January 1st, 2014. This will make the 17-nation currency bloc one country bigger, following the lead of two other former Soviet states, Estonia and Slovakia. The small eastern European country, with a population of just 2 million, became a member of the European Union free market in 2004, and finally got the green light to join the single currency zone in June of 2013.

From Wednesday, Latvians will be able to exchange their lats for euros free of charge at a fixed rate of 0.7 to 1 euro. There will be a two-week period in which both currencies will be in circulation before the lat is no longer a legal tender on January 15th.

Latvia's integration into the Eurozone will solidify its position as part of Europe and the Western world, following its membership in NATO, the United Nations, and the EU after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite being poorer than many Western European countries, with a 2012 GDP per capita of $21,905, which was only two-thirds of the EU average, Latvia's economy is expected to expand by 4% this year, while the Eurozone economy is forecast to contract by 0.6%.…