May 2014

In this article I will show how with power of Drupal we can generate a ton of automated writing.Lets start with example:Potaro in Ajaria (region) is a Populated area located in Georgia - about 209.88 km from Tbilisi, country's capital townIn sentence above I have not written any letter by my own. It jut some simple query making some sentence using givens.In Drupal views it looks like this:<b>[title] in [field_region] (region) is a [term_node_tid] located in Georgia - about [distance] from Tbilisi, country's capital town </b>Of course it's not just so simple, in order to achieve…

Update: Georgian Railway still (2016) offers free Wi-FI (at least in Tbilisi - Batumi line), but it is slow, because most of the passengers have tuned their devices (laptops and mobile phones) to online video streaming services making this a very bad internet browsing experience. Once I noticed a dude opening torrent sites and downloading movies (most probably piratical)  - while browsing YouTube meanwhile. For some serious work - Wi-FI offered by Georgian Railways (it' s Geocell actually) - is not an option - and if you need a stable internet connection while on trip - I highly suggest…

Coffee bar Palms is one of the oldest coffee places I know located in Batumi park between Hotel Intourist Palace and Seaside Boulevard.  Here you can order scramble and delicious Turkish coffee for breakfast for reasonable price. Coffee bar Palms in Batumi Interior made from Bamboo tree

As tourist resort city Batumi offers many tourist leisures. And some scam.Like today I made a purchase for 9.50 Gel and gave 20 Gel but fir change got just 0.50 tetri. When I reminded that I gave 20 saleswoman started to scream. Ok I got my change back.At restaurant ship located near to sea wr got scammef for some extra 50 gel. Our overall bill what usually should be 80 gel raised to 130. I wont complain much. Its just sad to sre that Batumihas started to cheat.Remember visiting popular tourist destination be careful not to be scammed. 

Once I lived in Batumi for about 6 months and today after about one year I visited it again. Its amazing how Batumi has changed. New rope way has been built offering one of the most amazing views in the city. Many new skyscrapers has been built. Batumi I missed you so much.  Striking sunset in Batumi I took above image back in 2014 using my phone, in 2016 I re-exported this image to Adobe Lightroom and... wow.

Today I walked a lot. At first made a ride on metro to Avlabari, then with taxi up to Sameba. Then down to old city. Then up to Narikala and then near Mother Georgia monument to Rustaveli Boulevard.  From there with bus nr 124 up to Mtatsminda amusement park. with funfunicular down to the Pantheon and again by foot again down to the Rustaveli Boulevard. I guess some 8km at least.

On May 26 in Georgia Independance day is celebrated.  Back in 1918 was founded first Democratic Georgian Republic.Here is few interesting facts about that time Georgia I found on Wikipedia:The Democratic Republic of Georgia existed from May 1918 to February 1921 and was the first modern establishment of a Republic of Georgia.The DRG was created after the collapse of the Russian Empire that began with the Russian Revolution of 1917. Its established borders were with the Kuban People's Republic and the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus in the north, the Ottoman Empire and the…

Today I visited Mtskheta, an ancient capital of Georgia. Svetiskhoveli cathedral looks astonishing and rumor has it there can be found clothing of Jesus. According to the tradition of the Georgian Orthodox Church, the chiton was acquired by a Jewish Rabbi from Georgia named Elioz (Elias), who was present in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion and bought the robe from a soldier. He brought it with him when he returned to his native town of Mtskheta, Georgia, where it is preserved to this day beneath a crypt in the Patriarchal Svetitskhoveli Cathedral. The feast day in honor of the “Chiton…

Today new wine festival was held in Tbilisi.  Many wine from different regions was presented. I enjoyed 35 years old Georgian brandy.  Although I dont believe it was so old. Af least I enjoyed it.

Taking a few hour drive from Kutaisi to Tbilisi you can expierience many Georgias. For example in Imereti region people sells honey, in Khashuri nets are sold while in Gori apples.Amazing Georgia

Yesterday I created promoted Facebook post and spent on it $5, and I was sure, it wont help me generate any lead. I was wrong. Today I recieved a phone call interested in my offering.Pretty nice, now it's time to aquire that lead and convert it to customer.So even with small amount of money you can generate some leads.In case of me $5 for a lead is damn good money to spend, because the profit is some 30 times higher, except it requires a hard work to fulfill that offering

Yesterday I promised that I will spend $100 in 30 days in Google and Facebook ads in order to generate leads for my Drupal development firm. I will post about my success or failures in my blog for each spent $5. (at least I hope so :) )Since my target audience is located in Georgia, and Georgia is country where Georgian is spoken $5 is pretty OK amount of money to get more than 100 clicks a day to your website. It's cheaper than in US, Canada or UK. On the other hand I don't speak Georgian, and for now my promotional materials are in English. So there is huge risk, nobody will care, because…

I must admit it may be harder to acquire new customers when nobody knows about you, no matter how good you or your services are. After quite a long vacation I decided to take another look at my marketing strategy, and for now I must admit it sucks. I'm talking about web development - For now I'm having some long term customers, and that's great, but I'm looking for growth. Yes we can discus about SEO, viral marketing and other. This time I decided to talk about Paid marketing. I'm considering to spend some amount of money in Google Adwords and Facebook promoted posts to generate…

After two weeks of my travel to Latvia I finally feel happy that I am back to Tbilisi.  

I have ambivalent feelings in my native Riga. It's sad to leave my loved ones like my dear grandma.See you in Tbilisi.

Tonight whole Europe will open its museum doors for visitors. Starting Riga and ending Tbilisi

Those traveling to Riga and looking for home away home feeling. Consider visit Ilguciems, for me it reminds Brighton beach,  Brooklyn or vicr verse. Old timers from Soviet era lazy walking around pathways.  Local bread shops or restaurant Tatiana.

Unfortunatelly due to my travels abroad, and despite I have 3G phone, I failed to connect to internet and post blog posts for 2 days. There still is places on Earth where is no internet connection. I hope I wont fail next time

It's damn hard to keep posting when you are on your travel.

Latvian GDP has rised by 2.8% in 2014 first quarter.http://www.gorod.lv/novosti/230600-vvp-latvii-v-pervom-kvartale-etogo-goda-vyros-na-28

Hockey championship in Minsk, Belarus has started

At start of this May I changed Adsense placement in my blog in order to get higher click through rate. So far this seems is working, CTR has raised. Now I'm willing to increase Cost Per Click. For last 10 days I stacked with 2 image only ad units and one text only ad unit. I believe due to fact, that my blog traffic is pretty modest, I started to receive smaller CPC, while getting higher CTR.For now I'm switching back to Google Adsense default settings (text/image)It's still plenty of time to test, what works better and what not. In future I'm planing to decrease ad unit count to 2…

Laidi manor or palace (Laidu muiža - pils in Latvian) is a very cool tourism sight in Laidi parish, Kuldīga municipality, in the historical region of Courland (Kurzeme) Built in the early 19th century by the local German nobility, it has housed the Laidi primary school since 1921. Park at Laidi manor The origins of the manor date back to the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The complex of the manor has formed around the administrator’s house, which is the oldest one in the manor. From the year 1800 to 1810 the nobleman Manteuffel was building the manor’s castle with its household…

Seems that Baltic capital Riga is friendly for bicycle riders.  Havent seen so many riders lately. There are plenty of tracks in Riga, integrated in overall city traffic.Many youngsters choose bicycle as their vehicle.  Propably it's just a trend. If you are looking for cyclists friendly city Riga might be your choise.

Lithuania a small Baltic nation, once a part of Rzecpospolita, then a member of Soviet Union, now a small country on European Union Eastern border.The Anti-Russian sentiment seems is high just on TV, I guess.. I was surprised to see how good Lithuanians know and use Russian language. That is first thougt. Stop pretending that there is no Russia, Russia is bad or other bullshit.Second, but minor thought, together with Latvians, Lithuanians are complex nation. I'm always laughing hearing sentences like, here is Europe, where do you think it's allowed. Lithuanians like to think they are "better…

Next two weeks in Latvia

Bagrati Cathedral probably is among the most iconic site to visit in Georgia, and it should be a must have on your travel list if you have been in those parts of Georgia (Kutaisi). If you are traveling to or from Kutaisi International airport take your time and pay a visit here. In fact I have visited Bagrati cathedral just between my travels to or from Kutaisi airport. So did happened my first visit here after I had been living in Georgia for more than 3 years. And so did happened when I last time took my mom here after she arrived to Kutaisi. P.S. Both of my parents have visited Bagrati…

On the way to Kutaisi

In this Drupal tutorial I will show you how to add Pinterest Pin It Button to Drupal 7 site using views and html.tpl.php file. I like it keep it simple, and I have created a separate view for all social share plugins (Facebook, Twitter, G+ and Pinterest). Each of the social sites came with his own JavaScript you have to load either to your template.php file or I prefer to add it to html.tpl.php in theme folder (If you have not it, consider creating it). Add Pinterest script to your html.tpl.php <!-- Please call pinit.js only once per page --> <script type="text/javascript" async src…

One of the most interesting hotels I have stayed last time. Located in the footsteps of surrounding mountains next to Ilias lake, which offers some recreation opportunities, in heart of Georgia, Kakheti, Kvareli. We stayed here at Easter weekend, 2014 and we definitely got what we paid for. About Royal Batoni Located in a picturesque area on the bank of Ilia Lake, between the Kvareli Mountains and the Duruji River, Royal Batoni offers a sauna and outdoor swimming pool with beautiful views of the lake. Free Wi-Fi and private parking are available. The elegant rooms feature modern design and…

According to exchange rates issued by National Bank of Georgia, USD to GEL exchange rates on 02.05.2014 are 1.7700, what is up by 0.0185 if compared to middle of April.Since start of this year GEL has lost already 0.0334 from its value on 01.01.2014.Or by other words saying, if in start of this year we had 1000 GEL we could buy for them $575.83, then today with 1000 GEL we can buy just $564.97, in total we have lost $10.82 in 4 months.In case you are doing business in Georgia I would suggest for you to switch your currency from GEL to EUR or USD. By so, you will not loose $10 for each…

I agree social media makes a huge impact on blogs traffic and its conversation rates.In this tutorial I will show how you can auto publish your posts to your Facebook page using Twitter and Twitterfeed.At First we will setup auto publish to Twitter, using Twitterfeed, you can find tutorial here.Once all of our posts are synced with Twitter, we can use Twitter built in features to connect and publish to our Facebook page. For full guide read here: https://support.twitter.com/articles/31113-using-twitter-with-facebookIf you are using Open Graph it's gonna be just fine in your Facebook…

My Online income in April has raised for about 42% compared with month of March and makes modest $7.86.In average in month of April I earned about a $ 0.26 in a day, what is up by by $0.08 compared with March averages, when it was about $0.177 in a dayHighest earnings per day: $ 1.19Days earning more than $1: 3Lowest earning per day: $ 0.01In April my Adsense ad units made me money each day, thanks to RPM.  So in this case, I can say, I didn't spent a day without earning some penny.Speaking of my Adsense goals, some time ago I have setup on - Earn $40 in a month. By today I'm 1/5 way…

In this video it is explained and showed how to take screenshot in Samsung Galaxy S4. But it works for most of Samsungs for sure, at least it works for my Samsung Galaxy core I8262.How to take screenshotSimultaneously press power button and home buttonOpen screenshot from your gallery

I have been serving Google AdSense on my blog for a while. My traffic is pretty modest and so do is my earnings from Google AdSense. I have CTR about 0.7% on this blog, and I want to improve that, by getting at least 1% CTR. Some time ago I made the first experiment with changing layouts for serving ads. That didn't work as expected, and I'm changing again. Meet the new layout: For now, I am serving maximum allowed Google AdSense ad units on my site - 3. I have placed first under Title, and I'm using for that Responsive add Image only. Then I'm having 2 Responsive ads, this time text only.…

Month of April was pretty good in terms of organic search traffic. My traffic increased by 80.258% this month compared with previous month. In total making 977 unique visitors.By now I'm getting 32.5 unique visitors in a day.My goal is to reach 6000 unique visitors in a month, by end of this September/October.6000/month stands for 200/day. Right now I'm 1/6 there. Time is left not so much - 5 months. And that is making me worried. Althoug I'm seeing pretty good traffic increase, it's still very modest. And if things will continue go like previous 7 month, it could be hard to get 6000 uniques…