Blog Archive: January 2019

How To Upgrade Drupal 7 to 8 (With Multilingual Support)

9 January, 2019 | Drupal Development | 49 seen

Here comes another article, which has been in the blog's draft section since the start of 2017. In this article, I will share my notes on performing a major Drupal upgrade from 7 to 8 with multilingual support.

As a Drupal developer, I've been pretty conservative and don't rush for upgrades just because of upgrades, but here I was working with a website which was almost 8 years old (built from scratch on Drupal 7 in 2011)

What I don't like when upgrading from Drupal 7 to 8, is that the upgrade requires a fresh install of Drupal 8 site. Unfortunately, there are no still the magical one-click upgrade button (It's 2019 and not 2007, right)

In this Drupal tutorial, I will use the real example with actual content, modules and some custom fields - the site is not over customized, but it has some customization.

Let's start with a fresh Drupal 8 installation, follow this guide to learn more: How to Install & Config Drupal 8 on Ubuntu 14.04 + Ngnix

I own several Linode VPS's and deployment of new Drupal site took me about 5 minutes, depending on your hosting provider and your…

How To Disable / Enable Windows 10 Update

8 January, 2019 | Servers | 24 seen

Windows 10 updates might get annoying, and though they are much needed and it's not recommended to turn them off, in this article I will show one easy method how to disable and later enable Windows Update.

For other methods please see: How to Disable Windows 10 Update in Every Way

Understand the limitations of this method. While disabling the automatic update service will temporarily halt any Windows 10 cumulative updates, the service will re-enable itself after a certain amount of time. Here are the directions:

1. Press the Windows logo key + R at the same time to invoke the Run box.

2. Type services.msc and press Enter.

3. Scroll down to Windows Update, and double-click it.

4. In Startup type, select Disabled. Then click Apply and OK to save the settings.

To enable windows update, repeat the steps above and in startup mode chose Manual…

Bolnisi Sioni Cathedral

6 January, 2019 | Churches and Monasteries | 13 seen

Bolnisi Sioni Cathedral is a Georgian Orthodox basilica in the Bolnisi village of Bolnisi District, Georgia. The cathedral was built in 478–493. It is the oldest extant church building in Georgia. Bishop David was the overseeing church leader for the construction of Bolnisi Sioni.

It took me more than 7 years of living in Georgia to visit for the first time Bolnisi and Bolnisi Sioni at the end of December 2018, though I was familiar that there are one of the oldest historical documents of the Georgian alphabet.​

Bolnisi Sioni

Bolnisi Sioni Cathedral is known for its Georgian inscriptions. These are one of the oldest historical documents of the Georgian alphabet. This church is the first Georgian building to have a completion date on the exterior. Bolnisi Sioni’s decorative scheme was a Sasanian style. The southern and central parts of the church are adorned with curling vine scrolls, arabesques, and foliate motifs. Uniform masonry blocks were used to build on to the original building’s late antiquity remnants on the southern façade

How to get on one photography Tbilisi TV tower, Narikala and Tabor Monastery

5 January, 2019 | | 7 seen

Simple - panoramic photography.

It was at the end of 2018, we were wandering around Tbilisi botanical garden, to discover Zip Line, when I thought - hmm, there is a good observation point from which we can see Tbilisi TV tower, Narikala fortress and even Tabor monastery. 

I decided to make a quick experiment and was shooting panoramic photography. The result? 

Here you go

Panoramic photo from Tbilisi

I love experimenting with panoramic photography and I love doing it in Tbilisi, see for example Panoramic Photography From Tbilisi Holy Trinity Cathedral or How to take and create HDR Panoramic photos

Well, I agree - the blog post is not the best solution for sharing a panoramic photo - it might be a good idea to build a simple panoramic photography plugin for Piece of Life.

Panoramic photography from Tbilisi

P.S. Happy New Year (Happy New Year! Fireworks Photography from Tbilisi)

2018 in Review and Financial Goals for 2019

4 January, 2019 | Investments | 16 seen

I'm 33 now and I have a goal to save one million dollars by the time I will turn 60. That's 27 years to go. I've been documenting my journey towards financial independence for the past two years already

In today's article, I will review the past year of 2018 and take a quick glimpse at the New Year of 2019.

Just like in the previous year, 2017 for me was a year of peer to peer lending, dividend-paying stocks and  - cryptocurrencies. Speaking of cryptocurrencies 2018 was really bad for my long-term crypto holdings and whipped out all the great gains we made in 2017.

2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018

Structure of Investment portfolio at the end of 2018

At the start of 2018, I planned to invest about 42% of my annual net income, the planned amount for 2018 was $10,700.18, I managed to invest little more ($11,066.07) at the end of the year. I exceeded my initial plan by $365.89. In 2018, on the average I was investing at the pace of $922/mo, that's slightly less than back in 2017 ($1,000)…

Zip Line Tbilisi (Georgia)

2 January, 2019 | Outdoor Activities | 28 seen

Zip Line Tbilisi is another cool thing to do while in Georgia.

I might be late to the party, as discovered Zip Line Tbilisi just at the end of 2018, but seems it was first opened for a public already back in June 2017. It was during our latest trip to the Tbilisi Botanical garden when I noticed strange cables going from Narikala fortress into the botanical garden.

Zip Line Tbilisi

Visitors and locals of Georgia's capital Tbilisi can now enjoy the scenery of the city's popular botanical garden from a bird's eye perspective after a zip line running above the park was launched at the location earlier today.

Zip Line Tbilisi

Strung from the hilltop Narikala Fortress overlooking the city, the line is suspended 30 metres above the park and runs 270 metres to its destination platform. (Source)

Investment Goal #5 - $100,000 by the end of 2021 in Savings Account (Stocks, Cryptocurrencies, Peer to Peer Lending)

1 January, 2019 | Investments | 52 seen

This article has been in my blog drafts section since January 2018. With the New Year fast approaching, I took another look on it, and despite the goal sounds a bit scary to me now, I decided that January 1st, 2019 is a great day to publish it. As they say, there is no better date to make a wish. Here you go - my New Years resolution - a plan for the next three years.

I'm 33 now, and I have a goal to have in saving account a million dollars by the time I will turn 60, in 2045. I started my wealth building journey just two years ago in 2017, and by now I've managed to save ~ $20,000. On average that's about $10,000 a year.

To make it to $100K in the next 3 years, it would ask me to save $80,000 or about $26K a year. With my current savings rate, I could barely reach $50K by the end of 2021.

Now, that's why I decided to boost my goal (Which is just a small step from the bigger goal) - frankly speaking, from today's perspective, looking - I have not a single clue, how to double my savings rate on a yearly basis. 

On the other hand, there are a couple of options I'm considering…