Blog Archive: June 2020

Poppy fields near Mchadijvari

30 June, 2020 | Tourism objects | 228 seen

Summers in Georgia are very beautiful, traveling around the country is a pleasure. One such travel happened at the start of June 2020, when we decided to find the real poppy field.

Let me explain, a couple of weeks ago we already started to search for a poppy field here in Georgia to make lovely family photos, we did found one little field near Marneuli, and we even took very good portrait photography,  but this time we decided to find a real, rich with flowers, good for photography, and luckily thanks to the hints on Facebook we got location details - Poppy fields near Mchadijvari

Poppy fields near Mchadijvari in Georgia

The destination is quite easy reachable from Tbilisi, in about an hour we were here, with a little stop at Tsilkani Cathedral

Using Google Maps we added following route - Tbilisi - > Tsilkani cathedral - Mchadijvari. Once in the Mchadijvari, there is a Mchadijvari cathedral, and on the right side there is road, some 500 meters and there is a little unpaved road, another 300-400 meters and our destinations was reached

Poppy fields near Mchadijvari in Georgia

It…

Saint Dimitri Tesalonikeli Fathers Moanstery near Mtksheta

27 June, 2020 | Churches and Monasteries | 10 seen

This is a little monastery near Mtskheta, best reached via Mtskheta-Shiomghvime monastery road.

That's how we actually discovered this place at the end of May 2020 - during a random drive to the Shio-Mgvime monastery, we looked for some nice picnic areas to dine outdoors, we did a few stops here and there until noticed this place.

We didn't picnic here, but in the nearby forest after a brief trip to the monastery.

Probably not as impressive as the Jvari monastery or Svetistkhoveli cathedral in Mtshekta this place has some magic.

Little wooden roadside in Georgian 

The monastery complex is at the end of the road. Next to the monastery, there is a forest park and some horseback riding activities.

At the entrance of the entrance, we met monks, and they allowed us to come inside to take look around and take some photographs. 

A little church

There is a little church inside. What's interesting they are using solar power to generate electricity here. Very modern and sustainable. 

Wooden log houses inside the monastery

I'm not an expert on monastery…

Average Monthly Salary in European Union 2020

26 June, 2020 | Macroeconomics | 527 seen

In 2020 three were 27 member states in the European Union (EU), 19 of the 27 EU member states have adopted the euro (€) as their common currency.

In this article, I've compared the gross monthly average salary for 2020. As I have been writing these articles since 2014, I've left the United Kingdom, just for reference.

Update: Average Monthly Salary in European Union 2022

I wouldn't call the below written scientific research or take it too seriously, as most of the data in this article are taken from Wikipedia's article List of European countries by average wage. 

All calculations are done using Google Spreadsheets. The data provided below might not be 100% accurate but they should give an overall insight on average salary levels across European Union member countries.

Countries are ranked by average gross salary in 2020

Oskars Kalpaks Museum and Memorial Place "Airītes"

25 June, 2020 | Museums | 16 seen

Oskars Kalpaks Museum and Memorial Place "Airītes" is a branch of the Latvian War Museum established in memory of the hero of the Latvian War of Independence Colonel Oskars Kalpaks in "Airītes", Zirņi Parish, Saldus Region.

On March 6, 1919 during the liberation battles of Latvia, colonel Oskars Kalpaks, commander of the First Latvian Special Battalion; Nikolajs Grundmanis, the First Commander of the Battalion's Special Company; Peteris Krievs, Lieutenant-General of the Cavalry Squad and Johans-Hans Srinders, Lieutenant of the Baltic Home Guard Artillery died near Airites.

Airītes

From 1922-1933 monuments in remembrance of the four heroes were unveiled here, and the Oskars Kalpaks Memorial was opened in 1936. During the Soviet occupation, the Airites Museum and memorial ensemble were closed down. The memorial was reopened in 1988, and the renovated museum opened its doors in 1990. The museum's exhibition shows the role of Oskars Kalpaks and his battalion during the liberation battles

Church of the Archangels of Mchadijvari

23 June, 2020 | Churches and Monasteries | 14 seen

Mchadijvari Archangels Church is an architectural and historical monument in Georgia,  in the center of the village of Mchadijvari. 

We discovered this church when searching for the poppy fields in Georgia, at the start of June 2020 (hint poppy fields are next to the church, some 5000 meters on the right.

Church of the Archangels of Mchadijvari

The above picture is made from the Dusheti - Mchadijvari-Odzisi highway site. This time we actually didn't visited the cathedral, but here is what I was able to find out from Georgian Wikipedia

There is a construction inscription on the church. According to the inscription, the church was built in 1668 by Domenti Catholicos, and the castle-fence by Constantine Mukhranbaton in 1746 .

Shortly after the construction of the church, during one of the raids on Kartli, the Leks surrounded the village of Mchadijvari, but the church survived the demolition. In 1746, Constantine Mukhranbaton rebuilt the village and built a fortress around the church of Mchadijvari: "to be built and…

Khatsiri Forest Park

20 June, 2020 | Tourism objects | 23 seen

Khatsiri Forest park is a nice recreational area next to the town of Tianeti in Georgia. 

We discovered this place by accident after spending a day at Kuzh Park in Tianeti (sometimes we love to drive to the Tianeti town to walk in the Kuzh park with our baby girl).

Way back home to Tbilisi we decided to make a stop here at Khatsiri Forest Park - let me say in one word - WOW. I was impressed.

Picnic area at Khatsiri Forest park

We are planning to come here often and make a picnic quite often. Also this is yet another addition to our picnic places around Georgia.

View to the town of Tianeti

Local farmers are grazings cows and sheep in these meadows.

There is a little church a top of the hill

i didn't find much information online about this place, but if you happen be around town of Tianeti, give it a try.

Pine trees at Khatsiri forest park

Minimum Wages in European Union 2020

19 June, 2020 | Macroeconomics | 16 seen

In 2020 there were 21 out of 27 European Union member states with an official minimum wage set by the government.

In this article I've listed them all, also this is the first year I'm not including data for the UK in this table

Turns out this is already the seventh (#7) article about minimum wages in European Union featured on the blog.

Eat For Fit - Healty Food Home Delivery in Tbilisi

18 June, 2020 | Living in Georgia | 161 seen

Eat for fit is my favorite healthy food home delivery service here in Tbilisi.

Recently these loss-weight / dietary food delivery companies have started to pop up like mushrooms in the forest after the rain here in Tbilisi. We have tried a dietary menu from Eat for fit twice - and both times the result has been excellent. 

One thing should be added - we are the gym goers - and the great weight-loss results comes both from the physical activities and well-balanced food. Eat for Fit are great with calories counting and they cook really delicious food. There has not been a day I felt starvation. All was well calculated and prepared individually. 

We paid about GEL 32 (February 2020) for 5 meals for a day, meals were delivered using Glovo courier service every evening for the next day.

Eat for Fit packaging

Each day there were 5 items, like for breakfast, dinner, snacks, and supper. For snacks, there were fruits and dietary fitness snacks.

Cottage cheese with dills

When the meal plan was made - Eat For Fit asked is there some food I don't like and if there…

Tsilkani cathedral

16 June, 2020 | Churches and Monasteries | 37 seen

The Tsilkani cathedral of the Mother of God is a Georgian Orthodox church in the village of Tsilkani, Mtskheta Municipality, in Georgia's eastern region of Mtskheta-Mtianeti.

Originally built in the 4th century, the church was repeatedly remodeled in the Middle Ages. The extant edifice is a domed cross-in-square design, contained in a walled enclosure with corner towers. It is inscribed on the list of the Immovable Cultural Monuments of National Significance.

We discovered this church in early June 2020, when traveling the Natkhtari - Tsilkani - Mukhrani highway (we were in the searches for poppy fields, which we later found some 10 km from this church)

Tsilkani Cathedral

The Tsilkani cathedral stands in the centre of the eponymous village—northwest of the ancient city of Mtskheta—on the left bank of the Narekvavi, a tributary of the Aragvi River. The village, home to a Late Bronze Age burial mound and other archaeological finds, is also notable for a 4th–5th-century Christian crypt, with a Greek inscription on its wall

Church…

How to Install Drupal with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.4, MySQL, phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04 - Linode Guide

13 June, 2020 | Servers | 133 seen

In this article, you will learn how to setup webserver for serving  Drupal  websites running with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.4, MySQL and phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04

For the following tutorial, I used very much the information from my previous guide with Ubuntu 18.04, but I decided to rewrite it for Ubuntu 20.04 version as it is shipped with php7.4 version and will work for Drupal 7, Drupal 8 and most probably for Drupal 9

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 20.04 
• Root privileges.

You can get a cheap VPS starting just $5/mo from Linode. That's what I did - bought a new nanode from Linode

Deploying server with Linode

Literally in a couple of seconds, the new server was up and running - that's what I love sticking with Linode for years

Follow basic security guide, see: Securing Your Server

I will use Putty for Windows to access SSH

Create the user, replacing example_user with your desired username. You’ll then be asked to assign the user a password:

Add the user to the sudo group so…

File Permissions for gmap_markers.js

12 June, 2020 | Drupal Development | 13 seen

Time after time I'm facing this issue with gmap markers. As mostly this happens when I'm doing something on the server side with file permissions, I decided to keep the notes

here is the problem

Here is the solution

Simple CSS trick to Make Table Responsive

11 June, 2020 | Drupal Development | 51 seen

Working on the OptionsBrew.com project (website is powered by Drupal 8) I faced the following responsive table issue while browsing content with a table on smaller screens (phone)

Broken Table on a smaller screen

Luckily there is a simple CSS workaround:

in the .css file add the following to table properties:

like this:

here is how it looks now

Responsive table

You can see a live example here: Top 20 Most Active Stock Options May 2020

Poppy fields near Marneuli

6 June, 2020 | | 95 seen

We love poppy fields, we have featured them a couple of times here at the Piece of Life series

• Beautiful Poppy Field Near P104 (Jaunpils-Tukums) Road (Latvia)
• Railroad crossing in Skrunda municipality, Latvia

Today we are going to share a brief photo story with poppy field near Marneuli, next to the Милена Оптовый Магазин (Milena mall)

It was one of the first days when travel restrictions between Georgia's inner cities were lifted and we decided to head to the Marneuli side looking for poppy fields (my partner have seen online some beautiful photos of poppies the day before). I love these wandering around days.

We didn't find the special poppy field, instead we found poppies. Surprisingly we made a lot of great family portraits here rich with poppies  in the background.

Poppy fields next to the Milena Shopping mall near Marneuli

Quite an interesting stop here, we spent about an hour in this flower field.

Poppy field

That was a nice day at the end of May 2020.

Drupal 7 Fix: SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1231 Variable 'sql_mode' can't be set to the value of 'NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER'.

5 June, 2020 | Drupal Development | 1,129 seen

I was migrating Drupal 7 website to a newer infrastructure (PHP 7.4) and during the migration process when tried to connect to the MySQL database  I faced following error - SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1231 Variable 'sql_mode' can't be set to the value of 'NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER'.

Here is the error code:

No_auto_create_user

After quick research I was able to find a patch (Mysql 8 Support on Drupal 7 #24)  which involves overwriting core database.inc file (inclues/database/mysql - > database.inc)

here I'…

May 2020 Dividend Income Report - $225.17

3 June, 2020 | Investments | 18 seen

Welcome to the thirty-seventh (#37) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks and peer to peer lending in May 2020.

Just like the previous month of April, in May we also spent in a self-isolation (because of Covid-19) here in Georgia. Some of the strict lockdown measurements were lifted (like using a private vehicle and going from city to city)  we did a few road trips here in Georgia.  Baby girl is doing her online class, learning about animals, shapes, continents, and even planets. Quite fascinating what a 22-month-old can do. Development is very rapid.

Saint Dimitri Tesalonikeli Fathers Moanstery near Mtksheta

May come with very sad news - my dad passed away, some 11 days before his 66 year birthday. My dad was like a best buddy to me, we talked a lot about investments, stocks, politics, we argued, disagreed, we had opinions  - most of our conversations were on WhatsApp chat, he was very tech guy, into gadgets.. dad I miss you. Everything's gonna be alright - this was his favorite phrase. His last message on WhatsApp was on May 8: