Blog Archive: June 2021

Hotel Abastumani Residence

28 June, 2021 | Hotel reviews | 14 seen

Located in Abastumani village, this hotel features a shared lounge, garden, BBQ facilities, and free WiFi. Featuring family rooms, this property also provides guests with a terrace. The accommodation provides a 24-hour front desk, room service, and currency exchange for guests.

We booked a family room for one night stay in mid-June 2021, and paid for that GEL 350 (with breakfast included). The place seems nice, kid friendly. We enjoyed our brief stay here a lot. 

Abastumani residence

Surrounded by pine trees, the area of Abastumani is a popular health resort. 

All units are equipped with a flat-screen TV with satellite channels, fridge, a kettle, a shower, a hairdryer and a wardrobe. Featuring a private bathroom, rooms at the hotel also provide guests with a mountain view.

Guests at Abastumani Residence can enjoy a continental breakfast.

Clouds over Abastumani

You can play table tennis and darts at the accommodation, and the area is popular for hiking and fishing.

The nearest airport is Kutaisi International, 55 km from Abastumani Residence, and the property offers a paid…

How I Migrated my blog from Drupal 7 to version 9

27 June, 2021 | Drupal Development | 13 seen

The blog you are currently reading now is more than 7 years old.

I launched it back in October 2013 on the Drupal 7 platform.

During the years blog has expanded a lot and now is heldong a few thousand articles - zillions of photographs, more than 700 articles with geo location information and so on. 

The more the blog grew, the less I wanted to do any upgrades between Drupal versions, but then come the end of June 2021 and I just did it.

The past couple of days and hours I've been spending migrating my Drupal powered blog from version 7 to version 9. 

If you are reading this, you are reading the migrated version. 

Originally I started this upgrade path a few years ago, but was never happy with the result (too much complicated things to migrate, like gmaps, location, amazon filters, custom fields etc etc).

Around a year ago I almost did the upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, but again too many things were left broken and I decided I will keep the 7th version as long as I can (and I'm happy for that)

Around Aprl/May 2021 I noticed search traffic to my…

Vilgāle Winter Edition

25 June, 2021 | Tourism objects | 5 seen

Made a quick stop at Vilgāle today to check how our apt renovation works are going and made this short drone footage.

There is some recreational potential at Vilgāle. There is a guest house, a Montessori school, some shop (s), and a huge Vilgales lake (a couple of months ago I met some Aussies here). Quite often properties go from the hammer in this village. they just sold kindergarten for EUR 20K (we wanted to buy, but hell - what would we do with a kindergarten)
DJI Mavic Air 2, February 27, 2021
Music by Scott Holmes: Hotshot
 

GDP Per Capita In Former Soviet Union Countries 2019

23 June, 2021 | Macroeconomics | 78 seen

It has been a while since I last time compared the economic output of the former Soviet Union states.

Last time I did, I had data for 2013, see: GDP Per Capita In Former Soviet Union Countries 2013

With the latest economic sanctions against Belarus I decided to take a look, how does each of the former Soviet countries stands now, the latest data I was able to gather was from 2019 (World Bank).

Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is a metric that breaks down a country's economic output per person and is calculated by dividing the GDP of a country by its population. For the ease of calculations GDP per capita nominal is used in following table

Without further ado, here is the raw data

Green Cape near Batumi

21 June, 2021 | Tourism objects | 61 seen

Green cape is one of the most beautiful places in Georgia, located just some 9 km outside of Batumi. 

Batumi Botanical Garden is located within Green Cape's picturesque setting. You can reach Green cape from Batumi by a taxi or bus.

Pebbled beach at Green cape

There are several cafes located in and within a close proximity to Green cape. The main entrance to the Batumi Botanical garden also is located here.

Green Cape and a pier

This place has also some special place in our hearts, as back in the Summer of 2012, we camped overnight here at had a very very nice Summer Solstice (June 23) with grilled meat and a morning swim in the salt waters of the Black sea. Sweet memories. 

See this short video from Batumi and Green cape.

beach near the Green Cape near Batumi

The area is 70-92 meters above sea level.
Thousands of visitors come to the garden each year due to its wide variety of flora.

Javakheti Trip

18 June, 2021 | Living in Georgia | 11 seen

One of the strangest weekend trips, - from the Russian Tsar favorite places in Abastumani to the footsteps of Khertvisi fortress which, rumor has it, Alexader the Great has visited.

From the Georgian Cave towns in Vardzia to friendly Armenians in Ninotsminda and back to Russian Dukhobor settlements near the beautiful lakes of Saghamo, Paravani, and Tsalka reservoir, not to mention tasty Belgian chocolate from the Phoka Monastery.

Strange, but awesome. Thumbs up!

How To Update to PHP 7.4 Ubuntu 16.04 Drupal 7 Nginx

17 June, 2021 | Servers | 258 seen

I was facing problems with some Drupal modules not being supported, before upgrading to PHP 7.4 version.  

As I had running Ubuntu 16.04 server with Nginx and PHP 7.0 FPM on in I felt a bit afraid performing a live update and decided to make a new backup for all settings. 

Here I found some good advice: How To Install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 20.04/18.04/16.04

and also for Drupal specific things took my own advice from here: How to Install Drupal with Nginx, PHP-FPM 7.4, MySQL, phpMyAdmin on Ubuntu 20.04 - Linode Guide

Step 1: Add PHP PPA Repository

We’ll add ppa:ondrej/php PPA repository which has the latest build packages of PHP.

Step 2: Install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 18.04/19.04/16.04

Install PHP 7.4 on Ubuntu 18.04/19.04/16.04 using the command:

Check version installed:

$ php -v

Next, install php7.4-fpm with php-gd extension that is…

Hotel Dalis Mta

14 June, 2021 | Hotel reviews | 45 seen

Hotel Dalis Mta is located some 35 kilometers from the Dedoplitskaro town, right next to the Dalis Mta water reservoir in the Chachuna managed area.

We had a chance to stay here overnight at the start of June 2020, as the trip was organized by a German friend, he was the one who found and booked this place. The hotel charged GEL 50 per person, plus an additional GEL 30 dinner and an additional GEL 30 breakfast. If you are into grilling I guess it shouldn't be a problem to prepare a grill (as long as you have firewood and meat with you)

We booked this place in the frames of a weekend trip to Chachuna managed area, visiting mud volcanoes, eagle canyon and Big Shirtaki airfield

Solar panels installed at Dalis MTA hotel in Georgia

There is limited power (runs on solar panels plus generator) and no internet connection or phone coverage (so I guess it would be hard to call the place)

We got a nice, simple room with 3 beds, a separate bathroom and electricity was turned in for a few hours in the evening. 

I had a short small talk with the owner Lia and her associate, I was told this houses were originally built as…

Vashlovani Trip

11 June, 2021 | Living in Georgia | 36 seen

Epic Georgia! Epic Vashlovani!

Another awesome weekend recorded. Crossing desert sand, meeting more than 30 turtles, reaching man-built Chachuna reservoir, stepping in volcano mud puddles.

With an overnight stay in a camp base powered by solar power. Reaching Eagle canyon near Dedoplitskaro and having fun at abandoned Russian airfields in the middle of nowhere.

Many thanks to Ralph Schmidt for making this trip happen.
June 5-6, 2021
 

Hilton Batumi Hotel Review

8 June, 2021 | Hotel reviews | 37 seen

Located in the centre of Batumi, just 200 m from the Black Sea coast, Hilton Batumi is a pet-friendly 5-star hotel offering a modern interior design and high-quality facilities. Dolphinarium is 300 m from the hotel and Europe Square is 900 m away.

We booked this 5-star Hilton Batumi hotel for a 3-night stay at the end of May 2021 and paid about GEL 2400 / USD 772.

Price included a junior suite executive room with excellent views from the 19th floor, access to the executive lounge for some light snacks, a salty swimming pool, gym, and some more perks (breakfast), as we arrived in Batumi by plane, we didn't have to concern about parking.

In the past, we have stayed in many Batumi hotels, but from the 5star I should mention Batumi Radisson and Paragraph hotel in Skhekvetili. Hilton Batumi is something in Between. Frankly speaking, I liked Radisson more, but this is just my personal opinion. They all are great hotels, with great service. 

16 Best Batumi Beach / Seaside Hotels

Executive room at Hitlon Batumi

Each modern room here is air-conditioned and carpeted and features a flat-screen TV with satellite…

Top 10 Best Selling Laptops June 2021

7 June, 2021 | Laptop Reviews | 11 seen

In this article I've listed top 10 best selling laptops models on Amazon in month of June, 2021

A quick note: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on Amazon site, I might earn an affiliate income from that. Prices for laptop computers listed on this page are retrieved using Amazon Product Advertising API and is updated daily. For actual prices please refer on the product page on Amazon.

Powerful and portable, the Aspire 5 laptop delivers on every aspect of everyday computing. Housing the AMD Ryzen 3 3200U Mobile Processor, this Aspire 5 can tackle any job no matter how complex. Creativity soars to new heights with sharp, crisp visuals showcased on the 15.6" Full HD IPS screen, while the thin bezel provides you more space to work with wherever inspiration strikes. It’s the perfect companion to take with you wherever you go!

• AMD…

Batumi and Green Cape

4 June, 2021 | Living in Georgia | 13 seen

Another awesome weekend has been in our tapes - this time we booked a Tbilisi - Batumi flight by Vanilla Sky (it's super cheap and takes only 50 minutes to get there), a 5-star Hilton Hotel with executive views + gym and saltwater pool access.

Visited Green Cape + Botanical garden. Pink ice cream is still our favorite. Made a ton of hyper lapses and experimented with keyframing (fast forward in Adobe Premiere).

Enjoy and thumbs up!