Start-up Challenge Georgia November 16-21, 2014

20 November, 2014 | Doing Business | 13 seen

I had an honour to participate in event called Start-up challenge Georgia, which was held in Sheraton Metekhi in Tbilisi, Georgia.

I had a chance to listen to speakers like James Chung,  Spike Morelli, Marco Rubin and Warren Haber. Most interesting from what I hear I found on presentation of James Chung, his case study of investing venture capital in AgaMatrix company was pretty interesting. 

Here is what this event is all about:

Startup Challenge Georgia

Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency is inviting all eligible applicants to participate in the Startup Challenge Georgia on November 16-21, 2014 in Tbilisi, Georgia. A weeklong training is open to entrepreneurs who have an early-stage technology startup or have an idea and thinking of productizing it.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

Eligible applicants must meet the following criteria

• Must have a developed concept or product in a user-testing stage or already available on the market
• Product should be IT/web, mobile, energy, agriculture, or health

VALUE

• Participants will receive intense training…

My Barcelona Travel Guide - La Rambla, La Boqueria Market, Park Guell and even La Sagrada Familia

19 November, 2014 | Travel guides | 33 seen

This happened at the last days of October 2014, when after a week long travels around Catalonia we finally returned back to our starting point - Barcelona.

And so we decided to visit some local attractions. We all probably are familiar that one of the must have attractions in Barcelona is La Sagrada Familia cathedral, though we find this famous attraction, we refused to stay on a very long queue to get there in.

Another attraction we decided to visit was something  Park Guell (again, though we find it  - there was no parking place to park our car, and a person guarding parking lot - ordered us to drive away - we did, and didn't returned. 

We had a chance to visit a market called La Boqueria, and most pictures you will find in this article, has been made there. In short  - that's our Barcelona experience.

Bicycles on streets of Barcelona

Souvenir shops

La Boqueria Market in Barcelona

At La Boqueria Market in Barcelona

Fresh juices at La Boqueria Market in Barcelona

Olives at La Boqueria Market in Barcelona

La…

TBSC consulting - upgrade from Joomla to Drupal

16 November, 2014 | Drupal Development | 12 seen

TBSC consulting approached me for help - to help them out to secure their existing site, which was built on Joomla.

As a true Drupaller I offered them - can we switch CMS from Joomla to Drupal? And they agreed. Here is what we got:

TBSC Consulting Front Page

This site is built with help of some standard Drupal modules, and is availiable in two languages (English and Georgian)

TBSC Georgian

Although work on this site didn't request a lot of creativity - we were doing just migration of site, technical things were pretty harsh - main problem was to extract content and users from existing Joomla site, and then import it to Drupal site. But before that - here is a scenario which led me to suggest Drupal over Joomla:

So I got another Joomla site request to perform a Joomla major Upgrade from 1.5 to 2.5. 

I thought, hell, why not - let's fix this site, by not converting it to Drupal (As I usually do), but let's stay on Joomla.

Site works, there has been no hackers yet. So I started to do Joomla upgrade. At first I made a minor upgrade, to update Joomla database to latest stable. I was reading a lot…

Autumn in Tsinandali - Alexander Chavchavadze House Museum

15 November, 2014 | Tourism objects | 34 seen

This was a great Saturday - our friend took us on a Kakheti drive  - we went to Telavi (they have a great market there), Tsinandali (here is a house museum of Alexander Chavchavadze) and then we went to Royal Batoni near Ilia;s lake close to Kvareli. I decided to capture something from all of it - and in this post you will find pictures I captured at Alexander Chavchavadze house museum.

First time I was here around 3 years ago, also in month of November. Respecting traditions - then (first time) I didn't visited museum itself - just park, today we decided - why should we visit museum (what there might be so cool?), so just park, and some buildings we managed to get in :)

Autumn in Tsinandali

Bamboo trees at Tsinandali

Labyrinth and tree of Wishes at Tsinandali

Alexander Chavchavadze park

Restaurant

Trees at Tsinandali museum park

Trees at Tsinandali museum park

Entrance in Winery

Entrance in Winery

Hall

Wine Cellar

View to park

Those lovely colors…

Average Salary in Georgia = $442 in 2013

13 November, 2014 | Macroeconomics | 7 seen

Today I red an article pointing out about average salary in Georgia. 

It was interesting finding for me to learn that average salary in Republic of Georgia in 2013 was about $442 or GEL 773.

Turns out it's about 8.5% growth if compared to 2012. 

Though there is a pretty huge inequality of how many receives man and women.

So in 2013 men received average salary of $526 (GEL 920) while women got just $334 (GEL 585).

Source: http://newsgeorgia.ru/economy/20141112/217127602.html

Spontaneous Visit of Montserrat Mountain, Spain

12 November, 2014 | Tourism objects | 4 seen

Another spontaneous idea of visiting Montserrat Mountain arrived at our heads, after Google Maps misguided us from the main traffic road to Barcelona, and we went on the wrong direction - but hey -  we noticed a sign directing to Montserrat.

Signs speak themselves. 

Update: Visit of Mount Montserrat was a place from our about week long travels across region of Catalonia in Spain and Andorra. (Originally this article featured 18 bad quality pictures, 2 years latter since originally created this article, I reviewed both article and pictures and made some post-processing for photography in Adobe Lightroom). Now, I feel a bit sorry about myself I can't travel back in time and capture much much better photography, as back then (2014) I was just like another typical tourist flash lighting around with my point and shoot camera. Sad. On the other hand p Montserrat Mountain is a place I would love to return and will definitely return here!

Montserrat Mountain

Montserrat  is a multi-peaked rocky range located near the city of Barcelona, in …

Hotel Gaspa Review in Ordino, Andorra

11 November, 2014 | Hotel reviews | 13 seen

One thing I like about travel - is to choose hotels on site (who needs a booking systems? ).

So did happen this time, when we chose this 2 star hotel in Ordino, Andorra. As you might already now, Andorra is a tinny micro state sandwiched between Spain and France, so if you travel here by car, it's nothing tragic to drive out of capital city Andorra La Vella to find your perfect hotel.

After few minutes drive, we found ourselves in town/village called Ordino, and found a hotel just one the left side of high-way (I would call it street, rather a highway).

In overall - perfect 2 star hotel, for nice price - got this for EUR 40 with breakfast included, and it has a free parking on site.

Here are few pictures I managed to take at Hotel Gaspa, Ordino

Queen size bed at Hotel Gaspa

Room comes with a balcony

Balcony at Hotel Gaspa

View from balcony

Bathroom at Hotel Gaspa

Bathroom at Hotel Gaspa

Ordino  is the most northerly parish in the Principality of Andorra. Ordino is also the name of the main town…

Andorra - First Impressions

9 November, 2014 | Travel guides | 11 seen

Have you ever heard something of a tiny microstate of Andorra? I had, but my knowledge was short - so short, I didn't realize the precise location of it - I mean, I knew it's somewhere sandwiched between Spain, France or maybe France and Italy or even Spain and Portugal. In other words - yes I knew that such a place exists, but knew nothing more about it. Now I'm a little bit smarter in my Geography :)

So, how I got there? It all went spontaneous - after a couple of days in Spain, we decided, hey let's drive to Andorra. And we did.

My overall impression of Andorra right now - it's some tax haven, it's kinda outlet center (buy cheap - no or minimum taxes here).

And yes, it's sandwiched between Spain and France, and it's somehow related to Catalonia.

P.S. I'm somehow imagining Georgia (a country I'm currently living in) one day might become a very similar place to Andorra.

So here are some pictures I did take while in Andorra:

Entering Andorra La Vella

Scooters are popular in Andorra

Outlets malls in Andorra

Andorra La Vella

City centre of…

This day for history

8 November, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 0 seen

At first- I am too tired and wordless to write a 500 words/day minimum word post.

Second - decided to stop cycling in unsafe streets of Tbilisi.

Third - my blog cracked 20,000 unique visitors in total (counting since October 2013)

Forth - yesterday seems affiliate sales generated me more than $100

There are days we should be happy about our existence and complain less about things we don't have. Though, something bad almost happened today with me. I decided to take it as a lesson to be more thankful for every day I m living on this planet.

P.S. Learn that I have reached age of Saturn Return.

Take care!

Road to Andorra

6 November, 2014 | Travel guides | 10 seen

During our one week trip in Spain, region of Catalonia, we did a lot of driving. We drove almost all around Catalonia, stayed at lovely Costa Brava townlets - and you know what? It's more than enough with one week - and you are sick and tired of completely identical seaside town lets. They are nice, they are charming... but if you need more - go away from those charming town lets with beautiful seaside views.

At least we did so - after another charming tay at lovely resort town of Sitges, we decided to head to Andorra. Drive to Andorra from Barcelona (or Sitges) will take around 2hours. Here is some picures I managed to capture:

Road to Andorra

Spectacular roads in Spain

Flag of Catalonia

Road signs directing to Andorra

Tunnels in Spain

Mountainous road

Mountains

Manor 

Drive to Andorra

Lake

Town let close to border of Andorra

:)

Andorra La Vella

Streets of Andorra

Andorra  is a sovereign landlocked…

How Amazon Affiliates get paid in Republic of Georgia - Part 1

5 November, 2014 | Living in Georgia | 154 seen

How participants of Amazon Associates program are getting paid in the Republic of Georgia by a bank check is a blog series I originally made at the end of 2014 / start of 2015 while struggling to redeem my first bank check issued by Amazon,

Although it's still technically possible to withdraw bank checks in Georgia, at the end of 2016, I flew to the US and opened a bank account there, see: How To Open A Bank Account in the U.S., As A Non-resident Non - citizen, Wells Fargo Bank

For complete series of my adventures while living in Georgia with Georgian banks and checks from Amazon, please see:

• How Amazon Affiliates get paid in the Republic of Georgia - Part 1
• How Amazon Associates Receives Their Checks in the Republic of Georgia - Part 2
• How Amazon Associates Receives Their Checks in the Republic of Georgia - Part 3 - Waiting 40 Working Days
• How Amazon Associates Receives Their Checks in the Republic of Georgia - Part 4 - Bank Commission Fees

I have a feeling this will be a long and fun experience on how to get paid in the Republic of Georgia by Amazon Associates checks :)

…

My Online Income Report - October 2014

4 November, 2014 | Blogging | 10 seen

Welcome to my monthly income report - this time covering month of October 2014.

In brief:

Things kinda went wrong - after 2 great months with Amazon Affiliate, October earnings decreased, not tragically, but decreased.

• In total I earned $142.81, what is a -50.28% decrease if compared to previous month ($287.25)
• $142.81 makes average $4.6 a day

Thus, my earnings in month of October decrease by around a half, it still managed to became a second best month, in terms of online income

Obliviously I started to wonder - why does income this month is lower - and if honest I didn't find a good explanation. I have just one assumption - October was a slow month for retail sales, why? Have no idea! Maybe in October people have less money to spend?

See - there is nothing wrong with traffic to my blog, it even increased for 42% in month of October, so I cannot explain this with lost traffic. Even clicks to Amazon increased sharply, but conversation rates decreased from…

Sitges - a Popular Resort Town in Spain

2 November, 2014 | Travel guides | 15 seen

During our Spain trip, we visited many interesting towns and places, like town of Girona, Salvadors Dali museum at Figueras, charming stone building town Peratallada, Begur, Roses and Cadaques and other. Now was turn for a popular resort town of Sitges, located close to Barcelona.

As usual I don't pay much attention for a new exploring object before visiting it - and it was fun latter to learn that Sitges is not only popular resort town in Spain, but it's a very popular destination for gay and lesbian travellers from all over the world. Well - quite an interesting fact about this town :)

I didn't pay much attention is there much gay/lesbian travellers (Seen some of them - like men kissing in the beaches and so on). What I found - Sitges probably is popular destination for surfers as well - seen pretty much surfers here (Maybe gay and lesbian surfers? )

No offense on LGBT people!

So did we stayed at a pretty nice hotel Globos at Sitges.

If honest, all those costal towns looks the same for me, but you may have other oppinion, so here are few pictures I did take in Sitges

Beach at Sitges

…

Blog Traffic Report - October 2014

1 November, 2014 | Blogging | 7 seen

This is already my 13 blog traffic report. This one is special for me - this month report compares my blog traffic with first month when I started to blog one year ago.

October 10, my blog celebrated one year anniversary - in case you are interested to find out more - what is the feeling after one year of blogging every day - you might find that post interesting.

Now let's see how my blog performed on month of October:

Blog traffic October 2014 (source: Google Analytics)

• I got 4785 unique visitors, what is a 42.24% growth compared to September traffic
• I have managed to attract 1421 more unique visitors if compared to previous month
• 4,785 visitors makes 154.34 user a day, what is up by 42.22 a day (previous 112.13)

Now lets see, how my precious blog traffic compares to those one year ago:

Blog traffic comparison October 2013 vs October 2014

Well... is there anything much to add, to describe image above?

It's 12,169% growth if counted by unique visitors. Some pathetic result…

Hotel Globos Review in Sitges, Spain

31 October, 2014 | Hotel reviews | 16 seen

One of the things I like about hotels is not to plan a stay at hotel before. No bookings, no planning. Just pass by, if you like it - go into it, and ask for a room and price. The best of this is bargain.

So did happened this time, after we arrived from Peratallada, a nice medieval town to resort city of Sitges, close to Barcelona. Turns out with spontanous decissions I have not only stayed on hotel I liked, but I have visited one of the most gay resort cities in world. 

Price for a room at this hotel: EUR 55

Here comes the pictures of Hotel Globos, hotel we find close to sea:

Bedroom at Hotel Globos

Balcony at hotel Globos

Bedroom at hotel Globos

Bathroom at hotel Globos

Seaside view from hotel Globos at Sitges

Balcony at Hotel Globos

Mojito at hotel Globos

In overall - modest hotel for reasonable price with close to sea location, but a little bit walk distance from city centre. Rooms were clean. 

The Los Globos Hotel Sitges, a charming hotel which is open the whole year…