The Best Ways to Enjoy the Sun in Tbilisi: From Parks to Pools

22 December, 2013 | Living in Georgia | 41 seen

Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, is known for its beautiful landscapes and diverse climate. One of the most notable aspects of the city's climate is the abundance of sunlight it receives throughout the year. In this article, we will explore the sun in Tbilisi, including its impact on the city's culture and lifestyle, as well as some tips on how to enjoy the sun during your stay in the city.

Tbilisi is located in the Eastern European Time Zone and experiences a humid subtropical climate. The city enjoys a high amount of sunshine throughout the year, with an average of around 2,200 hours of sunshine annually. The summer months, from May to September, are the sunniest with an average of 10-12 hours of daylight. During these months, the sun rises around 6:00 AM and sets around 9:00 PM, providing ample opportunity for outdoor activities.

The abundance of sunshine in Tbilisi has a significant impact on the city's culture and lifestyle. Locals love to spend time outdoors, whether it's in parks, on terraces, or in cafes with open-air seating. Many cafes, restaurants, and bars in the city have outdoor seating areas where you can enjoy the sunshine…

Do-Follow Links and Google SEO: How Backlinks Impact Search Rankings

21 December, 2013 | Blogging | 5 seen

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), one of the most important factors that can impact a website's ranking is the presence of do-follow links. A do-follow link is a hyperlink that allows search engine crawlers to follow the link to the destination website, which can help boost the site's ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). In this article, we will explore the role of do-follow links in Google SEO.

First, it is important to understand how search engines like Google determine the ranking of web pages. One of the key factors that search engines consider is the number and quality of inbound links to a particular page. Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are links from other websites that point to the target website. If a website has many high-quality backlinks, it is seen as a trustworthy and authoritative source of information, which can help improve its ranking in search results.

Do-follow links are an important factor in this equation because they allow search engine crawlers to follow the link to the target website, which can help to improve its visibility and ranking in search…

Inside Transnistria: Unrecognized State Between Moldova and Ukraine

20 December, 2013 | Macroeconomics | 4 seen

Transnistria is a breakaway region located in Eastern Europe, sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine. The region has been unrecognized by the international community since it declared independence in 1990, following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Transnistria has a complex history and cultural identity, with a significant population of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians. The region's language and culture are heavily influenced by Russian traditions, and the people of Transnistria generally identify more with Russia than with Moldova.

The conflict between Moldova and Transnistria began in 1992 when Moldova declared independence from the Soviet Union. Transnistria, which had a large population of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, declared independence in response, leading to a brief but bloody conflict that ended in a ceasefire in July 1992. Since then, Transnistria has remained a de facto independent state, despite being unrecognized by the international community.

Transnistria's economy is heavily dependent on trade with Russia, which provides the region with energy and other resources. The region has a large metallurgical industry, as well as agriculture and…

Why Many Political Leaders Skipped the 2014 Sochi Olympics

19 December, 2013 | Macroeconomics | 9 seen

The Olympic Games are a global event that brings together the world's top athletes in a spirit of international cooperation and friendly competition. However, the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014 were marred by controversy and political tension, as many political leaders chose not to attend the event.

The Sochi Olympics were hosted by Russia, and tensions between Russia and other countries were high at the time due to political and social issues. In the lead-up to the games, there were concerns about security and human rights violations, particularly in relation to Russia's treatment of LGBT people.

As a result, many political leaders from around the world chose to boycott the Sochi Olympics. The leaders of the United States, Germany, and France were among those who did not attend the opening ceremony, while the leaders of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia attended but did not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In addition to the political tensions, there were also logistical issues that may have contributed to the low attendance of political leaders. Sochi is a relatively remote location, and some leaders may have been deterred by the long…

Europe's Energy Security at Risk: The Role of Ukraine in the Gas Supply Chain​​​​​​​

18 December, 2013 | Emerging Markets | 8 seen

Ukraine has long been at the center of a geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia and the West, and the country's energy sector has been a key battleground in this ongoing conflict. The latest chapter in this story revolves around Ukraine's gas supply, which has become a major point of contention between the country and its neighbors.

Ukraine is heavily reliant on gas imports, with more than half of its natural gas coming from Russia. This dependence has been a source of tension between the two countries for many years, with Russia often using gas prices as a political tool to pressure Ukraine.

In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, a move that triggered a crisis in Ukraine and led to Western sanctions against Russia. As part of this conflict, Russia also cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, leading to energy shortages and price hikes. In response, Ukraine began to diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependence on Russia.

The latest gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia began in late 2021, when Russia refused to renew a gas transit agreement with Ukraine. The previous agreement, which was signed in 2019, allowed Russian gas to be transported to Europe via…

How to Add a Facebook Share Button to Drupal Views

17 December, 2013 | Drupal Development | 6 seen

Adding a Facebook share button to your Drupal website can help improve your website's user experience. By making it easier for visitors to share your content, you can encourage more engagement and interaction with your website, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and better overall website performance.

A time ago, I created a tutorial showing how you can add a Facebook-like button to your Drupal-powered site. That tutorial was pretty easy because we used a module. Today I'm willing to show, how to add a Facebook share button to the Drupal views page.

Go to the Facebook developer center - https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/share-button/ 

Generate your share button:

We will use HTML5.

Now you must add JavaScript SDK to your theme, you can load JavaScript with the theme .info file

Once JavaScript is added to your theme - go to your views, add a new field  - path, exclude it from your display, and move it under the custom text field (custom text I use for views overrides)

Now open your custom text field and add HTML5 code from the Facebook page, change URL to [path]…

How to automatically add watermarks to uploaded images in Drupal

16 December, 2013 | Drupal Development | 71 seen

Drupal is a powerful content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites with ease. One of the features that make Drupal popular among users is its flexibility and extensibility. Drupal's module system allows users to add functionalities to their websites, including automatic watermarking of uploaded images.

If you are making photos and publicizing them to the internet - sooner or later you will find that you want to protect them somehow.

Protect yourself from people stealing your artwork and re-publishing pictures in other places. One way to protect images is to add watermarks. Well, it doesn't mean someone still won't steal your pictures, but at least your watermark will be on. 

I have found one solution in Drupal 7, using the ImageCache action module:

As you can see on picture above - I have added simple watermark on bottom right corner. And it's done with Drupal Image Cache actions module.

• Download ImageCache actions module
• Extract to sites/all/modules
• Enable Imagecache Canvas Actions

Now go to your image style settings (admin/config/media/image-…

Facebook advertising: How to promote your page and reach a wider audience

15 December, 2013 | Blogging | 3 seen

Facebook advertising is a powerful tool for promoting your Facebook page and reaching a wider audience. With more than 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides businesses and organizations with an unparalleled opportunity to connect with potential customers and promote their brand. In this article, we'll explore the basics of Facebook advertising and provide tips for how to use it to promote your page and reach a wider audience.

The first step in promoting your Facebook page is to define your target audience. This involves identifying the demographics, interests, and behaviors of the people you want to reach. Facebook offers a range of targeting options, including age, gender, location, interests, and more. By targeting your ads to a specific audience, you can increase the chances that your message will be seen by people who are likely to be interested in your brand.

Facebook offers a variety of ad formats, including image, video, carousel, and more. The type of ad you choose will depend on your goals and the content you want to promote. For…

Tbilisi First Snow

13 December, 2013 | Living in Georgia | 9 seen

First snow appeared today on Tbilisi streets. Made some random photography of it.

Update: I have created much better quality Tbilisi winter photos. Read more: Tbilisi - Fairyland in Winter

Snow in Tbilisi

Its snowing on Tamar Mephe street

Police patrol in Tbilisi streets

Tbilisi Railway Station

How to configure postmarkapp to work with Drupal webform

12 December, 2013 | Drupal Development | 16 seen

If you are running your site under Apache then most probably your server will be auto configured with mail send module.

But if you are running, lets say Ngnix without mail send function enabled, then you might consider some options to send e-mails from your site. And one of this options is to use Postmarkapp.com service.

Today I'll show how to configure your Drupal powered site to deliver e-mails using postmarkapp and few handy modules.

At first - go to the postmarkapp.com and sign up for a new user (if you haven't done that already)

N.B. Postmarkapp.com wont allow to use major public domain names like gmail.com, so use your custom domain name instead.

Once you have been registered, you'll see screen like this:

Click on the blue button, suggesting to Setup a New Server

Enter the name of your new server and click on Next Step

Screen with deployment actions will appear, and at the result you should see congratulations, that your new server has been created. Now you should add some sender signatures (without sender…

Most visited Georgian websites (2013)

11 December, 2013 | Living in Georgia | 128 seen

After living in Georgia for almost 2 and a half years I still haven't found any reliable website traffic analyzer, except Alexa and local top.ge statistics.

Today I'll try to put both of them in one pot, and make some analysis.

According to Alexa:

According to top.ge

Now let's take those websites, we see on both tables and put on one, just those who overlap:…

The Mentalist

10 December, 2013 | Worth to Watch | 19 seen

The Mentalist is an American drama television series that ran from September 23, 2008, until February 18, 2015, broadcasting 151 episodes over seven seasons, on CBS.

The show was created by Bruno Heller, who is also its executive producer. The show follows former "psychic" Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), who is a consultant to the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI), using the highly developed observational skills he previously employed to "read" people's minds.

The series follows Patrick Jane, an independent consultant for the California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) based in Sacramento, California. Although not an officer of the law, he uses his skills from his former career as a successful, yet admittedly fraudulent, psychic medium to help a team of CBI agents solve murders. The real reason for Jane's involvement with law enforcement is to track down the serial killer known as Red John, who was responsible for the brutal murders of his wife, Angela Ruskin Jane, and his daughter, Charlotte Anne Jane.

Found these TV-series on IMDB. Since the rating was 8.0, decided to…

Image hover effects - how to change background on mouse over

5 December, 2013 | Drupal Development | 43 seen

Today I faced again some interesting thing to create - on hover image to change the background and display text over it

Here is how it looks:

On the left side, you can see the default image, while on the right side with mouse over. To achieve such behavior in Drupal is pretty simple, a little bit CSS and you are done.

Here is my view with div tags and Drupal fields:

And here is CSS:

Easy, right? 

Drupal pathauto + transliteration

4 December, 2013 | Drupal Development | 61 seen

Are you writing in different language than English, languages like Russian, Greek, Georgian, Hebrew or maybe Latvian? You find it's not attractive URL generated? In this article you will learn how to fix this using Drupal CMS and a neat module - Transliteration.

Take a look at these screenshots:

Here is Latvian URL in Chrome:

Chrome handles special characters nicely.

The same URL in Mozilla Firefox:

First problems detected - special characters have been converted to %C%4 - not nice.

And here is IE:

Yes, IE cannot handle them either,

The good news are - the URL will be shown nice in Google search in all browsers: Take a look at this screen made on IE.

In case you are concerned taht your URL looks ugly on Google, don't - everything is fine. But if you still find it unattractive how your language is outputted in Drupal install Drupal Transliteration module.

• Download Transliteration module
• Extract to sites/all/modules
• Enable

After you have enabled transliteration module…

Building a Drupal site from scratch - Complete series

3 December, 2013 | Drupal Development | 11 seen

<p>Some time has passed away, since I started my tutorial how to build a Drupal site from scratch. I'm making this post to list all series</p><ul><li><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-1-planin… a Drupal site from scratch - part 1 - planing</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-2-applyi… a Drupal site from scratch - part 2 - Applying a subtheme</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-3-better… a Drupal site from scratch - part 3 - Better administration</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-4-creati… a Drupal site from scratch - part 4 - Creating views</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-5-custom… a Drupal site from scratch - part 5 - Custom fronpage</a>&nbsp;</li><li><a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/building-drupal-site-scratch-part-6-workin… a…