Documentary Around the World by Graf Zeppelin (1929 footage)

Documentary Around the World by Zeppelin is a film by Dutch director Ditteke Mensink made first aired on BBC Four in 2010.

This was one of the most interesting and quality films I've watched lately. The story is about Graf Zeppelin flight around the world in 1929. The route is following  New York - Friedrichshafen - Moscow (didn't stop here) - Tokyo - Los Angeles - New York.

The story is told through the letters and diaries of Lady Grace Drummond-Hay


In 1929, for the first time in history, a Graf Zeppelin circumnavigated the globe. Beneath the enormous airship hung a gondola to accommodate the lucky passengers and crew for the duration of the 21-day voyage…

Personal |

Learn to Read Georgian in 5 Days

Strange, how it works - It was on a lazy Saturday afternoon when I finally decided to buy a Russian literature's classic - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. While reading this book I decided to launch a new topic series on the blog - Bookshelf, keeping notes and sharing books I've read.

While browsing Amazon's store online accidentally I found this great learning guide - Learn to Read Georgian in 5 Days by Irakli Aleksidze. The price for Kindle Editon was just $3.99 and after reading a free preview on Amazon I thought - hmm, it's tempting to learn Georgian Script in 5 days. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on…

Personal |

Hiking Trails in Kemeri National Park (Near Forest House)

Kemeri National Park in Latvia is special for its great biological diversity, the unique Kemeri Bog, mineral waters and therapeutic mud found here.It was on a lazy Sunday afternoon we decided to visit Kemeri National Park, as we had no idea what exactly to look for, we decided to make a stop at first "look-a-like" place, so we ended at Forest House, located some 45km from nations capital Riga.I was equipped with my Canon DSRL camera and in a good mood to make some panoramic photos here:Forest House in Kemeri National ParkRough translation from Latvian about Forest House (Meža māja)The Nature Education Center "Meža māja" is located on the banks of the Vēršupīte, surrounded by…

Latvia |

Palios Mylos Restaurant Review near Argiroupoli Springs, Crete

Ahh, I love these lovely roadside cafeterias which are hard to locate, after visiting and leaving, on the map. This time I was lucky enough and turned out I had pictured the name of this place in Greek. A bit patience and usage of Greek language transliteration and here you go - found both the name and location of this place, meet Palios Mylos Restaurant near Argiroupoli Springs, Crete.Visited back in June 2017. Now it's hard to recall exact our route back then, but most probably we arrived here somewhere from Triopetra area. The restaurant is located next to the Argiroupoli Springs some 27 km southwest of Rethymnon on the slopes of the…

Greece |

February 2018 Dividend Income Report - $62.89

Time flies and so did last February disappeared like a flicker. Now it's time to look back and see how did it go for me in terms of dividend income.February marks already the tenth (#10) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks, peer to peer lending (both fiat and cryptocurrencies)Surprisingly, but February turned out much better than I thought before - after a few e-mail and support tickets forth and back with bank and fund I was looking to have in my portfolio since August 2017,  I finally managed to add this fund to my portfolio. The fund dividends helped to boost a little bit dividend income in February, and…

Dividend Income |

Winter near The Baltic Sea (Dubulti beach, Jūrmala)

In today's Piece of Life series, a couple of HDR's from the Baltic sea (more precisely Dubulti beach in Jūrmala, Latvia)Pinewoods, frozen sea and cold fresh air.Frozen Baltic seaWould love to return here in Summer.Restaurant Orizonte in Dubulti beachPinewoods near Dubulti beach

Latvia |

Winter in Bākūži 2 - 2018

A couple of weeks ago I made a couple of HDR's back at Bākūži (Bākūži Winter 2018), despite it was still a winter, we had little to no snow back then. Now at the end of February 2018, I made some more photos - let's say this - there is still room to grow to reach the levels of the fairytale in Tbilisi, but still lovely.Snow, frozen pond, and lonely rock garden see it for yourselfCar parked next to the pondPile of firewoodStill needs to be processedRock garden in WinterThe houseStill, a lot to do :)

Home Remodeling – Bākūži |

How To Verify Skype Account Without US Credit Card (Microsoft Account Verification)

In today's article, I'll share my experience how I managed to verify my age for Skype account. It all started that one day I was not able to login to my skype account, which I have been using for more than 10 years already. 

It turned out  Skype / Microsoft thought I'm a child, as apparently in my Skype account I had entered my birth year as 2008. Now back in 2008, it didn't seem an issue. Since Microsoft acquired Skype back in 2011, apparently, some new rules have been pointed out and it was on the February 2018, Skype started to think I'm a child. I was not able to login to my account, even despite I've been a paid subscriber to Skype OUT

Trying to Google out some solution for…

Servers & Config |

How To Setup Gekko BTC Trading Bot on VPS (Ubuntu 16.04) with GUI (Vultr.com)

Gekko is a free and open source Bitcoin TA trading and backtesting platform that connects to popular Bitcoin exchanges. It is written in javascript and runs on nodejs

For the past couple of days I've been playing around with Gekko trading bot installed on my laptop (Windows 10), I have made a few trades and experimented with a couple of strategies. First impressions are promising. See: Simple BTC Trading Bot Gekko - First Impressions

Running a trading bot on a laptop is fun, but if you are looking for a bot 24/7monitoring market and executing trades, either you should keep your PC turned on 24/7 or you could set up a cheap VPS and setup bot on it. …

Servers & Config |

How to send international fax to USA using Faxapp

Think fax is outdated? Think twice, fax is still popular in certain business areas, and fax is kind of popular in the United States. I believe the last time I have seen an actual fax machine in work was back in 1994. Now 24 years later at one stage I thought, it would be good if I would have a fax machine in 2018.

I had to send a fax confirming my identity to the Microsoft Corp. Keep reading to learn how to send an international fax without having a fax machine.

Turns out, there are several online apps allowing to send a fax from the web, after a quick research I decided to give it a try for Faxapp.

Faxapp

Send faxes without a landline to a "classic" fax machine. You’ll get your…

Servers & Config |

Simple BTC Trading Bot Gekko - First Impressions

The idea of using a bitcoin trading bot comes up just shortly I decided to trade up from 0.03 to 0.05 BTC. In the past, I've been using Coinlend bot to lend free coins on exchanges and earn some little interest.

Doing a quick google search I found a few bitcoin bot traders, most come with a price, but as I wanted to test how these bots actually work I continued my searches and found free bitcoin bot trader - Gekko.  Setting up this bot will be simple for a tech-savvy person, but might be a daunting task for a novice, as bot asks to install nodejs and in fact, it took me some 4 hours to set up this bot, as there were some issues (more on that at the end of this article…

Servers & Config |

Ethereum (and other altcoin) mining review after 2 months in 2018

February 16 marks a small 2-month anniversary since I've started to mine Ethereum and others altcoins. In today's article let's take a quick review and try to understand is GPU mining still profitable in 2018?It all started with a FOMO back in December 2017, after successful second part of the year of investments in crypto, I decided to build a 12-GPU mining rig.Currently, I've invested $1,661 in this mining rig and after 2 months of operations, the current ROI is 12.53% (not counting in cost for electricity). Meaning that in past two months I've mined coins worth of $208.05.I have experimented both with different GPU cards and different coins. Here are coins I've mined…

Crypto mining |

How To Mine EXP (Expanse) with SMOS

A couple of days ago I shared a quick tutorial on how to mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) with SMOS (Simple Mining OS), as there is an upcoming ETC Callisto airdrop happening, the idea to pre-mine couple of ETC's sounded tempting to me. Now, as I've been using a mixed AMD + NVIDIA mining rig, to get most of it, I'm left using Claymore's dual miner, which just recently released version 11.0 , and I decided to test it with some new coin, after a quick google search I found a quite a few Ethash based coins (good for Claymore's miner) and this time my attention got the EXP (expanse) coin. Reason is quite simple, EXP is listed on Poloniex.com exchange, which means following - I…

Crypto mining |

How To Mine ETC (Ethereum Classic) with SimpleMining OS

For the past couple of weeks I've been experimenting with crypto mining and started with Claymore's dual miner to learn that I can dual mine both Ethereum and Siacoin out of the box, I put my mining rig as it is and let the machine to mine coins for me. See: I'm Making $0.98 Per Day By Mining Ethereum and Siacoin, and I want MORE!Meanwhile, in crypto space, a lot has happened, and I decided to explore my options to mine some other coins using SimpleMining OS, which IMHO is awesome.At the end of January, it started to look that mining Siacoin is not any more profitable with gpu's (Is It Profitable Mining Siacoin (SC) in 2018?) and I went solo mining Ethereum …

Crypto mining |

Deep in The Forest (Winter Edition)

It was on some February's (2018) afternoon, we decided to make a simple hiking in very familiar to us Latvian forests, unfortunately, the temperature outside was way too freezing and our hiking ended after some 15 minutes, fortunately, I managed to capture some HDR's here.Followers of Piece of Life series will recognize this forest from Deep in the Forest or Wandering In The Woods B&W Photography series. Winter in LatviaNo mushrooms or will berry this time of the year.Marvelous golden hour in forest

Latvia |

Rixwell Elefant Hotel Riga Review

Rixwell Elefant Hotel is a 4-star superior hotel and it is conveniently located between Riga International Airport, which is a 5-minute drive away, and the city centre. Shopping center Spice is within walking distance from the hotel and 10 km away is the famous water park Livu Aqua Park in Jurmala.Rixwell Elefant hotel in Riga is among the cheapest 4-star hotels I've stayed so far, both in Riga and elsewhere, in total for a one night stay here we paid EUR 46, which is decent for a 4-star hotel in this part of Europe. Click here for more Riga hotel reviews. Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to Booking.com, by clicking on links on…

Latvia |

January 2018 Dividend Income Report - $100.95

Welcome to the ninth (#9) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks, peer to peer lending (both fiat and cryptocurrencies) in January 2018. Surprisingly, but January 2018 turned out much better I thought before, an unexpected dividend payment from Silvano Fashion Group boosted total earnings in January, and I was able to generate $100.95 income in a very passive way. Silvano Fashion Group have been in my portfolio since the July of 2017, I literally chased to buy this stock for a couple of days back then.As usual, I was doing nothing much, just investing in great companies, playing a little bit with …

Dividend Income |

How To Connect to SimpleMiningOS using Putty SSH Terminal And Few Simple Commands to Get You Started

Putty is a nice and neat free SSH terminal for Windows OS, I've been using Putty for years, mostly to perform server-side tasks (Ngnix, Drupal and so on). About a month ago when I started gpu mining experiment and decided to build 12 GPU Ethereum mining rig, I didn't know much about many options available for mining and soon found SimpleMiningOS, which is brilliant (IMHO) - plug and play ready to go from an 8 GB USB stick.I was pleasantly surprised learning that I could manage my rig using Putty SSH terminal, and for this article, I have decided to list some basic information on how to connect via Putty and some simple commands to get you started.Locate your internal…

Crypto mining |

Bākūži Winter 2018

Made a couple of HDR's back at Bākūži, the country house where for the last couple of years we have done some home remodeling.In today's Piece of Life series, simple winter mood from Latvian winter (January 2018)FishpondA decent level of water, not to say more, see: Waiting For The Water Level To Rise In The PondBack view of the houseApple orchardFor those of you interested how it all started, see: Home Remodelling - How It All Starts

Home Remodeling – Bākūži |

Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition Review

Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition is the latest addition to my Ethereum mining rig, which currently consists of 4 GPU. Bought back in Tbilisi, and I believe that I just overpaid about $100 for this card, in total spending $296 for this card. Not very cost effective. A couple of weeks ago I bought Zotac Geforce GTX1050Ti card for about $220. And in fact, this time I visited a store I was looking to purchase another Zotac, but unfortunately some had reserved all cards already and I was left either to purchase SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 or search for another store.I choose the second option, and that's how I acquired Asus Geforce…

Crypto mining |