February 2018 Dividend Income Report - $62.89

6 March, 2018 | Investments | 15 seen

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 I was able to generate  $62.89 income in a very passive way.  Hopefully, this fund will contribute also in May, August, and November. 

I'm speaking about Baltic Horizon Fund - and there is one bold reason I like this fund, quarterly dividend payments (at least in 2017, and hopefully in 2018), the yield is around 7-9%, which is among the highest yields in the Nasdaq …

Winter near The Baltic Sea (Dubulti beach, Jūrmala)

4 March, 2018 | | 6 seen

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 sea

Would love to return here in Summer.

Restaurant Orizonte in Dubulti beach

Pinewoods near Dubulti beach

Top 5-star Luxury / Boutique Hotels in Barcelona

2 March, 2018 | Hotel reviews | 8 seen

Barcelona is one of the most popular travel destinations in Europe, the city is the desired location for romantic trips, in case you are looking for best honeymoon or just romantic weekend in fabulous Barcelona city, in this article I have listed Top 5 star and luxury hotels in Barcelona, based on actual user reviews on Booking site.

Alternatively see: 20 Top Rated Romantic Hotels / Apartments In Barcelona

The price per night for those 20 top rated hotels varies - starting from EUR 95 and up to EUR 375. The price may change, and there are some hotels offering huge savings.

Disclosure: hotels listed below contain links to Booking.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a reservation on Booking.com site, I might earn an affiliate income, at no cost to you.

This property is 9 minutes walk from the beach. Set within the World Trade Center building, this 5-star design hotel overlooks Barcelona’s port and is a 5-minute walk from La Rambla. It features a seasonal rooftop pool, a gym and a spaciousterrace.

The Eurostars Grand Marina Hotel…

52 Week Money Saving Challenge

1 March, 2018 | Investments | 13 seen

I first heard about such challenge from SEB Latvia bank - How to save 1,400 euros per year?

The recommendation is simple - to deposit in the first week one euro, in the second week - two, third week - three, etc. The amount after each week continues to grow, up to the last week of the year, when it is 52 euros.

As I love challenges and believe they are the great way to master new skills and make good habits, and in fact, there have been a few long-term challenges already passed in the frames of this blog, like - blogging 365 days in a row or daily photo challenge for 365 days. Not to speak about ongoing Road To Million dollars challenge. I decided to opt-in for a 52 weeks money saving challenge as well

Now, I might be late to the party, as it already starts of the March and I kind of already have defined my financial plans for 2018, see 2017 in Review and Financial Goals for 2018, there is still one reason I'm taking this challenge - lack of the cash in my portfolio.

Let me explain - I invest heavily all of the free money in stocks, funds, peer to peer lending and crazy crypto…

Blog Income: 104% Increase YoY in Google AdSense Revenue 2018

27 February, 2018 | Blogging | 17 seen

Learn how I increased revenue from Google AdSense by 104% Year over Year and how you could too. 

For a prelude: I have been using Google AdSense for already eight and a half years by now, from whom first four and a half years have generated a really modest sum of EUR 100 from couple of low traffic and let's be totally honest - thin content websites (I had installed AdSense ad units on dozens of sites). I started using Google AdSense to monetize my websites back in 2009.

Today by accessing Google AdSense reports  (02/26/2018) I noticed that my lifetime revenue from this channel has reached EUR 2,704.25 for a time period Sep 4, 2009 - Feb 26, 2018. It is for eight and a half years. Nothing much, right?  About EUR 318 per year (that's less than a euro per day), on the other hand, the real increase has started from 2014. In fact, half of the money I made just in the last 365 days.

If compared year over year, during the past year, it has been a whopping 104% increase.  …

Top 20 Aluminium Chassis Notebook / Laptop Computers

26 February, 2018 | Laptop Reviews | 4,056 seen

As they say, Aluminum / Metallic chassis laptops are more durable than plastic ones.

Indeed the surrounding chassis matters, but still when choosing an aluminum chassis laptop don't forget to see what's inside the chassis, like the graphics card, processor, RAM, and of course HDD.

In today's article, I've listed the TOP 20 bestselling aluminum chassis laptops on Amazon. Following laptop/notebook manufacturers is a popular user choice for aluminum chassis - Samsung, Acer, Lenovo, ASUS, DELL, The Razer Blade, and HP.

Most Aluminum chassis laptops come with the price attached and nowadays there are both traditional, touchscreen, and of course gaming laptops surrounded by metallic cases. 

See: HP ENVY x360 - 15-cn0003ur Convertable Touchscreen Laptop Review

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to Amazon.com, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on the Amazon site, I might earn an affiliate income from that. Prices for laptop computers listed on this page are retrieved using Amazon Product Advertising…

Winter in Bākūži 2 - 2018

25 February, 2018 | | 3 seen

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 yourself

Car parked next to the pond

Pile of firewood

Still needs to be processed

Rock garden in Winter

The house

Still, a lot to do :)

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

24 February, 2018 | Servers | 47 seen

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 this strange case I ended up in this article: How do I change the birthdate on a Microsoft account?

I’m an adult, but my account thinks I’m a child

To change your own account from a child account to a full account, you need to prove that you're an adult. You have two options:

• Option 1: Provide a valid U.S. credit card number
• Option 2: Send us proof of age

Despite I have a valid U.S. Credit Card (see…

Google Introduces Machine Learning AdSense Auto Ads

23 February, 2018 | Blogging | 21 seen

Yesterday I received a promotional e-mail from Google AdSense, introducing the new Auto Ads.

As a long-term Google AdSense user (How I Made $2,135.03 with Google AdSense in 8 years), I decided to give it a test for my Drupal-powered blog, despite I was amazed at what I saw, I still removed Google AdSense Auto ads shortly.

Let me explain - Google Adsense ads have been featured on this blog for about 4 years, during the past 4 years the blog has grown into a complex multi-topic website/portal. Despite I'm serving Google AdSense ads on most of the content pages, there are sensitive categories and pages I'm not using Google AdSense to monetize the content. With enabling Google AdSense auto ads, this exception is not honored and I saw Google AdSense auto ads served even on About page. Sure I believe I could custom code to remove auto ads from specific categories and pages (How To Hide Drupal Block For Nodes In Specific Taxonomy - Example With Google Adsense) , but right now the solution of the box just didn't work for me. Probably after some custom coding and longer testing I could implement Google AdSense auto ads on the blog.

…

Back testing BTC/EXP RSI on Gekko Trading Bot

22 February, 2018 | Crypto | 27 seen

For the past couple of days, I've been testing Gekko BTC trading bot, executing a few trades running the bot on my laptop, ending to build a VPS to run Gekko trading bot on a cloud. As you can see for right now - I'm fully determined to master this trading bot.

To master trading like a pro some should learn basic technical analytics, in today's article, I will speak about using Relative Strength Index (RSI) for crypto trades. I believe RSI is one of the easiest ways to trade cryptos. 

Disclosure: I'm not a financial advisor and I don't give you any advice, I'm just sharing my own experience. Investments in stocks, funds, bonds or cryptos are risk investments and you could lose some or all of your money. Do your due diligence before investing in any kind of asset. 

The relative strength index (RSI) is a momentum indicator developed by noted technical analyst Welles Wilder, that compares the magnitude of recent gains and losses over a specified time period to measure speed and change of price movements of a security. It is primarily used to attempt to identify …

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

20 February, 2018 | Servers | 57 seen

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. 

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links to cloud hosting companies like Linode and Vultr, by clicking on links on this page and by making a purchase on cloud hosting sites, I will earn an affiliate income at no cost to you.

As I have a couple of VPS from Linode, my first idea was to test this setup on Linode VPS, but fortunately, I found a cool tutorial How to setup VPS on Vultr.com and run Gekko by…

How to send international fax to USA using Faxapp

18 February, 2018 | Servers | 4 seen

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.

Send faxes without a landline to a "classic" fax machine. You’ll get your own local fax number. 
No software required, but available.

All received faxes are swiftly delivered to your email inbox.

Ten-day trial

• Send and receive faxes for free
• Cancelled automatically
• No credit card required

It took me some 5 minutes to open an account at faxapp, and the next thing was just to send international fax to the United States

Faxapp dashboard…

Simple BTC Trading Bot Gekko - First Impressions

17 February, 2018 | Servers | 35 seen

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)

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.

You can either create your own trading strategy or start with the built-in example strategies. Once you have a strategy you can use Gekko to automatically run it in a few different ways:

• Backtest: You can start a simulation of the strategy over a historical data period and…

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

16 February, 2018 | Servers | 49 seen

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 so far: ETH, SC, ETC, and EXP

Mined coins

Currently, the rig consists of 4 GPU's:

• Mining with SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon™ RX 560 4GD5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 (Single Fan), 6GB GDDR5 Review
• Mining Ethereum With ZOTAC GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti OC Edition Review
• Mining Ethereum With Asus Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB ROG Strix OC Edition…

How To Mine EXP (Expanse) with SMOS

15 February, 2018 | Servers | 15 seen

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 don't need to look for a wallet (I should but for the purpose of this experiment I don't), and since the coin is already listed on a well-known exchange - there shouldn't be problems to exchange EXP to BTC.

As I had some nice ZEC/BTC trade on Poloniex, I exchanged some small amount of BTC to EXP, before going deeper.

Now, before getting into technical stuff on how to mine EXP with SimpleMining.net, let's find out more what do we know about EXP…