How To Shoot Indoor Photograpy

4 April, 2017 | Digital Photography School | 4 seen

Indoor photography covers a huge range of situations – from kids’ birthdays to high-end interior shootings. Basically, everything that is shot indoors.

Assuming that you don’t own studio lighting gear, all you’re left with is a light that’s already in your space. Because of that, indoor photography is often not-so-easy to shoot. Why? Because most of the time, the light in indoor spaces is poor and you need to learn to set your camera for low light situations.

Here, we’ll focus on some basic principles to follow while shooting indoors.

Problems disappear if there is a plenty of natural light

The indoor photography is a real test on how much do you understand your camera and settings that come with it. When you shoot indoors, manual mode is a must. Otherwise, in low light situations typical for indoors, on automatic mode, your camera will fire a built-in flash pretty much always. In such situations, you should avoid the built-in flash because it gives an unnatural, flat light that makes your subjects look unflattering.

Make the most out of the…

How I Lost 4.4 Pounds In 5 days In The Gym

1 April, 2017 | Health & Wellness | 17 seen

With this article I'm starting new blog series on blog - fitness, my first article, kind of warm up article for beginners,will cover details on how I lost my first 4.4 lbs (2 kg) in the gym after first five days of training.

For a prelude, I have been overweight for years, not obese, just overweight. My body weight have been in the range 210 - 242 lbs (95-110kg) for the past 10 years. My ideal body weight as I believe should be under 200 (90kg).

I live medium healthy lifestyle, with the biggest treat to health being smoking, which I want to get rid in the foreseen future. Though I eat pretty healthy and live medium active lifestyle including cycling and hiking in my weekly routine. See: Outdoor activities

Now, loosing body weight might be a tricky thing, I'm not into some diets, trying to starve my body in order to loose weight. 

It was bout 3 years ago, I started to think more about my health, and almost enrolled to the gym - see: Aspria -Fitness club in Tbilisi

Unfortunately I didn't enrolled back at that time, though coming years had been good for my fitness (at least in Summer months) I have been really busy with…

How To Build a Drupal List Page With All Users

31 March, 2017 | Drupal Development | 20 seen

In today's Drupal tutorial series I'm going to show a simple way how to build an authors page listing all users with their profile information + some other neat features.

A few years ago I was working on a Drupal project for large media organization and I was required to build an extended user profile system on Drupal. Recently I hired few freelance writers for my own blog / website and idea of having a nice author overview page sounded a must have.  

The further written can be applied to some micro social websites powered by Drupal, but for the ease of this tutorial I will stick with an user / author overview page for multi user blogs or media organizations.

Here is the final result:

Authors overview page on Drupal

You can see a live view here: Authors

In above view I have displayed info for authors taking info from profile field, which are following:  author picture, author bio and categories author writes articles about, as well displaying total article count for each author and sorting authors on page by total…

House of Madatovi - Tbilisi Restaurant

30 March, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 15 seen

House of Madatovi is a really lovely Georgian style cuisine restaurant, located on the recently renovated part of David Aghameshabeli avenue.

See: New Life for Agmashenebeli avenue, Tbilisi

Madatovi restaurant features not only authentic Georgian cuisine with amazing serving, it's crafted of lovely details, like chandlers with paper house shades, wine bottles, shelves, more shelves. Tastefully.

Interior at House of Madatovi

Stylish places with rustic elements are popping a lot lately in Tbilisi. The interior seen here reminded a little bit something from Restaurant Barberastan

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Chandlers with paper house shades

Now, this is something nice, not seen before. I really like that and I might use this idea for our upcoming home remodeling works.

Georgian Cuisine at House of Madatovi

Now this was the biggest surprise - I thought I know a lot about Georgian cuisine, turns out - I don't. They had some great salads with baked pumpkins, which was just delicious (and I don't love pumpkins). Some really good veal meal and mcvadi served with pomegranate seeds. Not to speak about delicious Georgian…

ISO Settings for Night Photography

29 March, 2017 | Digital Photography School | 83 seen

The purpose of this article is to familiarize the user with the best practices regarding ISO settings for night photography. We will go over a basic introduction to ISO as well as a short guide on using different ISO values in relation to other camera settings in order to achieve best results.

One of the reasons casual photographers decide to upgrade to a DSLR camera is so they can capture quality photos during night.

However, DSLRs often require understanding of different camera settings and shooting parameters in order to achieve best possible image quality for night photography. One of these settings is called ISO.

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In film photography, ISO number is an indicator of film’s sensitivity to light. Similarly, in digital photography ISO number determines light sensitivity of a digital sensor. Higher ISO levels will produce brighter images, but it will also introduce more grain (noise) into the image.

With most digital cameras, ISO can be set to Auto, meaning the camera will automatically choose what ISO settings to use. It can also be set to manual, where the user chooses the ISO value himself. 

We…

Champions Academy Tbilisi

28 March, 2017 | Health & Wellness | 95 seen

Champions Academy in Tbilisi is a gym/ fitness / crossfit training facility, located on a 4-storey building on David Agmanashebeli avenue. 

I've enrolled at Champions Academy at the start of February 2017, with a goal to train my heart using cardio vascular trainings, also I'm using a little bit weight lifting and some crossfit workouts. 

The gym seem to be open starting 7:00 AM, which is great because of two reasons - first I love to exercise in the mornings, and second yes, this gym is located really close to our apartment. 

Unfortunately during the early hours, there are no trainers / coaches available, and I'm left to train my self using knowledge I have from my previous almost 20 years (though irregular training sessions). Luckily YouTube helps a lot.

The price per month without a trainer (which still is not available at 7:00 AM) - 160 GEL, with kind of limited access, just to the buildings second, third and fourth floor. Unlimited access, and probably some individual graphic from a trainer - 200 GEL.

The first floor seems is for power lifting, second floor is for dog sled and ropes, third floor is equipped…

Restaurant Kus Tba (Turtle Lake) in Tbilisi

26 March, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 17 seen

Restaurant Kus Tba is located next to the popular recreational area Turtle lake in Tbilisi, here serves a traditional Georgian cuisine in a touristic sauce. 

I have been to this place several times, I cannot tell neither good, neither bad - I'm more neutral regarding this place, it definitely is not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, from what I have met in Tbilisi. See Tbilisi restaurant reviews.

I have my favorite Turtle lake restaurant, maybe that's way I cannot be objective today - Intelligentsia Coffee Bar Tbilisi, which actually is located just few meters way from Kus Tba.

Cozy interior at Kus Tba restraunt

Salads with chicken filet dressed with matsoni

Sleep Inn Philadelphia

25 March, 2017 | Hotel reviews | 10 seen

Offering a fitness centre, Sleep Inn Philadelphia is located in Philadelphia. Free WiFi access is available. Each room here will provide you with air conditioning and cable channels. There is also a microwave. Featuring a bath or shower, private bathroom also comes with a hairdryer and free toiletries.

We booked this hotel at the start of 2017 (January) and stayed here for about 3 nights, during a short, but remarkable trip to Philadelphia. We paid about $120 per night. Though this hotel is listes as a 2 star hotel, it actually is really good, I realy love the location of this place, it's just a few blocks away from famous Terminal Reading market, and Greyhound terminal is very close.

Sleep in hotel in Philadelphia

The hotel is 100 m from Pennsylvania Convention Center, 800 m from Liberty Bell and 1.1 km from National Liberty Museum. Philadelphia International Airport is 11 km away.

King Size Bed at Sleep in Hotel

Cost of living in Batumi, Georgia

24 March, 2017 | Living in Georgia | 67 seen

This article was originally written as a guest post by Ms. Irina Nikolaeva (written back in 2017)

In the article 5 reasons why Batumi is better than Moscow (or other big cities), I specified the low cost of living as the first reason why I moved from Moscow to Batumi. So let’s have a closer look at this topic.

Apartment. The middle price of apartments for 1-2 people (about 50 sq. m., studio with a separate bedroom) is about 300$. That would be a flat not far from the city center (honestly the city is so small as most living areas would be in 15 minutes from the center), with good design, fully equipped with consumer electronics. If you have less money, you can find something lower, from 150$. This price is real if you would search for a flat in the period from October to March and rent a flat for one year or until May or June.

Batumi Real Estate Crypto Investment

Then closer to the summertime flat rents are growing and becoming extremely high (from 500$ for the same flat). This way every apartment owner tries to earn more money during three months of holiday time.

Utilities. If you rent a…

Home Remodeling - End Of The Season 2

23 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 10 seen

Wow, that was a ride. In this post I will write down all major tasks we performed during Summer 2016, which was second year since we started to manage and repair our rural property.

Learn more how it all started: Home Remodeling - How It All Starts

Each year, at the start at April we arrive to our house and put a lot work and investment to make this a livable place. In the first year, the major task performed was roof replacement, see: Meet the New Roof (Pictures Before and After)

Season 2 we started with following goals: 

For this years plans - a water supply is a must have, in order to get water here, we need to dug a well at first. We plan to construct a bathroom (for that we will need to change few bearing beams and rebuild from scratch few walls). I believe a lot of effort will be put on territory improvement, one of the things we plan to do on this - to dug our small fish pond a bit bigger)...and plan a really cool outdoor terrace.

The good news - we completed about 85% of initial goals. And yes, there are no bad news. 

We started in Spring with territory cleanup, chimney repair works, trimming trees…

What's Minimum Wage in European Union 2017

22 March, 2017 | Macroeconomics | 55 seen

This is already fourth annual article covering minimum wage and its disproportion among 22 of 28 European Union member countries.

Update: Minimum Wages in European Union 2018

Feel free to browse through the archives for previous years, before proceeding, see: 2016, 2015, 2014

In 2017 there were 22 out of 28 European Union member states with official minimum wage set by the government.

N.B. Countries that don't have a minimum wage set by the government in European Union - Austria, Denmark, Finland, Cyprus, Italy and Sweden (collective bargaining agreements effective, instead of minimum wage)

Now, the biggest question about future reports involves Britain after Brexit. As for 2017 United Kingdom still counts in as a member country of EU, in the following table below you will still find data on how much Britons receive in the minimum wage in 2017

As for the previous years, there are no changes in the country with highest and lowest minimum wage. Luxembourg as usual ranks #1 with almost EUR 2,000 minimum wage in 2017, while…

Planting Strawberry Plants In Fall

21 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 11 seen

It was at the end of September (2016), when we planted 80 strawberry plants in a field which was prepared few days ago with a tiller. See: Ground Milling With A Tiller

Earlier this Summer we planted about 15 strawberry plants in wooden boxes, but as we were of for a week long travels to Spain, corvine's ruined 90% of our harvest. This is the thing I worry most, probably some net should be added over plants in future.

Strawberries planted under film

We bought about 6 varieties of strawberry plants (in total 80 plants) at local plant nursery, paid for both film and plants under EUR 20. Film is strengthened using special plastic bolts. Rocks are added as an extra safety against wind.

View towards house and rock garden

First harvest is expected to be around Summer Solstice 2017.

Temporary Window For Bathroom

19 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 7 seen

This year's (2016) home remodeling works are coming to the end, though one problem were left - a window for bathroom. 

As just outer constructions of walls were performed, and there are still a lot to do inside, before having actual working bathroom, I was left with two options, either purchase an used plastic window and install it or be more creative. I opted for the second variant. And as a temporary window I used old wooden doors.

Window box for bathroom

See complete works for bathroom.

Old wood doors

These doors will be used as a temporary bathroom window for upcoming winter.

Window installed and secured from inside

Carpe Diem Cafe Bar in Tbilisi

18 March, 2017 | Restaurant reviews | 24 seen

Carpe Diem is a cozy cafe bar in Tbilisi, located between Narikala fortress and Shardeni. Here at Carpe Diem you can try tasty home made burgers and have a herbal tea in pot. 

Because of this place been located in a steep uphill between Narikala fortress and Old Town, I have visited this place just twice so far, both of the times after climbing down from the fortress. The good news, this cafe bar have been in business for years, and it means just one - it's a good place. 

Carpe Diem is one of the rare places in Tbilisi, where  smoking inside is not allowed.

Carpe Diem in Tbilisi

Carpie Diem in Tbilisi is located next to the Armenian Apostolic church. Had to make a panoramic photo, to frame both places in one photo. 

Interior at Carpe Diem

Ground Milling With A Tiller

17 March, 2017 | Home Remodeling | 6 seen

During the Summer of 2016 we met some new faces, and so back in July we met with a neighbor (Ok, he is actually living some 10 km from our rural house) with a tractor with tiller - I started to ask about the device, would it be possible to mill ground at our place, as we are really into growing some veggies not only in a wooden boxes, but would love to grow something in the soil. 

It was at the end of the September, when I got a call from the neighbor and he asked - OK, I will be at your place tomorrow with a tractor. I thought, cool, let's do it. And so did in couple of hours neighbor with a tractor an tiller did the magic - the ground was milled. 

Tractor with a tiller

With time I'm planing to buy some tractor with a tiller and grass mowing functionality, but for now this was a win-win deal. Sometimes its cheaper to rent.

Ground milling process

After milling the soil is soft as a powder

New garden is ready

Noe it's time to seed in something, more on that in upcoming blog posts.