Blog Archive: October 2016
Mastis Lake in Telšiai, Lithuania
| Lakes | 14 seen
Mastis lake is located in the town of Telšiai, Lithuania.
There is a dwelling houses located in the shores of lake Mastis, and seems there is a nice recreational area built closer to the Telsiai city center.
View towards lake Mastis
Captured from the parking lot of Guesthouse Sinchronas, we stayed here for one night in August, 2016.
Recreational area near lake Mastis
Probably you can rent some boat here and enjoy a lovely boat ride.
Guesthouse Sinchronas in Telšiai, Lithuania Review
| Hotel reviews | 17 seen
It was on the eve of my birthday (August 2016), and we decided to celebrate it in Vilnius, Lithuania. We took our Honda CRV car, crossed Latvia / Lithuania border through Priekule, made few remarkable stops at places like - St. Michael Archangel Church in Mosėdis, Idol Hill (Alkakalnis) near Salantai, Žemaitė Memorial Museum, Bukantė Manor Homestead and finaly we had a stop at Restaurant 'Porto' Near Plunge at which, eating our pizza and using booking.com we booked Guesthouse Sinchronas in Telšai for tonight's stay.
As my birthday was coming, we wanted to book a decent (not luxury, but decent) hotel somewhere in this part of Lithuania, as it was getting late already. Guesthouse Sinchronas in Telšai promised to have 4 stars.
Well, huge was our disappointment, when in place of 4 stars we actually got a 2 stars with a minus. No don't get me wrong - it's a decent guesthouse, with clean rooms, roof terrace and kind of restaurant. It just lucks a normal parking lot, an elevator (guesthouse rooms are located in the third or fourth floor) and what the most funniest - in the bathroom it featured half cut…
5 Days In Georgia Itinerary List - Make Most Of Your Trip
| Living in Georgia | 182 seen
For the second time, I felt like a real tourist in Georgia.
Let me explain - I have been living in Georgia for more than 5 years, thus for the past two years I'm spending the Summer months in Latvia.
This year we were absent from Georgia for about 6 months, and when returned - we had no choice but to travel a lot across the country, as the friends of my partner joined us during our journey back home to Tbilisi.
We booked our flight back to Georgia (Tbilisi) already at the start of August (back then I was still busy with brick-and-mortar things performing home remodeling works). Friends of my partner planned to visit Georgia for the very first time. Our flight was on the same day, on the same plane. Instead of a typical week of doing nothing, after return, we had a very busy first 5 days in Georgia.
Our story starts at Tbilisi airport, I had called before to my driver and asked him to pick us up at the airport, but as it might happen in Georgia, he was late for some 30 minutes, and I had a chance to listen to almost all taxi drivers tempting offers, promising to…
Telavi Market (Buy Georgian Churchkhelas , Spices or House Wine)
| Shopping Venues | 19 seen
Oh, I love fresh vegetable markets, especially those located in Georgia. One of my favorite markets in Georgia is located in Telavi. I remember once I pulled our vehicle of the road near Gori, and we bough a box with tomatoes, see: Fresh Vegetable Market Near Gori Highway - amazing. In today's article I will provide some info about Telavi market, located in the region of Kakheti.
Make sure you check out other shopping venues.or see a full listings of my discoveries in Georgia: All About Georgia.
In fact, if I have a chance being in this area of Georgia. I'm trying to visit especially this market and buy some groceries for our household here. I love this market because of two reasons - it's much cleaner than those in Tbilisi (see Bazroba) and prices here can be twice as lower than in Tbilisi. Friends of mine who I have taken here, loves this market because of great walnuts and tasty Georgian churchkhelas. If you are a tourist in Telavi, and looking for some tasty souvenirs to take back home - Telavi market is a great destination, then. Churchkhelas, Nuts and wide variety of Georgian spices.
…Kindzmarauli Corporation Wine House in Kvareli, Georgia
| Tourism objects | 26 seen
Right here comes another interesting Georgian Wine House, with a super cool name - JSP Kindzmarauli Corporation Wine House, located in the Kakheti, town of Kvareli.
I must admit - I had never heard of tis winery before, on the other hand I don't call myself a wine expert. Thus I can at least tell which is mine favorite Georgian wine - Khvanchkara.
We arrived here from another winery, located just a few kilometers from Kindzmarauli corporation, see Wine Tunnel Near Kvareli in Georgia (Winery Khareba). My good old Georgian driver tried to convinice me, they are selling a tap Kvahckara wine here for 2 GEL per litter. It sounded fishy for me, but I agreed driver to take my friends and me to this winery.
Variety of bottled Georgian wines
There is a small wine shop at the entrance of Kindzamarali wine house, where you can buy wine produced at this factory directly form producer. I asked, so - I was told you are selling tap Kvachkara as well, and got a nice reply - no Kvachkara is too exclusive wine to be sold on plastic bottles. It was fine with me and I replied - Thank's God…
Theming Drupal 8: How to Hide Site Name
| Drupal Development | 15 seen
I'm starting a new Drupal series - Drupal Tuesday, from now on - every Tuesday, Drupal related articles will be featured on my blog.(at least I hope so)
It's not that I wouldn't had any previous Drupal tips and tricks, In fact I have more than 100 Drupal related articles already in archive.
Just recently I started working with Drupal 8, and since it involves a new learning curve even for me - I decided to refresh my skills and write down notes.
Let's start with a really simple issue - removing site name from Drupal 8.
What at start seems like a simple issue, might turn out to be a imminent problem. The truth is - it's super simple, but a little bit complicated if you come with a Drupal 7 background.
Let's hide site name the Drupal 8 wayFor hiding site name in Drupal 8, we will need to go to the blocks structure (amazing, why I spent an hour trying to figure out why it's not under configuration section?)
Search for a block site branding (it should be in header section)
Site Branding Drupal 8
Click on the configure button:
…
How To Recover Permanently Deleted Files (Canon CR2, JPG and more) on Windows
| Digital Photography School | 11 seen
In this article you will learn that not all is lost (in most cases), and it's still possible to recover accidently deleted Canon CR2 files (I'm writing about Canon, as I'm writing from my own experience).
Here is my case study: I bought a new Asus laptop about a year ago, it did came with a 500GB built in HDD storage, the main purpose for this laptop was to perform some everyday computing and post-processing RAW images in Adobe Lightroom. If you are a photographer - you get the point.
It took me about one year - when I noticed I'm running out of disk space - most of my 500 GB disk space was occupied with images (Raw files), the photos kept rolling in, I was busy with my home remodeling works, and had no chance to visit city to buy an external HDD to make a backup of my image library, and for that moment it seemed a bit too pricey to buy a separate server (well what else a server architect could do, as to look for ways to build my internal/external cloud). For now I'm running few VPS on Linode spending about $100/mo. The disk space on all those servers combined, doesn't exceed 200GB, so to build a cloud on Linode for storing images only would…
How To Password Protect Your site with Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04
| Servers | 18 seen
I was working on a new customers website, and I was looking for ways to showcase current development stage to the client, meanwhile hiding contents from others. Sounds familiar? In this server series guide I will provide info how to set up basic HTTP authentication with Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04.
Most details for this article are taken from Digital Ocean's guide: How To Set Up Basic HTTP Authentication With Nginx on Ubuntu 14.04 with few minor adjustments.
As I'm serving more than just one domain from this development server, I had to take an extra step and configure following domain to be default on this machine, as I will provide just the IP address to customer. For setting up default domain on Nginx, see this article: How To Setup Ngnix Default Domain For Not Configured Domains or IP Address
Step 1 — Installing Apache ToolsYou'll need the htpassword command to configure the password that will restrict access to the target website. This command is part of the apache2-utils package, so the first step is to install that package.
sudo apt-get install apache2-utils Step 2 — Setting Up HTTP Basic…Sighnagi Museum
| Museums | 17 seen
The Sighnaghi Museum is located in the charming Sighnagi town, region of Kakheti, Georgia.
I have paid many, many visits to Sighnaghi, but for the very first time I visited this museum just at the end of 2016. It was cloudy day, instead of beautiful landscapes and street photography we were left with no option, but to visit a museum. Well, few weeks ago I familiarized with famous Georgian painters Niko Pirosmani works and life, I was so impressed that I even ordered an artist to paint a reproduction of one of the most famous Pirosmani works- The Fisherman (The work is still not ready)
Sighnagi museum
The Sighnaghi Museum was founded in 1947. The first exhibition opened on December 31st, 1950, comprising seven hundred artifacts. The Painting Gallery was founded at the museum in 1967, furnished with donations from well-known and beginner artists. Today, the ethnographic collection features five thousand artifacts, including textiles, copper and wooden domestic items, agricultural instruments, materials corresponding to viniculture, goldsmith works, different types of working instruments, and musical instruments…
Gergeti Trinity Church
| Churches and Monasteries | 31 seen
Gergeti Trinity Church is a must have to visit destination in Georgia. The church is located at an elevation of 2170 meters, under Mount Kazbegi some 160 km North from nations capital Tbilisi.
I have visited Gergeti church for some 3 times during my stay in Georgia, and always have hired either Jeep (Lada Niva) or Delica cars to get to the final destination. Let me explain - the road until the Gergeti village is pretty fair, but from the village there is a really bad road heading up to the church, and not many will drive up in the hill with their own cars - on the other hand, once at the destination, there are many experienced drivers available with Delica or Lada Niva cars - taking you up for 50-60 GEL (per car, not person). On the other hand I have noticed many hikers there, and actually I wouldn't mind to hike next time to Gergeti church - as I believe it's should be one of the most amazing experiences.
Here is a joke from our latest trip - nobody from four of us wouldn't agree to drive up not for 50 lari or 100 US dollars.
Our Delica car
We hired this Delica car…
How To Setup Pretty URL's For Drupal 8
| Drupal Development | 22 seen
It seems just yesterday I wrapped a simple Drupal tutorial on how to enable pretty URL's for Drupal 7 site. Turns out already three years have passed. Time flies, newer versions of Drupal emerges, but the question remains pretty popular. I could point you to the previous article, but things have changed a little bit in Drupal 8, thus the principles stays the same.
Today I will provide a simple tutorial on how some (perhaps you) can enable pretty URL's for Drupal 8 site.
One of the most common Drupal tasks is to setup - Drupal friendly URL's - friendly both for humans and SEO. In fact - friendly URL's have been one of the main SEO strategies for the past decade (at least).
Default Drupal path structure is like this - node/4803, which is nice - but if you would like to convert node/4803 to /my-awesome-title, you will need to download and enable Pathauto module.
- Download Pathauto module (with it's dependencies - Ctools and Token modules)
- Extract them to /modules folder
- Enable Pathauto from Extend section (admin/modules)
Installing…
Theming Drupal 8: How To Include the Facebook JavaScript SDK
| Drupal Development | 18 seen
That time have come - and I have started to officially develop my first Drupal 8 site - I won't go into details by comparing Drupal 8 vs Drupal 7 or Drupal 6 (as I think that's a topic for another article).
Today I will show how one (perhaps you) can include default Facebook JavaScript SDK library to your Drupal 8 site. I'm working on simple business website, which has a Facebook business page, and we want to include Facebook page plugin into site's sidebar.
For getting actual code, you must first visit Developers Central on Facebook and customize your Page plugin according to your need, next you must copy/paste two sections of code. First - include SDK library, second paste actual code to generate Facebook page plugin on your Drupal site.
Include the JavaScript SDK on your page once, ideally right after the opening <body> tag.
<div id="fb-root"></div> <script>(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8&appId=…Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument
| Tourism objects | 216 seen
In fact I had to open a Wikipedia to learn the name of this place, as I mistakenly thought this is just some cool viewing platform located high in the Caucasus mountains, built by Soviets. Turns out it's not only built by Soviets, but bears the name of The Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument
Located on the Georgian Military Highway between the ski resort town of Gudauri and the Jvari pass, the monument is a large round stone and concrete structure overlooking the Devil's Valley in the Caucasus mountains.
Russia–Georgia Friendship Monument
This monument has been built in 1983 to celebrate the bicentennial of the Treaty of Georgievsk and ongoing friendship between Georgia and Soviet Russia.
Soviet design
Inside the monument is a large tile mural that spans the whole circumference of the structure and depicts scenes of Georgian and Russian history.
But what's cool - a spectacular view can be observed from this viewing platform:
Caucasus Mountains
For the history lovers - Treaty of Georgievsk
The Treaty of…
Zhinvali Water Reservoir, Georgia
| Lakes | 69 seen
Zhinvali, also Jinvali, is an artificial water reservoir located on the river Aragvi in Georgia. The building of the hydroelectric dam formed the Zhinvali Reservoir. The dam has been built in 1986.
You have probably noticed this perfect blue surface lake, if traveled to Gudauri or mount Kazbegi (Gergeti church) via Georgian military road. If not, and you are still planing your trip to this area, the chances are you will make a stop at Ananuri castle complex (which is located near Zhinvali water reservoir), but there is a small watching platform when approaching from Tbilisi - a perfect place for a group photo or as I prefer - landscape photography.
Zhinval water reservoir
We were on a trip to mount Kazbegi (Stepantsminda) and I decided to make a short 10 minute stop here, so I can experiment with a HDR photography
Zhinvali water reservoir
See also: Algeti Reservoir in Georgia
Tbilisoba (Tbilisi City Festival) 2016
| Living in Georgia | 14 seen
Tbilisoba or Tbilisi City Festival is an annual October festival which celebrates the diversity and history of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. If you are planing your first trip to Georgia - consider your trip here during city festival and try local cuisine and that awesome Georgian wine.
Tbilisoba 2016 were held on October 15-16 in the streets of ..you are right - Tbilisi. As usual I took my camera and went for a photo walk, starting Rike Park, ending at the right embankment of Mtkvari. My best finds this year was: Dzin Chao food tent and mcvadi from farmers.
Raft in th River of Mtkvari
There is a tradition to ride a raft during Tbilisi City Festival.
Colorful balloons at kid zone
This year the kids zone were set at Rike park.
Tbilisoba was first held on October 28, 1979, and has since become an established tradition. The festival features open-air concerts of traditional music and dancing and various cultural events, centered on Old Tbilisi, the historical part of the city. Beyond celebrating the city's past and present, people from all over Georgia represent…