Blog Archive: December 2017
To Mine or Buy Ethereum/Zcash/Monero in 2018
| Crypto | 84 seen
Since the beginning of the second half of 2017, I call myself a proud crypto investor - currently investing in the 4 major cryptocurrencies - bitcoin, ethreum, litecoin and ripple.
Starting July 2017, using dollar cost averaging I keep buying crypto coins once in the month. So far, the total crypto portfolio shows an awesome 132.98% year to date value growth.
Update, lately I've been playing with bitcoin cloud mining contracts from HashFlare, see Should You Invest in Hashflare Ethereum Cloud Mining Contract or Build Your Own GPU Mining Rig
HashFlare.io (Affiliate link here - if you will click, register and decide to invest, I might earn 10% commission from that)
A couple of days ago I decided to give it a try and set up a 12 GPU ethreuem mining rig, for that I headed to Amazon.com and ordered goodies (motherboard, graphics card, risers, processor and so on)
Now, in total, I spent $960 for a bare minimum, just one GPU, which I'm planning to extend during 2018, by adding a new card once in the month.
I decided to compare/forecast/predict - should I rather…
Red Cafe Tbilisi (Near Marjanishvili Theatre)
| Restaurant reviews | 36 seen
Red Cafe Tbilisi is another interesting place to visit if you are looking for an all-day brunch menu. It seems that lately, brunch menus have been very popular across Tbilisi restaurants.
Stylish, elegant. Pretty interesting menu items. One of the rare places not serving Turkish coffee, even when I asked to make one especially for me. Instead of Turkish coffee, you can get here some Ethiopian, as I'm not a coffee geek I don't care is it Ethiopian, Colombian or Arabica. But yes, for those of you looking for a place where to enjoy an Ethiopian coffee in Tbilisi - think Red Cafe.
It's hard to understand why this pace is named Red, as I didn't find much red in exterior or interior. And that's good - I would probably avoid visiting a place with red walls or ceiling (not good for vestibular apparatus).
Interior at Red Cafe
Now, what I was really surprised was the food items on the brunch menu. A typical burger with Georgian spices and seasoning. I did dare to order such, and - well - burgers are burgers, it's not advisable to experiment with them. It was OK, but I wouldn't try it again. Instead of a juicy…
Building a 12 GPU Ethereum Mining Rig From Scratch - Part 1: Ordering Details
| Servers | 48 seen
I love testing ideas and even more than just testing new ideas I love testing them using Minimum viable product approach.
I've been in a crypto craze for a while already - started with buy and hold, added little speculative trades, tried an ICO and now even considering to start mining. Totally insane? Well, I can only agree!
In fact, that doesn't even sound like me - you see, I like buying and holding, I even enjoy doing a few swing trades once in a while, but to run a mining rig? Totally not me. It sounds like a lot of hassle to me.
But still - starting a mining - is the latest crazy idea I've been thinking lately. And here you go, just ordered some goodies from Amazon.
Inspiration for ordering these goodies comes from these two great articles (make sure to read them out)
- Affordable 12 GPU Mining Rig: Monero, Vertcoin, Bitcoin Gold & Ethereum
- Silent Ethereum Mining On EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 at 22 MH/s
In short, when looking for most affordable options for GPU mining rig I was worried about two positions, motherboard and graphics cards.…
Lenovo Ideapad 320-15ISK (Intel Core i3) Laptop Review
| Gadget Reviews | 39 seen
Bought this Lenovo Idepad laptop for the use at our Tbilisi office.
As recently we bought a few Desktop PC's with Intel Core i3 processors for transcription projects, for me it was important to have an office laptop with the same or similar parameters.
Top 20 Budget Class (Intel Core 3) Laptops / Notebooks
Ideapad 320 series comes with up to top-of-the-line 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 processing, plus up to 16 GB DDR4 (for this model Intel Core i3 and 4 GB DDR) memory, guarantee lightning-fast responsiveness and reliable performance. Run multiple programs simultaneously, and transition seamlessly between web tabs — you'll be able to multitask with ease.
Lenovo Ideapad 320-15ISK
Everything about the IdeaPad 320 is designed to simplify your life. It will handle any task with ease, thanks to powerful processing and discrete graphics options. Preloaded with Windows 10 Home, you'll have the personal assistance of Cortana, designed to help open apps and answer your questions — whether typed or spoken. From the new streamlined design to a cleaner desktop interface, you'll enjoy the simplicity that IdeaPad 320…
November 2017 Dividend Income Report - $50.75
| Investments | 10 seen
Welcome to the seventh (#7) dividend income report, covering earnings I've made from dividend-paying stocks, peer to peer lending (both fiat and cryptocurrencies) in November 2017.
Surprisingly, but November, in terms of a passive income, turned out better, as I thought before, and generated me a dividend income of total $50.75. I didn't plan to make more than $40 this month, but increased lending rates and additional dividend payment helped to boost dividend earnings in November.
Also, a super hyped month with cryptocurrencies made a nice boost to the total portfolio value.
As usual, I was doing nothing much, just investing in great companies, playing a little bit with cryptocurrencies and lending out money via peer to peer marketplace. Most of the November was on autopilot, just at the start of the month I deposited some chunk of money to Mintos.com peer to peer lending marketplace, and at the end of the month - purchased additional shares of Vilniaus Baldai on Nasdaq Baltics.
About Portfolio November 2017At the end of October, I've …
Christmas Charity Fair Tbilisi 2017
| Living in Georgia | 11 seen
Annual Winter Fair (Christmas charity fair) was held in Tbilisi's Radisson Blue Hotel on December 2, 2017
It has been a tradition for us while living in Georgia to visit this fair, already since 2011. Here are a few articles from the past: Christmas Charity Winter Fair in Tbilisi 2015, Christmas Charity Winter Fair in Tbilisi Sheraton Hotel, Christmas charity fair in Tbilisi
As usual, we took a camera, backpack and went shopping, it' s a great time to buy great things and let's believe it helps charity, as all earnings made during this fair is believed to be donated to charity. It should, after all. Winter fair was organized by International Women's Association Georgia (IWAG)
Unfortunately, lately, I've been missing inspiration for photography and didn't make much photography today.
French pastry
Our basket of goods after this year's Charity fair in Tbilisi
For years, our favorite stand has been the embassy of the United States of America, but this year Italy won our hearts. Also, It should be noted that from favorite attractions during the fair I should note…
How to Send RSS Web Push Notifications to Segments in OneSignal
| Servers | 24 seen
It has been already more than one year since I've enabled OneSignal Web Push notifications for this blog. Over the past year, the blog has acquired more than 25,000 web push subscribers. Frankly speaking - sure web push notifications are great if used the right way, speaking of me - unfortunately, or for good, as I keep writing on many topics, I still haven't found the most optimal use for web push notifications, as readers of this blog fall into many audiences and demographics.
One of the use scenarios to sync web push notifications involves using RSS feed, see: How to send OneSignal RSS Push Notifications Using Zapier
For setting up OneSignal with Drupal see: How To Setup Web Push Notifications For Drupal 8 (Or Any Other Site) Using OneSignal
Today I will write about how to send RSS web push notification using custom-built RSS feed, OneSignal, and Zapier for the country based segment.
As usual, I will provide an example of real situation - about 743 subscribers from more than 25,000 are from Georgia. As Georgia related content is often featured on blog, I decided it would be a good to keep users engaged, by…
How to Prepare for Drupal 7 to 8 Upgrade - Planning
| Drupal Development | 8 seen
It has been more than 4 years since I started this blog. During the years it has evolved a lot, featuring about 1500 articles, extended of using about 60 modules and what's not less important - attracts about 100,000 users monthly. For more than 4 years this website has been running on Drupal 7.
Despite me thinking of Drupal 7as one of the best Drupal versions so far, I understand the importance of upgrading to the latest Drupal 8 version. Drupal 8 features a lot of new and cool features, one of the things I like the most - composer for updating site functionality. Sure, there are many pitfalls also. Personally, I think it will take about 6 months for me to completely upgrade to the latest Drupal 8 version, as still there are many modules not yet supported in D8.
During the last two years I've built a few Drupal 8 sites from scratch and written a dozen of articles (mostly covering Drupal Nginx stuff), so I'm not a complete novice with Drupal 8.
Here are few articles related to configuring Drupal 8 environment
- How to Install & Config Drupal 8 on Ubuntu 14.04 + Ngnix
- Drupal 8 Configuration for Nginx Server Blocks,…