Blog Archive: June 2018

On the top of the abrupt Baznīcaskalns (Church Hill) stands the white masonry Talsi church – the dominant of the old town. It was built in 1567 and later rebuilt for several times. A transept and sacristy are attached to a rectangular, elongated building. Talsi Evangelical Lutheran Church The square bell-tower is…

Talsi has been on my radar since the Summer of 2017. One of the first tourism attractions I discovered here is Talsi Regional Museum.  For a long time, I thought it's probably some manor house or something, but doing a Google search I learned I was wrong. Well, as I have never been inside the museum, instead I love…

It has been already a tradition to feature the first barbeque of the year at our rural country house in the blog. See First Barbecue Festival in Our Newly Inherited House 2018 is no exception, and it today's home remodeling series a few photos from the early Spring 2018 Grilling season has just started Last year…

Now, there is one more reason I'm starting to enjoy Drupal 8, embedding YouTube videos in articles now are super easy, thanks to the simple and neat Drupal module - Video Embed Field In this article, I will guide you through how to configure Drupal 8 built-in CKEDITOR to work with this module. For another…

In today's Drupal tutorial series I will talk about Trusted host settings, what they are and how to configure them. In short, Trusted host settings protects against HTTP HOST Header attacks (prevent your site from thinking it is someone else). Drupal 7 added a new feature into the core that is not user-facing…

As you might already know search engines (Google) sees www.domain.com and domain.com as two separate domain names. If you are not using 301 redirects (www to non-www or vice verse)you might get penalized for duplicate content.  In Ngnix, there is a simple solution how to make such redirect happen, see: Ngnix Redirect…

Setting up Google Analytics for a Drupal 8 powered website is as simple as it is with Drupal 7 website, luckily for us, there is a small and neat module doing the hard work for us. Google Analytics is one of the essential modules to have for any website, see: Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 3, Essential…

In the third part of Drupal 8, website building from a scratch series I will focus on a few essential must have, modules to boost Drupal website's SEO and usability. Before continuing to learn how to build a successful Drupal 8 Website, make sure to check out previous articles in the series: Building Drupal 8 Website…

The other day a blog reader asked me about purchasing a vineyard in the Republic of Georgia. I do feel flattered being honored as an expert in such topics, but in fact, I'm not. Sure I have visited a couple of wineries in Georgia (Château Mukhrani Winery, Wine Tunnel Near Kvareli in Georgia (Winery Khareba)), have…

To strengthen Drupal websites security I decided to disable one-click automatic module updates from Drupal dashboard, unfortunately, it makes it harder not even for bad guys to compromise Drupal website but it also makes it harder for Drupal devs. Now, there are several options you might choose instead, composer…

Now, this is interesting, today I was browsing Viator for tours in Georgia, and this one caught my attention - 2 days in Soviet Georgia starting $335.00 My attention was caught with that lovely yellow Soviet VAZ car, I quickly imagined driving around Georgia in such and thought -  cool. By the way, last summer I…

Can't decide on a new hobby? Think about tapping birch sap in early spring. Depending on the region you are located and availability of birch trees you might even enjoy this drink - a birch sap. In today's article a few photos from tapping a birch sap in early spring in our backyard using Libertu Birch Sap Kit. You…

There are a couple of great helper modules for Drupal to learn more about failing security holes - Security Review and Hacked.  Security Review The Security Review module automates testing for many of the easy-to-make mistakes that render your site insecure. Security Review runs the following checks: Safe file…

In the second part of the series Building Drupal 8 Website from the scratch I will cover details on working with content types and node displays. Make sure to check out part 1, before proceeding. When comparing Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, there is little difference regarding managing content types, except most of the cool…

Confessions of a day trader is an interesting term, I first discovered about a year ago - a guy from Norway, living in Riga, contacted me about some issues with doing business in Georgia. That guy turned out to be a day trader, writing a popular blog on day-trading. Here is the blog: Quantified Strategies I thought…

Seems Pāvilosta is a popular spot for kitesurfing among surfers from the Baltics. It was on mid-June 2017 we decided to visit lovely white sand beaches near Pāvilosta piers when I noticed some kitesurfer gathering. Seems there was a good wind that day. As I was equipped with my gear and a telephoto glass - I made…

I'm still on my way of building a million dollar retirement account from scratch by the time I will turn 60 (in 2045). Right now, in June 2018, I've reached just about 1.87% from my goal. My investments this year have been spread across peer to peer lending, dividend-paying stocks, cash and of course cryptocurrencies…

Pesto Cafe is a popular restaurant chain located in Kiev, Ukraine. We visited branch located near the Independence square (located inside the shopping mall Globuss). Actually, that was the closest restaurant from our hotel room at Hotel Ukraine, Pesto cafe serves classic Italian cuisine for pretty affordable prices…

It was back at the end of June 2017, we had just returned from about month-long travel (Turkey, Georgia, and Greece) to notice that grass have more than overgrown. I took my old pall - Edward The Trimmer and started my fight with the grass once more.  Freshly cut grass It's always a pleasure seeing such a nice…

Varenichnaya Katyusha (Вареничная Катюша) is another cool Kiev's restaurant, discovered by accident back in the Summer of 2017.Turns out Вареничная Катюша is a popular restaurant chain across the Kiev. But I didn't know that back when discovered it. We found this place after a night boat ride along the Dnieper river…