Sites and blogs are mainly about buying and selling

There are a few altruistic souls who maintain websites as a service; a few persons that just like to write, but mostly what I see on the web is that it is being used for self-promotion. I suppose it’s understandable. People, if they enjoy writing at all, mostly write to their friends, and for that they don’t need websites. There is social media, messengers and what have you. So the open web becomes a marketplace.

Lately I have been growing bored with even my alternative social media. Sometimes it’s nice to feel that others are seeing one’s content; yet just as people are lazy about writing, they tend to be lazy about reading, or even viewing material produced by others. And this is understandable too.

Initially, or each time I return to social media, I tend to share more in the beginning, till gradually it peters off. Eventually I end up mainly commenting or sharing what others have shared. It gets a bit stale. I do enjoy the alternative social media as a source of new information.

Sometimes I’ve permitted Google and search engines to include my content, and at other periods I’ve used the noindex nofollow flags. But for the greater part of its existence, the blog has been private or undiscoverable.

So why, in fact, maintain a blog, other than for the perfectly legitimate purpose of self-promotion? I think a blog can be a place where one can broadcast, in a non-intrusive way, what one feels, thinks, believes in, is going through, has experienced, wishes to relate, etc. It is not “in your face” like social media. Indeed it is so far removed from being “in your face” that it is likely that no one ever sees it. But it’s out there none the less.

So, here is my blog, my stash of thoughts, ruminations, feelings and reminiscences. Boring or interesting, common or unusual, uniquely my own in their combination, whatever.

Setting up Dave Winer’s River5 RSS aggregator in MX Linux (Debian Stretch)

Setting up Dave Winer’s River5 RSS aggregator in MX Linux (Debian Stretch)
[summary]Setting up Dave Winer’s River5 RSS aggregator in MX Linux (Debian Stretch)[/summary]

git clone https://github.com/scripting/river5.git
get node and npm
followed instructions at https://linuxhint.com/install_npm_debian/
go to river5 directory
npm install
node river5.js
go to http://localhost:1337/

From his file FORPOETS.md :

Okay now you have River5 up and running, but it’s only reading the feeds I told it to read. Things get more interesting when you create your own list of feeds.

For this part you need a plain text editor, like Notepad on Windows or TextEdit on the Mac.

  • FInd the URL of a feed you want to subscribe to and copy it to the clipboard.
  • Open your text editor and create a new file.
  • Paste the URL into the text file at the beginning of the file.
  • For each new URL add it on its own line.
  • Save the file into the lists folder at the top level of the RIver5 app folder. Call the file myRiver.txt or something else that ends with .txt.
  • Make sure River5 is running. At the top of the minute it will read the new file, along with all the others in the lists folder, and add it to the feeds it checks.
  • There will be a new river named myRiver.js in the rivers folder.