http://river4.smallpict.com/2015/08/04/installingRiver4OnUbuntu.html

http://daladevelop.se/oppet-hackathon-15-augusti/

Per this WordPress support page, you can type in a URL like the following and see the blogroll or links of a WordPress weblog in OPML format:
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/wp-links-opml.php
http://andysylvester.com/wp-links-opml.php

To me this seems like a more or less forgotten and highly downplayed feature of WordPress that could be really, really powerful.

I’ll get back to this subject eventually.

If you’re trying to install River4 on Ubuntu, please read this whole article. Don’t do things as you read. Reading it in its entirety will likely spare you some headaches.

Dave Winer, the creator of River4, has an easy to follow guide on how to install River4 on a Mac. To install it on Ubuntu you need to be able to wing it a bit.

The first order of business for me was to install Node.js. I tried to do that simply by running

sudo apt-get install node

It seems to work fine so I uploaded the River4 files via my FTP-client of choise. I then navigated to the River4 folder and tried running

npm install

And hit a big snag. It turns out installing Node via apt-get does not install NPM. So I tried

sudo apt-get install npm

Okay, NPM got installed and I tried npm install once again. Still no luck. NPM itself ran but couldn’t download the specified packages.

After doing a bit of searching I found a Stack Overflow post that instructed me to change the way NPM got its data. I managed to do that and it seemed like the install process got further but it still ended up failing, now with and error message telling me my version of Node was too old for River4.

WTF?!? I just installed it. How can it be too old?

Well, after som more searching I found an article titled Node.js v0.12, io.js, and the NodeSource Linux Repositories. I did not read every word of it but the gist of it is that the latest versions of Node is not accessible via apt-get(!). Instead the article gives us the following command-line instructions to run:

# Note the new setup script name for Node.js v0.12
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.12 | sudo bash -
# Then install with:
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

I’m sure someone smarter than me will know the exact details of what this does. To me it was enough to know that it would allow me to install version 0.12 of Node. So I ran it and then tried to install the River4 dependencies again. Once again it didn’t work.

Out of frustration I removed the entire River4-folder from the machine, re-uploaded it via FTP and tried NPM again. This time it worked and the app could be launched with node river4.js.

When I logged out of the server it stopped working so I learned the hard way that I needed to launch it using nohup node river4.js > /dev/null 2>&1 &. This way it’ll continue running in the background indefinitely.

What to do

This is an attempt of telling you how to go about installing River4 on Ubuntu. I leave absolutely no guarantees. It might not work. It might blow up your server. It might make you sad.

1. Install the latest version of Node.js using
   > # Note the new setup script name for Node.js v0.12
> curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_0.12 | sudo bash -
> # Then install with:
> sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
2. Install NPM using sudo apt-get install npm.
3. Upload the River4 app via FTP.
4. Run npm install in the River4 folder.
5. Start the app and server using nohup node river4.js > /dev/null 2>&1 &.

If NPM gives you problems in step 4, try changing where it gets its data:

npm config set registry http://registry.npmjs.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wIs2gkFmWk

In reality this is so not true. For the last five weeks I’ve been on vacation and most of that time have been spent raising my baby daughter. Before that I worked and raised my baby daughter. So off course I’ve accomplished something. I’m in the middle of raising a human being!

But that doesn’t make the feeling of needing to accomplish something less urgent. What I mean in this case is that I feel that I should create something, something that is visible online.

I have a lot of ideas of things to do and a lot of started projects that doesn’t seem to ever go anywhere. Here are some of the things I want to do/have begun doing:

Make and iOS app and publish it to the App Store.

Last summer I finally managed to carve out the time to learn how to use Objective-C and how to code iOS apps.

I’ve made two apps that kind of works that’s only been used by me and my girlfriend.¹ However I’ve not managed to get them polished up to the point where I’ve felt comfortable posting them to the App Store.

This is very common for me. I start something and it gets ”good enough” for me to use it, but then I never make it good enough for others to use.#

The apps are a photo app to create time-lapse photos of something that slowly changes (like a pregnant woman’s belly) and a private photo sharing app that uses WordPress as a backend.

I also have an idea for a River of News based RSS reader.

Remake this blog/website.

Lately I’ve been really interested in the idea of owning your content, in ”POSSE” and the whole indie web, or silo-less web or whatever you want to call it. That has gotten me to start changing things around on this blog to accommodate ”microblog”, ”link blogs” etc. etc. (I’m also highly anticipating Manton Reece’s upcoming microblogging service.)

This has led to some progress but also to a cluttered site, both in terms of the content but mostly in terms of the underlying code and the services I use (for instance IFTTT and Radio3) to make this happen.

I would like to clean up the code and at the same time move forward in adding functionality, like webmentions and some sort of backfeed of comments from Twitter and App.Net.

At the moment it seems like it would be faster to actually start creating a new theme from scratch (although with the same basic look) rather than refactoring the one I’m using. But it also feels like a drag to do that. It feels like I once again start over in something rather then polishing something up. (Do you see a pattern here?)

On the other hand, working on the theme might result in some open source code and that would really be me making something.

Do something cool with one or more River(s) of News

A couple of days ago I installed a River of News aggregator on my computer and I got blown away by it. Unlike other forms of RSS aggregation this seems like the perfect way to consume a large number of current topics via RSS. I also have a strong feeling that rivers of news will be important in a possible future with a more open web. Hell, Twitter is basically a bunch of rivers of news!

Today I also read a post that, among other things, requested a better way for blogs to recommend each other to readers and to curate content from each others blogs. This is likely accomplished by rivers and the OPML files that are the foundations of the rivers.

So I have multiple ideas of things to do involving rivers.

Playing Zelda

Or, I could just continue to Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D. Sometimes playing a video game can feel like I’m accomplishing things.

Read a book

I really, really, love to read but I read way to seldom. So maybe I should just continue reading Spook Country.

So, what do I do?

I don’t know. Hopefully something productive. I guess time will tell.

http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2015/08/01/restoring-the-network-of-bloggers/

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/19/ad-tech-online-experience-facebook-apple-news

http://www.emmafrans.se/sexualbeteende/skillnaden-pa-man-och-kvinnor/

http://scripting.com/2015/08/01/braintrustDesktopForUbuntu.html

http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/bitcoin-chef-gripen-i-japan/

http://fnordspotting.blogspot.se/2015/07/om-regleringen-lofven-och-crowdfunding.html?m=1

http://fnordspotting.blogspot.se/2015/07/om-sommar-i-p1-och-malin-krutmeijers.html?m=1

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/30/9074865/cecil-lion-palmer-mob-justice

http://www.marco.org/2012/07/07/twitter-is-a-corporate-api