🔗 A Little Help From My Friends?

Jack London used to buy story ideas from the young Sinclair Lewis. He blamed his “damnable lack of origination”: “I’m damned if my stories just come to me,” he wrote. “I had to work like the devil for the themes.”

💬 Futility Closet

expression, you see — with me — is far easier than invention.

💬 Jack London ~ writing to Elwyn Hoffman,


Crucial Track 🎵 May 5, 2026

"Steppin' Out" by Joe Jackson

Listen on Apple Music

I was listening to the new Joe Jackson album - really rather good - but for me - it still doesn’t meet the excellence of Joe’s crucial track.

View John Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile

Listen to my Apple Music playlist


🖋️ When Can You Swear?

Leon reposted this 🔗 Disparaging Nouns | Forking Mad+ … with some commentary. Got a couple of comments back in turn - so I thought I would pop over to see what was being said in context - because personally I had never heard of ‘walloper’ … Brit here with a ‘lifetime’ in the USA and 6 years .. so far … across the Tasman.

But then he moved on.

Read More →


'🖇️ Getting There' I asked yesterday.

'Slowly' I answer today.



Crucial Track 🎵 May 4, 2026

"(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult

Listen on Apple Music

Prompt Share a song you love that has parentheses (in the title).

A song that would have been in my ‘Just Good Songs’ playlist the day I heard it - it’s just that 🍎 hadn’t got round to inventing it - mainly because mere mortals didn’t have the internet.

View John Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile


👁️ There’s a lot to styling even a few pages isn’t there?😖


👁️ Two new sources added to my ‘central aggregator’ today .. restyling and leaning as I go.

A screen shot revealing a post fromo each of the feeds

Crucial Track 🎵 May 3, 2026

"Rockin' In The Free World (Glastonbury 2009)" by Neil Young

Live. Glastonbury. Well over ten minutes. Neil rockin' out.

View John Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile


In Obsidian there is a plugin called ‘Style Setting’ written by ‘@mgmeyers’. I wonder if a similar plug in could be developed and worked on MicroBlog?

It’s a user friendly mechanism for people to talk to the custom CSS using simple form changes that get applied to the CSS?

… just in case there is anyone out there with some spare time on their hands @AndySylvester 😉 … and I am not sure whether this would be before or after creating a presentation layer for Feedland et al so I can have it look like the rest of my sites.

To me - before would make most sense - and the first use case could be interfacing just to the Feedland CSS?

Filed in ‘A Boy Can Dream Can’t He’?


Getting There?

... with a title.



Getting there.




People First - All Else Follows



It is what it is - and this is no exception. Too early to get excited.



So this right here is what might happen



👁️ You don’t want to rebuild your site too often when it is on the ‘larger’ side. Yet to unpack the specifics behind ‘larger’.


Crucial Track 🎵 May 2, 2026

"Hi Ren" by Ren Gill

Stunning. A friend shared this with me last year. If you want to listen to a totally original and highly talented artist - start here.

View John G Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile


People will be more important in the future, not less.

💬 Mark Zuckerberg

Whilst I fervently believe that - I don’t ~believe him~ think he knows what that really means.

Now - Not Important

Zuck Now

Zuck In The Future








































John Now

John In The Future

The Future - Very Important


Crucial Track 🎵 May 1, 2026

"Permanating" by Steven Wilson

Listen on Apple Music

In the Venn Diagram of music that jax and I both like - this one sits high ... so clearly needs to be pulled out first.

View John G Philpin's Crucial Tracks profile


👁️ Its decided. Farewell Reeder … Hello (again) NetNewsWire old friend.