http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ Practicalist is a blog by Ben Clemens. It's interest in ideas is to treat them as though they are people, with complex emotional, spiritual, and intellectual needs. It follows Richard Rorty in avoiding the attempt "to unite 'beauty and justice' in some kind of seamlessly perceived whole ... the consequence of such an attempt is to harden political aspirations into rigid ideologies and to distort reality by ... aestheticizing it." The logo is a stylized number '7' from the 700 year-old Indian Gujarati alphabet, because most people can easily hold about seven things in their mind at once. Separately it's also a beautiful shape. en-us ben.clemens@yahoo.com 2008-06-29T11:49:24-08:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000481.html At my job they use a more elaborate setup for development than I've been used to (the Very Special engineer that I am). It has some advantages over the quick 'n dirty approach I've used, but it has proved to... 481@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ 2008-06-29T11:49:24-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000480.html 480@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ 2008-06-19T10:04:38-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000479.html 1576684627In an article about Flickr by Virginia Heffernan ("Sepia No More" in the New York Times Magazine), she bemoans what she sees as the dominant aesthetic on Flickr: As art-school photographers continue to shoot on film, embrace chiaroscuro and resist... 479@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ beauty 2008-04-29T11:12:33-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000478.html In a recent post on Hitwise by Heather Hopkins, "Content Aggregation is King?," the bind that existing news media is in is highlighted again: "Aggregators are taking a larger piece of the pie but the size of the pie is... 478@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ hypotheses 2008-04-18T14:24:10-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000477.html Many of the good ideas below came in talking about personal information with Doug Fritz, the bad parts are my own ideas. When Friendster and Flickr started getting traction (2002 and 2004 respectively), I wasn't a huge fan of the... 477@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ technology 2008-04-09T12:47:07-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000476.html Update: I really wanted to switch to Evernote, the built in OCR is amazing, but its lack of easy integration with all my existing stores of things that are spread all over was a deal-breaker ultimately. Still hoping for the... 476@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ humility 2008-04-05T02:38:37-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000459.html Eric Alterman's article ("Out of Print, The death and life of the American newspaper" in The New Yorker) about journalism is wrongheaded and off-base. As someone who really loves newspapers wants them to survive, I was surprised by how inadequate... 459@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ media 2008-03-31T10:56:22-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000451.html When I was a teenager I was lucky enough to own a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100, with a 300 baud modem. It allowed me to program in BASIC, compose documents in a Wordstar-compatible text editor, and even access CompuServe... 451@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ technology 2008-03-28T21:46:03-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000439.html magenta from benjaminclemens on Vimeo. Another fragment, with the very patient Elan Freydenson and Lily Chai.... 439@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ humility 2008-03-27T05:31:52-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000438.html Given the petabytes (exabytes?) of words that have been expended on social media, user generated content, participatory media, etc. etc. etc., it is miraculous to read a book that lays out clearly and simply the why and how of the... 438@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ social design 2008-03-27T04:08:47-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000384.html hush from benjaminclemens on Vimeo.... 384@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ 2008-02-03T22:57:56-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000372.html See update at bottom. Having a "design process" for Web projects is an appealing idea. It codifies principles that designers like into rationales for involving design in major decisions. Since design is imagining, a lot has been written about doing... 372@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ humility 2008-01-10T14:30:30-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000371.html further from benjaminclemens on Vimeo. A ten second thought in pictures, inspired by and made with Jill.... 371@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ humility 2008-01-05T16:11:14-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000366.html In an article about the politics and economics of consumer choice in cable entertainment ("Bland Menu if Cable Goes à la Carte") in the New York Times, the author talks about how it's actually a good thing that the costs... 366@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ technology 2007-11-28T09:57:55-08:00 http://www.practicalist.com/mt/archives/000364.html $5 Chocolate Bar "the urge to say something stupid or fucked rises up like habit, but I fight it. I'm hungry for one genuine moment without insult, wit, or smoke."... 364@http://www.practicalist.com/mt/ humility 2007-11-18T06:39:23-08:00