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PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

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I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

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This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

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Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

It's not "RAW", it's just "raw"

At the end of this old post by John Nack at Adobe I found corroboration of my feeling that putting "RAW" (as in, raw image files from digital cameras) in all caps is silly. Some might feel this is a level of detail that only concerns copy editors and trademark lawyers, but I'm like that sometimes.

I've always preferred the nice, simple "raw" as the term for this sort of format. Saying "RAW" seems a little aggro ("RAW is WAR!!"), like you need to make the little devil-horns with your hand while saying it. The term is neither an acronym (RAW) nor a proper name (Raw), but rather a generic descriptor for a whole class of formats. Therefore Adobe just says "raw."

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
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1 comment

• Comment from David Krauth, later that day

As a connoisseur of fine Apple products, I too chafe at similar such erroneous designations when referring to a Mac (of the Macintosh variety) - its not a MAC (as in Media Access Control).

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