Stamp Column Archives

The Glassine Surfer Column Archive

This column originally appeared in the American Philatelic Society's monthly magazine, "The American Philatelist." Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

June 2001

Sarawak

Sarawak Specialists' Society is affiliated to The Association of British Philatelic Societies and an APS affiliate and studies the stamps and postal history of Sarawak, Brunei, North Borneo (Sabah) and Labuan.

Here you'll find all you need about the society such as events, auctions, journal, officers and membership, as well as answers to queries, a bibliography, a list of useful publications and a page of links to related sites.

Sarawak Specialists' Society
http://britborneostamps.org

Get Back

Your PC's two years old, you've downloaded, installed and removed several programs and games, and now you notice these uninstalled programs have left things behind, your "New" document dialog is cluttered.  You'd also like to clean up the broken file associations and get a better handle on your PC's security, so try Tweak UI (user interface).

It's a tiny Microsoft applet that sets up in your Control Panel and you'll be able to click and change settings for your mouse, xplorer, desktop, My Computer, logon, New (documents), IE, and more through a simple tabbed interface.

The "Paranoia" settings will let you delete Run, Document, Find Files, Find Computer, Logon, and network, IE, and telnet history items when Windows loads, and there are several autorun settings to better customize your desktop and Internet Explorer.

This is an official Microsoft Power Tool and is free, and rather than typing this long URL into your browser, visit the APS Web site where you can just click on it.

Tweak UI
http://www.microsoft.com/ntworkstation/downloads/powertoys/networking/nttweakui.asp

Come Together

Everyone probably has used WinZip on their PC.  It was spawned back with Windows 2.0 and grew into the be-all-and-end-all of Windows compression utility programs.  Even if it doesn't cover all the compression programs, it's easy and ubiquitous, but, yes, there is a registration fee.

And wherever there is a registration fee, there's a freeware programmer, and though the drawback usually is that programmers are only as good as what they're asking for their wares, PowerArchvier 2001 (formerly EasyZip 2000) has changed that.

PowerArchiver 2001 is an excellent, full-featured archive manager and provides complete support for ZIP archives, as well as support for ARJ, ARC, ACE, BH, CAB, GZ, LHA, TAR, ZOO, XXE and UUE formats.

It intergrates with Explorer Shell Extensions enabling drag and drop with Explorer, etc., and has Windows 2000 style toolbars, forms and buttons.  Archives can span disks and can be password protected.  

In addition, file lists can be printed out or exported to html or txt files, and there are tools for repairing corrupted ZIP archives.

PowerArchiver 2001 6.11.0
http://www.powerarchiver.com  

The Long and Winding Road

Plate Number Coil Collectors Club Web site has long been one of the best stamp club sites, and now has its own unforgettable domain: PNC3.com.

Though this is the club's official site, there's more here than just an application, byelaws and officers.  The club's auctions are listed here, along with club chat and a guestbook.

Added to the interpersonal material is a wealth of PNC information.  If you need to know about plate number coils, this is the site to see first, which is as it shoudl be for, not only does this online data keep members current with new PNC's, but it allows non-PNC3 civilians a chance to delve right into this area of stamp collecting.

Needless to say getting casual visitors hooked on PNC's is a terrific way to build to keep the club vital.  New members bring new ideas, new stamps and sources into the community, and everyone benefits.

The site carries information on new plate numbers and varieties.  There's a master list and checklist, all of which are well designed and executed.  

But one of the most helpful things here are two simple URL's leading to the PNC lots for sale at the APS' StampStore and on eBay.  Reference reading material is essential, but the day-to-day quest of a collector is acquiring new stamps and keeping an eye on what's available.  

These little framed links make that easy and are a service to everyone; buyer, seller and middleman.

A glossary is in the works, and you can read about how to get a precancel permit.  And if you're not sure what these people collect, just click "What's a PNC?" under "Reference."

This site works for PNC3 collectors, the club, and as a hub for learning about and finding PNC's.

Plate Number Coil Collectors Club (PNC3)
http://www.pnc3.org

Tomorrow Never Knows

Share a web site with other APS members, or join the Sociable Stamp Society's in my chat room on Sunday evenings.  Meet some fellow collectors, chat about stamps and have fun, and anytime you have the WWW of stamps on the brain, drop me a line.

Thanks for reading the "Glassine Surfer."