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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

August 2002

AbiWord

I started computing before Microsoft was ubiquitous, and I like elegant software solutions, which means I appreciate fast, small, and reliable. It also means I don't like to use Word and prefer plain text editors.

Word is good for writing, but it does more than I want it to. To me, using Word is like buying a Ben & Jerry's factory just to treat myself to an ice cream cone on Saturday evening. Word eats memory and it does cost a lot if you didn't get it bundled with your new PC's operation system.

There now is a program called "AbiWord" which may allow you to read, write, and edit Word's .doc files without having to submit to Word's bloated requirements. AbiWord is an open sourced, free word processing program that looks and feels like Microsoft's popular word processor. It reads and writes in .doc format and is available in Windows and Mac OS X flavors.

AbiWord isn't a bare essentials text editor, and owing to its open source code genealogy, changes and improvements, features and options, are coming along quickly.

If you have an old PC that you'd like to use as a typewriter, or want to save space on your laptop, AbiWord could help you out. Currently, AbiWord has plug-ins and scripts, a spell checker, column formatting, and image importing. Check their website for details and a download.

AbiWord
http://www.abisource.com

If you or someone you know is headed back to school, this could be a handy tool.

Virtual Stamp Club

The Virtual Stamp Club is an online meeting place and stamp bulletin board. It's also something of an Internet institution and currently residing at Delphi Forums.

The forum's broad categories include US stamps and Canadian stamps, clubs and societies, an online stamp and cover bourse, dealers and auctions, postal services, topicals and specialties. Each category is a collection of many discussion threads with more added every day.

The VSC covers just about everything about stamps, and its strength is the people who frequent its discussion list. The guiding light and webmaster is Lloyd de Vries, known to most as the secretary of the APS.

The VSC experience is something like a continuous cocktail party on the first night of a major stamp exposition. It's extremely useful, a bit addictive, and by any standards, a very well mannered club.

If you'd like to post a message on the VSC, you'll need your own user name so that no one else could can post messages using your identity. It's easy and you'll be on your way pronto.

Virtual Stamp Club Forum
http://forums.delphiforums.com/stamps

Croatian Philatelic Soc.

The Croatian Philatelic Society is a non-profit group for collectors for the study and exchange of information on Croatian and related postal issues, postal history and numismatics.

Since the independence wars in the Balkans in the '90's, there's been renewed interest in this historic and philatelically rich area of the world, and this year CPS marks its 30th anniversary.

In addition to details about the Croatian Philatelic Society and how to join, the site has a few online articles from the official publication and a list of upcoming auctions.

Croatian Philatelic Society
http://www.croatianmall.com/cps