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 Since then some of the information may be out-of-date depending on how far back you're reading.

December 1999

Holiday Postmarks

Deep down the Yuletide, the Feast of Lights and Christmas are intertwined, and on winter's darkest days humanity raises its eyes, hearts and minds to rekindle hope, as we fill our homes with light and sing.

People are at their best during Christmas, and we sing more songs on this holiday than any other because of it.  Among all the songs Irving Berlin's "White Christmas" is my favorite simply because it's all about hopes and dreams.  

The intro lyric sets the mood: "The sun is shining.  The grass is green. The orange and palm trees sway."  And at Christmas that's what I want to hear.

Now, before winter snickers at us as our tires lose their grip, let's take a philatelic trip where sandy beaches and turquoise lagoons sparkle under a gentle sun, somewhere where the palm trees sway.

Sail Away

That somewhere is the British Caribbean.  These 18 former British colonies range from Belize (British Hondurus) on the Gulf coast of Central America and Guyana on South America's north coast to the British West Indies.

The BWI is actually 11 separate administrations stretching from the British Virgin Islands near Puerto Rico down to Trinidad & Tobago near Venezuela, five of which are still administered in some degree from London.  The other British Caribbean countries are more well known in the USA.

Bermuda lies off the coast of the American Carolinas. The Bahamas swim off Florida along with the little Turks & Caicos Islands, and Jamaica and the Cayman Islands play in the sun further south.

If you'd a quick get-away, let the tide pull you away and ride the waves on the Web to these virtual islands in the sun.

British Commonwealth Postmarks at
http://www.pbbooks.com/cr1.htm

British Caribbean Philatelic Study Group at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/BCPSG/

The Trinidad & Tobago Philatelic Page
http://home.cwix.com/~e.barrow@cwix.com/

The Island Sun (BVI)
http://www.islandsun.com/FEATURES.html

Nevis Philatelic Bureau
http://www.nevisweb.kn/nevpost.html

The Crown Agents at
http://www.casb.co.uk/

The Anguilla Philatelic Bureau at
http://www.web.ai/stamps/fountain/

Bahamas Postage Stamps and Postal History at
http://www.gsu.edu/~libpjr/stamps.html

Barbadoes Post Office at
http://www.gpobarbados.com/

Bermuda portrayed on its stamps
http://bermuda-online.org/stamps.htm

Bermuda Post Office at
http://www.bermudapostoffice.com/

British Virgin Islands at
http://www.bvigovernment.org/index1.html

Cayman Post symbol at
http://rampages.onramp.net/~ekelton/cayman.html

Fly the APS Banner

I hope you've seen the APS' new www design, a collaboration by the entire staff executed by Wendy Masorti.  Besides revamping the APS' architecture and engineering, Masorti's also brewed up a fresh batch of graphic banners and buttons for your web site.

Just follow the easy instuctions and you're all set.  Use the graphics to link back to APS, but remember that these crisp, clean graphics will be doing more than telling the world you're an APS member.

Stories of fraud and deceit on the Web's bidding sites are common with these buyer-to-seller bidding sites bringing new meaning to the phrase "caveat emptor."  Tradional stamp auction houses separate the wheat from the chaff, but Web bidding sites don't.  

We're all affected by these slippery shennanigans on the Web.  All collectors are tainted by association, and the resulting word-of-mouth of continuing examples of shoddy ethics is poisionous.

Stamps can't change people or the Web, but APS members can do their part.  Use your membership number and Wendy's buttons on your stamp web pages to show you abide by the APS code of ethics and introduce others to APS.

For over 100 years APS has helped philately grow, and on the www (wild wild web) APS is the only community with a sheriff.  I won't guess about the APS "Magnificent Seven," but you can join the posse and help bring law and order to Web philately by pinning an APS button on your site.  (Canadian members may wear Stetsons and scarlet tunics.)

APS Buttons at
http://www.stamps.org/aps/logo.htm

They say bad only grows in the absence of good, so don't condone the bad with your silence.  Put on the button and fly the banner.

Just in Time

WorldTime is Scott Baker's creation and it is one of the very best pieces of time software available.  The typical user-configurable layout is a horizontal toolbar showing the time in an unlimited amount of time zones around the world.  Users can manipulate an unlimited number of clocks, choosing from a list of 900 worldwide locations. Besides the usual zones, you can have UTC/GMT, Swatch Beat, metric or sidereal time, and a nice touch is the chiming of Big Ben to remind keyboard addicts of the passage of time.  Again, the chimes can be configured to taste.

This is where most clock programs stop, but this one's Tool section keeps going and going.  The World Map feature is a zoomable globe, pinpointing your clock-cities and a host of other details, as well as being a good geography lesson.  

Then there's a calendar and stopwatch to track time big and small, plus an alarm manager and a countdown watch (TRAqDATE).  I like the WorldTime Calculator which answers the question, "What time is it in Calcutta when it's 7:35 AM in NY?" or "Where is someone if they say it's 8:00 AM?"  

WorldTime tracks my passage through time from Start Up to Shut Down, and is an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up presentation.  It's perfect for watching auction closes or knowing when friends in Auckland are coming online, and you can't beat the price: Freeware.  

WorldTime at
http://www.felinefuture.com/pawprint/wt/

Priceless NVI

In English it's NVI and in French it's TVP, though they both mean "no value indicated," those non-denominated stamps, or timbres sans valeur faciale.

This quirky specialty has a home on the Web with the NVI Club, a group based in France.  Their site's main encyclopedia section lists and shows worldwide NVI stamps with about 2000 stamps issued by 100 countries structured geographically by continent then country.  

Access at time may be slower than the norm as it's hosted on a university system in Nantes, and if your first language is French, you'll feel right at home, though the English-mirror is excellent.

The NVI Club site is priceless, and that's not to be confused with having no value indicated.  And it's nice to see stamps without being reminded of their cost, especially at Christmas.

NVI Club at
http://www.sciences.univ-nantes.fr/asso/NVIClub/gbindex.html

WordOwning

Alexander Graham Bell invented an object that not only helped the deaf hear but also let people communicate orally over vast distances.  Everyone bought one, and that was that.  Bell didn't copyright the word "telephone" or call it "telePhone" or "tele-phone," but on the www it's different.

Millions of dollars and thousands of lawyers can only mean trouble, and now E-Stamp (TM/R/C) is claiming that the word "e-stamp" belongs to them, much in the same way as Kleenex, Styroform, Thermos and Dumpster do to their makers.

How does a hypenated prefix convey ownership?  And who owns "e-mail"?  Maybe Tim Berners-Lee, the Brit who created the web, (not the 'Net) ought to have a judge reinstate his patent of html, claim all words, nuances and phrases created for, by and on the web and donate them to a U.N. charity.

To learn more about the fight over the short word indicating "information based indicia" check out this site.

Online Stamps at
http://onlinestamps.com/

IE 5 Toys

IE4 called them "Toys." IE5 calls them "Web Accessories." In both cases they are small tweaks to the Internet Explorer browser that may make some of your repetitive browsing chores easier.  It's just a little freeware download that includes the following.

Quick Search: a simple code prefix sends your search term to the  specified search engine.

Web Search: highlight and right-click a Web page word, then selecting search sends the word to your default engine.

Zoom In/Zoom Out: zoom in and out of any Web page image.

Image Toggler: toggle all images on/off.

Open Frame in New Window: open Web pages in new windows without the sidebars.

Text Highlighter: highlights text in a document.

Links List: shows every link on a Web page in a list format.

Image List: shows every image in a list.

IE5 Web Accessories at
http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/IE/WebAccess/ie5tools.asp

PSP VI

If you need a PC graphics program and haven't heard of Paint Shop Pro, you have to visit their web site for Paint Shop Pro 6 is in release under the usual shareware terms.

It is the continually evolving program of Jasc Software in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for creating web graphics and enhancing digital images.  This version of PSP also includes Animation Shop 2 to make spinning and eye-catching web graphics.

PSP does everything 90% of graphics users need and then a lot more.  PSP captures images from digital cameras and scanners, creates and optimizes web graphics, paints, draws and animates images as well as enhances and prints photos.

Some of the new features in PSP 6 include: vector-based editable text tool options, more special effects, deformations and filters; enhanced image browser and file management system; better intergration and file format support; and direct support for over 120 digital camera models.

Jasc says, "Paint Shop Pro 6 is the Swiss Army knife of digital imaging," but it's bigger and better than that.  It's more like that mythical sword Wart pulled from the stone that made him king.

Users can download a full evaluation version from the Jasc site, but be warned this program is popular.  I'd recommend using a program that allows resumable downloads and hooking up in the early AM to avoid the traffic jam.

Paint Shop Pro 6.0 at
http://www.jasc.com

Capt. Cook in the 21st Century

Topicals were made for the web. Hyperlinking stamp designs and desciptions to non-philatelic sites reveals the breadth and scope of the essence of topical collecting to learn and understand more of the subject through a study of stamps.

The Captain Cook Study Unit has the requisite information on the CCSU and how to join the group, but they share a huge amount of information on Capt. James Cook's voyages.

There are 195 links to sites dealing with the captain and his adventures, and other portions of the site deal with books and journals, coins and engravings, the logs of his ships, his biography and chronology.

Of course since this is a philatelic study unit, there's plenty on the Capt. Cook issues.  There are scans of recent stamps and a 600 item list of stamps, labels and envelopes that you can download to guide your collection.

"The Captain Cook Checklist" by Brian Sandford in Adobe Acrobat format gives issue dates as well as catalog numbers and descriptions.  Besides, being a throughly professional treatment, it's the sort of free information that helps novices discover and enjoy the vastness of the subject.

The CCSU also has 45 of their articles posted online to educate the visitor and maybe recruit a new member, and if they're so inclined a visitor can download portions of recent issues of "Cook's Log" in Acrobat.  The content and presentation are both first rate.

In the 18th century while American colonists were floundering about on the Eastern seaboard, Capt. Cook was charting the unknown waters of the South Seas, Hawaii and New Zealand.  It's nice to see his philatleic counterparts are doing the same on the www in the 21st century.

The Captain Cook Study Unit
http://freespace.virgin.net/chris.jones/ccsu.htm

And yes, he named the island for the day of discovery on Christmas.

Islands Drift

The New Hebridies have moved.  The site was originally mentioned in our column in August.  Though still in Germany, the "Virtual Album" has a new URL.

Virtual Album of The New Hebridies
http://www.roland-klinger.de/NH/index.htm

Christmas is a time for open hearts, open hands and open minds.  Reach out to the hungry, the homeless and those without hope and may you always get exactly what you deserve.  Enjoy your holidays.

Read about "White Christmas" at Steven Lewis' fansite at
http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/pennvalley/biology/lewis/crosby/whitxmas.htm