Complaints here!!

[clif]

Is there a place for complaints*? I have one ... and it has to do with Bill Steiner's album pages. Now let me say ahead of time that I've used his pages for several years and have thousands of pages saved and printed off with thousands of stamps on them ... and this issue is really the first I've had. Here it is:

here's a pic of some modern Norway stamps I teased out this morning ... thought it would be nice to mount them on some pages ...



*just in case .. I'm being somewhat facetious here ... I'm not REALLY complaining all that much ... really!

[clif]

and here's Steiner's page



notice that he has put a spot for a STRIP of stamps ... and no spots for used (or mint) singles.

Now I could go ahead and just place those stamps in that spot anyway ... but the OCD part of me would scream in protest. Seriously .. I've tried ... he does the same thing with modern Canada ...

[clif]

I have lots and lots of modern Canada ... I want to albumize them ... and am not happy with using Steiner. So I guess I could

a) buy a nice album that does what I want (Scott, White Ace, Davo, etc) .. bit of an investment though ...
b) sort and arrange on varios .. which is kind of what I'm doing now. But I'm not pleased with that solution
c) suck it up, quit whining, and design my own pages!

ok ok ...

anybody else have similar idiosyncrasies? Or is it just me? Please don't let be just me!

[JanetC]

I have the same problem with Steiner so what I do is just stick the stamps in the block of 4 or strip section as singles if that is all I have. They really do fit in there

[clif]

Nov 1, 2015 14:07:36 GMT -5 JanetC said:

I have the same problem with Steiner so what I do is just stick the stamps in the block of 4 or strip section as singles if that is all I have. They really do fit in there

I know I know ... and nobody will ever know ... but I'LL KNOW!! They just don't look right! 

life's too short yada yada ... but still if I'm not happy with how they look then I shouldn't mess with it at all .. which has kinda been what I've done .. so now I have a stockbook along with a notebook of varios full of those Canada 4-5 stamps sets ...

here's the solution that I've hit upon. I'm going to design my own pages for just those sets ... add them to Steiner's pages (so that I also have a space for the single stamps along with the block or strip if/when I acquire it).  

I just needed to vent a bit 

[kacyds]

I think that I am in the same boat as you clif. I too dislike the way he has the spaces for used stamps but then I think about all the pages he has to make every year.... WOW!!!

My OCD also says to make your own pages, but I dont have the time for that....

So what do I do? I SUCK IT UP and just put the used stamps in the boxes he provides. They are ugly but in there proper spaces....

[kacyds]

Look how pretty they are.... <yeah right>

[kacyds]

[samb]

I haven't had this problem with any of his pages yet, I guess since I don't collect modern stamps. I have had this problem with my US Mystic album pages. I just gave the singles away and waited until I got the strips/blocks. They might cost a little bit more, but they are easier to find mint and it takes care of the ocd thing.

[darkormex]

I noticed this with the Steiner pages and also thought it was frustrating but I have encountered it before with the Scott albums...my solution is to take a ruler and a pencil and divide the big squares or rectangles or strips into equal spaces for the stamps I am going to mount, thus creating straight lines to place my mounts on or measure against.

[tony]

Hi Stampers 
I have the same gripe as I am a used stamp collecter and Bills pages are desgined for a mint collection with spaces for strips blocks booklet panes etc.

I am at the moment mounting Germny 1949 to the present day I have found for single stamps the spaces are far too small with spaces for self addesive stamps much larger,with miniture sheet spaces under size by 5mm in some cases.

Bill does offer a quadrilled page to print with a title you can enter this comes with the USA pages, like a lot of collecters would love an album for used stamps in date of issue order with all stamps (semi postals included) one can but dream!!!



 

[mourningdoves]

Here's something that might make dealing with the Steiner pages a little easier:

Album Easy

Basically, you use a template (the author helpfully supplies one called Steiner.txt) and modify it to get the boxes and titling you want. Here's an example from Norway:

# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# First setup the page elements that are common to all pages in this album.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ALBUM_PAGES_SIZE (215.9 279.4) #Set the page to US Letter (8.5 x 11)

ALBUM_PAGES_MARGINS (22.0 10.0 10.0 12.0)
ALBUM_PAGES_BORDER (0.8 0.2 1.0)
ALBUM_PAGES_TITLE (HN 13 "NORWAY")
ALBUM_PAGES_SPACING (6.0 4.0)

PAGE_START

# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Add the first row of stamps.
# ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HN 10 "COIL STAMP")
# PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HN 10 "Sea Coast")
# PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HN 10 "2004")
# ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 5.0)
# STAMP_ADD (28.0 30.0 "PERFORATED" "9.75 Vertically" "( 5C )" "" "" "")
# Horizontal measurement first

PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HN 10 "Illustrations from Children's Stories");
PAGE_TEXT_CENTRE (HN 10 "1984")

ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 5.0)
STAMP_ADD (29.5 36.0 "2K" "" "" "" "" "")
STAMP_ADD (29.5 36.0 "2K" "" "" "" "" "")

ROW_START_FS (HN 6 0.1 5.0)
STAMP_ADD (29.5 36.0 "2.5K" "" "" "" "" "")
STAMP_ADD (29.5 36.0 "2.5K" "" "" "" "" "")

Once you save the modified template as a text file (this one is "Norway1984.txt"), AlbumEasy can generate a .pdf that looks reasonably like one of Steiner's pages. You use a text editor to actually compose the pages you want; AlbumEasy is only there to interpret those pages and turn them into .pdfs.

Warning: I've only used this on Linux. There's a native Linux version that is text-only, and is really geeky. I've used the Windows version on a Windows emulator in Linux; I have not used it on Windows 8 or 10, but the author rewrote the program in 2013, so I have to assume it works on the newer versions.

I'm sure that all this sounds like too much work, and yeah: I wouldn't really want to do a whole album of Romania with it. But with a bit of cut-and-paste and/or some abbreviation-expanding software, it's not bad at all, and it's great for fixing up pages in countries like Norway where most of the pages don't need fixing up. It's also free.

Oh. Yeah, I'm new here. I'll do a proper intro one of these days....

[khj]

Nov 12, 2015 10:40:23 GMT -5 mourningdoves said:

Oh. Yeah, I'm new here. I'll do a proper intro one of these days....

Welcome to Stamp Bears! Thank you for the information.

It is preferable that you first introduce yourself in the Introductions Forum.

k

[crazyquilter]

Hello mourningdoves, sounds like you know your computer programing. We would love to hear about you and your collection.

[Craig]

Welcome, @mourningdove, and Aloha from Hawaii