Just got a letter from the UK, and it had this colorful stamp on it.
For an instant, I felt that special twinge of joy that an interesting stamp elicits; only after a moment did I remember that (a) I no longer collect stamps, not since I was a kid I don’t, and (b) none of my friends does, nor do they have kids that do that I might give the stamp to.
This is a shame, really, because postage stamps have a built-in ability to delight. They are often beautiful, they come from wondrous distant lands, they have a story to tell in their miniature image, and they are eminently collectible. In this way, every letter that you or your circle of friends and relatives received had the potential to surprise you with a “bonus”, a tiny capsule of serendipity where the stamps it bore could be boring or fascinating, depending on the luck of the draw.
All this may soon be over. I don’t know whether stamp collecting is on the decline (I suspect serious adult collectors do exist, but children may be more into video games these days). But the stamps themselves may soon be obsolete. People send less personal letters since the advent of email, and I’ve just read that the UK is planning postage stickers you can buy online and print out, and these have a bar code, not a picture (they also took out the queen’s ever-youthful profile we see in the stamp above, causing much consternation).
But meanwhile stamps still exist, and I know of one guy who makes full use of their joy-creating potential. He is a fellow History-of-Computing collector, and an eBay seller of slide rules; when I buy one from him it invariably arrives in an envelope covered with a mosaic of small-denomination stamps, each one different, all beautiful.
The riot of color is so cheerful that I collect these envelopes. What a nice way to delight one’s customers!
Just posted a new article on my History of Computing site: 
“Truth in advertising” sometimes seems an oxymoron, and the cosmetics industry is hardly where you’d expect to find much of it. So hats off to Neutrogena’s Norwegian Formula hand cream, whose statement on the tube that it “instantly relieves dry or chapped hands – just a dab needed” is absolutely correct. They claim it was devised from the experience of Nordic fishermen with the effect of fish oils; be that as it may, I can attest that this formula really can handle chapped skin that would laugh at your usual hand lotion.
Those conservative business cards…
Business cards have been around for a long time – very long, if you count visiting cards – so we should not be surprised if they tend to have an innate inertia to them. Still, business has changed so much in recent years – isn’t it time that the cards paid attention?
I was scanning a batch of business cards I got in a conference recently when I noticed an interesting fact: they may come in many designs and colors, but 90% of cards will have the contact information in the following order:
Now this is interesting, because it has two attributes:
I had a friend, a master blogger and geek, who once said if he had his way he’d simply put on his card his name and “Google me!” – now that’s modern thinking for you! The closest you get to this are Moo minicards, those miniature cards that barely have room for a name, job role and email address.
Now that I noticed this I checked my own new card that I made after leaving Intel – and guess what, I had it almost right in terms of descending importance:
Only the physical address stayed higher than it should be…