(images from etsy.com )

I have been influenced by Tatty Devine, a London jewelry company that uses perspex to create contemporary charms for their jewelry line. I like the idea of using perspex because it comes in many colors and there are few limitations to the form. Also, I can cut the designs perfectly using a laser cutter in the university workshop. Below are a few pieces from the Tatty Devine website. Stay tuned to see my finished designs, you just might be able to them soon!

SNEAK PREVIEW :
The TwitteRing

There’s no rush.

Before establishing a Twitter feed for your airport, your communication team should have very clear objectives in mind.  The first thing you should ask yourselves is, “Who is my audience?”  Though social media continues to evolve, one thing is clear for airports:  Twitter is most effective when it is used to communicate with people who use your airport.

Kansas City International Airport is an excellent example for airports who are considering the use of Twitter.  There feed is a conversation with passengers.  They have mastered Twitter’s potential by building relationships with customers—answering questions, providing information as needed and simply wishing them a good trip or “welcome home.”  Passengers at KCI look to @KCIAirport for information, advice and a virtual friendly face.  It works at this airport because they are consistent with their objective and they know who their audience is.

There are inherent dangers in not having a plan for your social media program.  It is better to not have a Twitter feed at your airport than to have one just for the sake of having one.  As the medium grows in popularity, your customers will frequently engage you.  How your respond, and frankly, if you respond will be announced.  How would you feel if you called a customer service number and could never reach anybody on the other end of the call?  The worst thing you can do is have a Twitter feed and not use it or use it for the wrong audience.

As more and more airports are joining the Twitter ranks, an interesting phenomenon is underway.  Plenty of airports are busy talking to each other on the platform rather than engaging passengers who pass through there terminals.  Admittedly, building a rapport with other airports can also be advantageous for passengers.  Best kept secrets can be shared and the traveler’s experience can be enhanced by doing so.  But a conversation of Tweets and Retweets between airports with Twitter feeds, although fun for the airport Twitterer, are a gross miscalculation of its potential.

Airports using Twitter to talk to other airports is nothing to quack about!

Other airports are strictly using Twitter to announce fare sales and delays.  Customers lose interest very quickly when every Tweet is exactly the same, five times a day.  They will tune out.  Again, the effective strategy for your feed is engagement.  Be a person on the other end of the line and talk to your passengers, as they too are people.

The American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) is holding The 2011 Social Media Summit next week.  The three day event will be attended by airport social media community planners, airport marketing and public relations professionals and others involved with social media strategy in the aviation industry.  There is no denying that social media will continue to flourish in airports as it is in other organizations and businesses.   Experts will share best practices and social media tactics that work—and the benefits of implementing successful programs at your airport.

Adding social media to your airport’s public relations, marketing and communications program can grow your airport, provide amazing customer service and improve your public image.  Just make sure you have a plan to use it correctly.  It’s not just good Tweets that travel the speed of ‘send’.

Written by Casey Boatman
©2011 Caseyflies Media
Photo courtesy askville.amazon.com
Contact Casey at cboatman@gmail.com

Airport twittering is very effective because you have, essentially, a captive audience with time on their hands.  As passengers wait for their flight, especially with smart phones and ever-increasing availability of free airport Wi-Fi, they hop online and check Facebook and Twitter; they check in on foursquare.  This, from time to time, includes venting their frustration about, as they see it, a really long line through security or a rude gate agent.  When people have time on their hands, they tend to bellyache about things they wouldn’t ordinarily complain about.  Further, people are more likely to chatter about being at the airport because they think it makes them look sophisticated and well-traveled to their friends and followers, and it probably does.  They like to blow one’s own horn, so to speak.  In 140 characters or less, a scathing tweet about your airport is sent all over the world, instantly.  (By the way, it’s happening whether your airport has a Twitter feed or not.)

This is an excellent opportunity for airports.  Airports that monitor the buzz surrounding them can respond swiftly to complaints and stop something, like a potential crisis, while it’s still in its early development.  The good news spreads like wildfire too.  An airport’s response, more often than not, is re-broadcasted to the originator’s followers.  If it’s an effective response, your airport will have a fan for life.  You don’t have to be good at math to imagine the exponential power of social media for airports.

Passengers at Gatwick Airport are encouraged to provide feedback about their travel experience via Twitter while still in the building.

As the popularity of this medium increases, so do the incidents of individuals snatching up twitter handles that can be made to look like airport feeds.  Name squatters, or in the Twitter world, squitters, will sit on a name in hopes of selling it to an interested party.  Others will try to impersonate a company or a person by falsely representing themselves as an official Twitter account.  This has happened to numerous airports in the past including Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (@Atlanta_Airport), Detroit Metro Airport (@DTWeetin) and Orlando International Airport (not on Twitter), just to name a few and it continues to happen today.

Foolishly, eight people are following @ChicagoAirport, a Twitter account which isn’t following anybody and has never sent a tweet.  Among these followers are an aircraft dispatcher, an aviation journalist, and Hyatt Regency Hotel at O’Hare International Airport.  (I think.  Let me make sure @HyattOHare is a legitimate Twitter feed…  Yeah, it is.)  The second Twitter feed that emerges from a search is @ChicagoAirports.  This erroneous account is inactive.  It has no followers and no activity.  By the way, Chicago O’Hare and Chicago Midway airports do have an official Twitter feed: @flychicago.

The two Chicago examples appear to be the work of squitters.  Twitter has a policy against this practice but states in their terms of service, “Please note that if an account has had no updates, no profile image, and there is no intent to mislead, it typically means there’s no name-squatting or impersonation.”   Call it what you want.  Regardless, here’s a helpful hint for passengers to find an airport’s correct Twitter feed.

Rather than search for your airport’s Twitter account on Twitter itself, do a search for the airport’s website in a search engine and follow the link from there.  There are a number of phony airport feeds out there in a septic tank full of bogus handles claiming to represent companies or people.  Clearly, an airport’s link from its own website will direct you to their valid, official Twitter page.

Written by Casey Boatman
©2011 Caseyflies Media
Photo courtesy blog.easybus.uk.co
Contact Casey at cboatman@gmail.com

However, even communicating with the masses in 140 characters or less has its ground rules This is where Glamour’s Twitter Dos and Don’ts come into play. My favorite out of the ten?

DON’T send anyone a picture of your private parts. Ever.

Click here to read the rest (photo from Glamour.com)

顾影灯前不自怜。

一朝功成屠龙技，

回首何以报家国？

好假。

当你走进考场，坐到座位上时，你一定在等待着考试的开始（这不是废话么）。这时如果你不幸地发现考场里没有钟表，而又很想知道具体的时间（就像我遇到的情况一样），你会不会觉得很纠结？不用纠结，请follow the operation below!~

此时，电脑的确是锁屏的，但只要你点击IE浏览器内网页左上角的view log超链接，就有一个messagebox弹出，这时你就可以看到时间啦～（Fox 手贱点出来的..经我亲身验证保证安全性）好了，接下来就是我的一些碎碎念啦～

8/5，到达苏州，D521.北站偏远，转两次车方到达住宿处（北疆丹端商务酒店），怀着惴惴不安的心情，继续挣扎。晚上十点多即上床了，零点熄灯，窗外修路，甚吵，迷糊不知啥时睡着，大约是零点四十吧。
￥65（火车票）+4（bus)+98（住宿）+7（中餐，平江路旁，面不错）+6.2（晚餐，苏大食堂，不咋样）
8/6，早上六点零八分醒来了，好困，于是继续睡。七点左右再次醒来，由于闹钟的效果和小菊的起床，威哥与我两人也早早地下去了。换了个房间，打算考完游一游苏州——毕竟这是我第一次来苏州。于苏大食堂就餐，完毕约八点半，腹痛，急往考场进发。九点多一点到达考点，不断提醒自己这个考试无关紧要，但还是紧张。
其实新G的考试考场环境还是比较随便的，毕竟我们是从高考杀过来的嘛。ISSUE和ARGUEMENT写作的时候还是甚为紧张的。特别是ISSUE，左手边的美女同学给了我挺大的压力（之前偷偷瞟了一眼她的专业——finance），右手边的某女同学给了我挺大的宽慰。考场上我的大字速度略微有失水准，最后大概水了430words左右吧。顺便说一句，ISSUE的题目在前一天南京南站候车时正好和小菊比较充分地讨论过，也算是走运吧。ARGUEMENT这东西，我平时也没咋注意写，也木有模板，不过正好碰到一篇相当容易的，一眼就能看出N个错的那种（貌似寒假上课的时候新东方老师分析到过，貌似），于是一水水了5个flaws外加一头一尾估计有500了。总体感觉AW做得还是可以的，至少让我放心了。最让人紧张的AW过去之后就是相对轻松一些的verbal reasoning&quantative reasoning了。我的答题顺序是：Q，V，Q，V，Q（这个答题顺序正好和左手边的美女姐姐相互交叉，而且她的题目和我的是一样的，所以理论上说是可以考场作弊的，当然我没有）。在答第一个V的时候，某个文学类的阅读让我颇感崩溃，最终耗时28min完成（别看我说得那么轻松，我的填空基本是靠猜的——作为穿戴Bikini进行GRE考试的考生，我对此表示理解，当然，如果还有类反存在，我也就不会这么淡定了，新G果然是裸考考生的福音，不愿背单词者的福音啊）。第二个V耗时25min，难度比第一个容易太多了，这个一方面是由于我第一个V答得太烂，ETS感觉再难为我这个小白过不去，另一方面是由于第一个V中各种文学社科类，第二个V中各种自然科学类——让我倍感亲切。做完三个Q的感觉是庆幸，庆幸自己在考前去过了一遍Math Review,对各种词汇都有个大致的印象——尽量避免阴沟翻船，杀鸡也要用牛刀。如果没看MR，我也许也能有个750-800，但对某些题目的理解上就会有一些障碍，有某道关于分布的题目甚至肯定会做错。三个Q，第一个耗时22min左右，第二个24min左右，第三个20min左右——别笑话我做得不够快，我计算很不行的。总言之，在完成AW后整个考试的过程就变得相当轻松。其实，做Q大致等于休息，毕竟这些题目都不怎么需要费脑子，文字也很容易读懂。再加上中间有10min的休息时间，我们更能感觉到新G时间的宽松。除了肚子会饿那么一下下，其它情况都很好。轻松还得愉快，最后结果让我出乎意料。作为一个Bikini test taker,我很高兴看到能拿到这个分数，毕竟我在这上面投入的精力很少，单词基本没背，作文加上这次考试总共写了十来篇。不过最终的成绩还得等到11/8（愿ETS送我一个让我满意的生日礼物）。

So far there is nothing I want to tell the world.  So I’m not.

When I do think of something – you’ll be the first to know.

Now I’m going for a snooze -  I’m imparting this highly personal information because I just KNOW you care.   Deeply.   I feel your interest in my every move..  I felt I just had to tell you,knowing you’ll respect this confidence and treat it with the reverence it deserves!.

 Here’s a clip to ease the anxiety of separation I know you’ll feel while I’m away.  It has nothing to do with snoozing, blogging, tweeting or anything really.  It got much airplay some years ago when it was the theme for the British TV show “The Vice”.

 I just like it.

Image by webtreats via Flickr

The other day I was in a dress shop and three women came in who could only be described as twittering. They were like three beautiful birds who were just talking incessantly about this, that and the other thing, which really didn’t add up to much in the substance department, but went a long way towards entertaining.

I was kind of fascinated by them and thought about how many times we all find ourselves in that position, twittering about a whole lot of nothing and enjoying it. It seems to have nothing to do with gender either. Because of the fact that I’m by nature a quite person and usually hear more than I speak, I’ve been in the position to hear both women and men twitter on about a whole of nothing.

The whole idea of twittering has been taken to whole new level by social media and the whole concept of twitter is just as fascinating to me as watching those three women in the dress shop.

Maybe it’s the cute little blue bird that twitter uses as its mascot, or maybe it’s just that they’ve captured the love we all have to twitter on about nothing to close friends and strangers alike, but Twitter is on to something and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

The catch-22 about it is that most of it is just a whole lot of talking about nothing. I mean really, do you, or I, really care about where our friends are going for dinner on a given night? Unless, of course, we want to go there ourselves, and in some way it pertains to us and whether or not we’ll go based on their recommendations, but that comes after they’ve gone, not when they’re on the way. Which points to the fact that, in general, unless it has some relevance to us, we’re entertained for a while with twittering, but are bored with it in the long-term.

Even though I really like Twitter, I’ve gotten to the point where I only seek out the feed of one person, and that’s really only because I want to see what he has to say about the LORD. That’s it, that’s why I tune in a few times a week, the posts he makes about himself I kind of skip over, but, the posts he makes about the LORD I read. He makes very real short assessments of who the LORD is, who we are and the relationship between the two, all within the constraints of the Twitter feed, which is really amazing to me.

But, it’s not just my fascination with Twitter and twittering and the fact that it’s taken off that I sometimes think about, it’s what our involvement with it and what that involvement says about all of us that speaks volumes. Where are thoughts are, there our hearts are also, and sometimes with such a glut of twittering entertainment that we surround ourselves with, we are lost to our need to make sure we get a reality check and make sure in the middle of it all that we focus on the One who is truly a life-giver.

“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”

Luke 12:34

前段时间我看到一篇报道，其中有言曰我国的飞豹战机的设计是在一个名叫CITIA的软件的辅助下完成的，于是我好奇地去搜了搜，想搞清楚这CITIA是何方神圣，居然能设计飞机。结果发现它是一个强大的软件。我就想：玩玩软件也不错呀～不过当时苦于处在复习阶段没有时间，只好将此事暂且搁下。

今天我买到车票后又没有看GRE（神保佑我吧我相信自己不会死的），却突然想起了这个软件，于是果断爬到网上去找它——但是！只有电驴的龟速下载啊….龟速就龟速吧…一时手贱又下了其它几个巨大的软件…期待过段时间能搞出一架飞机吧～～（当然只是壳啦，我可没有搞清楚飞机内部结构的能力）～～play~~

总觉得“玩”是精彩人生不可或缺的一部分，既然觉得自己不会“玩”了，就谦虚地从头学起吧～不过别把GRE玩掉就是了～现在还木有吃饭呐…赶紧觅食去…