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I’m sitting here at 30,577 feet right now flying over Florida headed back to SFO in San Francisco. How do I know my altitude? It says so right on the interactive map that’s on the display in the set in front of me (powered by Google Maps) which tracks my flight all the way home.

I was going to process some photos (and I’m sure I still will) but when I fly Virgin America I’m just so tickled at what a great experience it is, I thought I’d post a quick blog post about the experience.

By way of disclosure Virgin America is flying me for free to Toronto next month as part of a program where they are offering what they call “influencers” a free round trip ticket between SFO and Toronto to try and promote this new route for them. The free flight was with no strings attached other than I disclose the free flight if I blog about Virgin.

But I loved Virgin before they ever offered me the free trip. I flew them earlier this year from Florida to SFO and was equally impressed and blogged about them then.

Anyways. On to the list of the top 10 reasons why Virgin America kicks ass over every airline I’ve ever flown.

1. Every plane seems to be new and is equipped with AC power at every seat and optional wifi that you can purchase — In coach! AC power is *HUGE*. Having AC power means that I can work on my laptop even doing battery intensive tasks like photo processing. It is so nice not to have to worry about trying to conserve power on my Mac.

2. Short check in lines and easy to use self serve kiosks. This is the second time I’ve flown Virgin now and both times there was literally no line. I’m not sure how they do this. My flight is a full flight back to SFO and obviously they fly other routes. But I’ve never had a wait with them. Even better the self service kiosk was easy to use and quickly pumped out 6 compact boarding passes for me and my family.

3. Free satellite TV in the in seat entertainment system. This is great to stay up on top of the news on stations like CNN and CNBC, but it’s also great because it includes things like the Disney Channel. This trip I’m traveling with a family of 6 and being able to put some headphones on the kids and let them watch a few Disney shows means less arguing about who gets to sit by the window.

The satellite TV system also has a mixture of very hip TV. Boing Boing TV, Current TV. Interesting programming.

4. A great selection of music. They have tons of my favorite bands to listen to. I was listening to Band of Horses earlier and now I’ve got my favorite new artist of 2010 on right now B.o.B. aka Bobby Ray. Ironically the song that’s playing right now is Airplanes. Appropriate.

5. I LOVE ordering my beer from the screen. I order it. Pay with my credit card. And it just miraculously shows up in my seat. I think I’m going to have a few more after this one.

6. Everything about this airline seems brand spanking new. The planes are super clean. They don’t have shag carpet fabric from the 70s peeling off the side of the interior like recent flights I’ve taken on Delta, Southwest and United. The lighting is cool purple. It feels more like you’re visiting a spa than taking a flight. The seats are all leather even in coach. I’m not sure if I technically have more room in my seat than other airlines, but it sure feels like it.

7. The flight attendants are super helpful. When we flew in to Fort Lauderdale we had a tight connection to Bahamas Air. Without even asking or requesting any information on this connection, one of the flight attendants came to my seat during the flight to let me know what Terminal my flight was out of and told me the best way to get there. He was a super friendly guy. It feels like the flight attendants on Virgin America are so much more positive than other airlines. It seems like they are having a good time even though they are working.

8. The cost of the flights are very reasonable. I paid $400 for roundtrip tickets to Fort Lauderdale from SFO. That was as cheap or cheaper than every other major airline I looked at.

9. In addition to the satellite TV they have a bunch of other great programming. TED talks? On an airline? That’s pretty cool. Believe it or not they even have instructional videos on things like how to use Twitter or Facebook. Haha. I don’t need those but someone else might. They also have a seriously good line up of pay per view movies and even better great TV. Entourage, Californication, United States of Tara, True Blood (Season 2 was great).

10. Seat to seat chatting. Of course you could always chat over Yahoo Messenger or AIM or something like that on your wifi connected device. But it’s fun to chat seat to seat too.

Oh two other cool things about Virgin America. It’s the first place I’ve ever seen a video commercial for Google’s Chrome browser. They showed the commercial right after the funny video on in flight safety (much better than the tired old routine I’ve seen a million times by flight attendants in person in the past). If you haven’t switched to Google Chrome from Firefox yet you’re months behind. 😉

And secondly, these pictures that accompany this blog post? I just took them maybe an hour ago. Took them, offloaded them to my Mac with my card reader, processed them, uploaded them to Flickr and posted them to my blog post. All while up here in the sky. The first one is of the wing out my window and the second one is of my wife operating the in seat entertainment system.

My Google Maps shows that we’re over Louisiana now. Time to finish this post and get back to processing more photos. I shot the Miss Teen USA Pageant contestants last night. More on that later. Coincidently B.o.B. is now playing “I’ll Be in the Sky.”

Got up early this morning and went and got the four other Banksy’s that are out and about with Troy Holden.

So far there are six Banksy works that I know of. You can see them all in my Banksy set here.

I’ve decided to start a new project. This project is going to be called “The Computer is Your Friend.” The project will work like this. Everytime I get some sort of error message or find that I can’t do something on my computer that I want to, I’ll screenshot it and add it to a new set that I’ll host on Picasa.

Once I get 2,000 of these or 5,000 (I’m not sure yet), I’ll try to set up some sort of public installation that cycles the error messages and other screenshot warnings, etc. through an installation loop on Plasma displays. The image above is an example. It’s one of the more interesting error messages I’ve come across from the site Hype Machine (my favorite music site on the web). I’m not sure how long this project is going to take me. I’ll probably have a better idea in the weeks ahead. Of course how much time I spend on my PC vs. my Mac may have something to do with the time it takes to complete the project as well. 😉

I’ve got the first 11 screenshots up now. Many more error messages to come in the weeks ahead.

This project is inspired by watching all of the excellent screenshots that Chris Messina regularly posts to his Flickrstream.

Glitch, a game of giant imagination, is the new slogan crafted by a group of former Flickr employees, including Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, to describe their new socially based massively-multiplayer game. CNET has a meaty indepth behind the scenes article out on the new game which will be free to play, is browser based and is currently in private alpha testing to be released publicly in the second half of the year.

In addition to Butterfield, former Flickr employees Cal Henderson, Eric Costello and Serguei Mourachov are also co-founders of a new company called Tiny Speck that is releasing the game. Daniel Burka, former creative director at Digg, is also part of the new team.

For those of you who are familiar with the history of Flickr, you’ll be aware that prior to becoming a photo sharing site, Flickr was originally released as a socially based game called Game Neverending.

I’ve been a big fan of Southwest Airlines over years. I love their lower prices and that they let you pick your own seat on the plane. I also loved that they let you print out your own boarding pass 24 hours in advance of your flight so that you can save time when you check in at the airport… well, that was until today.

I’m sitting at the Oakland International Airport right now because when I tried to do my normal online check in earlier today I was told that I could not. Today when I logged in I got an error message telling me that *my* itinerary was not available for online check in. So I called Southwest to ask them about this. The person on the phone was unhelpful. She told me that she could give me no information on the situation and told me only that I would need to check in at the airport, that she was getting the same error message I was when she tried to look into my reservation. I asked to talk to a supervisor and was told that there was nobody there who could help me.

Finally she relented and gave me the customer service (a toll number) for Southwest Airlines in Dallas. I tried calling this number for about a half hour (it was busy most of the time). Finally I got through and after a wait on hold for a while another woman came on the phone who looked into my record as well.

She also told me that I couldn’t check in online and told me that she thought it might be security related. She could provide me no specific information on why I could not check in online beyond her opinion that it was “security” related. She did give me the telephone number to the TSA though.

So I paid my $4 on BART and another $3 for the airport shuttle and went out to the Oakland Airport. I waited in line at the Southwest ticket counter until it was my turn at the employee assisted ticket kiosk. Here I entered my flight confirmation number again and got an error message saying “additional ID required.” The agent asked to see my drivers license and then printed me out a boarding pass.

Now, so today I’ve wasted 3 hours or so $7 to get to the airport only to show my driver’s license to a lady behind a counter. Now tomorrow when I take my flight I’m going to have to show THE EXACT SAME F***ING DRIVERS LICENSE to the security agent when I pass through airport security. So why in the blazes does Southwest Airlines inconvenience me and make me come all the way down to the airport in order to get a boarding pass the day before my flight? I could of course have tried to do all this tomorrow, but then I’d end up packed into a middle seat with a horrible boarding pass for my flight to Nashville.

How is “security” enhanced by my having to show my drivers license today AND tomorrow? And is it worth inconveniencing customers to this degree for no real enhancement in security.

Thanks for nothing Southwest Airlines!

I was deeply troubled by comments made in a Flickr forum that I admin by Photographer James Rhodes. His Flickr account is here where he goes by thevikingjames. He’s on Facebook here. For some reason Rhodes seems to blame me for internet harassment that he feels he’s suffered on the internet for admining an uncensored group on Flickr. He claims to have stalked me at the Dream Machines Show this past year in Half Moon Bay and has written that I didn’t know how close I came to being mugged by him at that event.

Note. This is someone that I’ve never met in life and had no signficant interaction with on the internet prior to him making these sorts of threats. He’s made threats against other people in this internet forum as well. I’m not going to get into the details of this specifically, other than to say that I found it offensive that he’d suggest that he was stalking me at a public photographer event. And that he’d threaten physical violence against people over differences in photography in an internet forum. I’ve posted a few posts of his below so that for the record (and Google) they can be associated with his name.

I did give James an opportunity to try and de-escalate this situation prior to blogging about his behavior on the internet. When somebody threatens people physically however that is totally inappropriate. When somebody claims to have stalked me and almost mugged me I take it personally. Whatever qualms James may have about an internet forum, threatening violence is not the answer. Below are the quotes attributed to him. I’m happy to give him ample space in this same blog post to justify his position or provide a response to why he felt it necessary to use these words.

“Must be the Sicilian in me, just can’t let things go…. still have yet to pay a visit to EA, and TH doesn’t know how close he came at the dream machines event at that airport on the coast…. and TH never really did anything… I just wanted to make an example of him… good thing I realized that he never said or did anything… I would have felt horrible afterwords….”

well to be clear I never threatened you, I just watched you from a distance. You never knew I was there, and you would have never know why someone would have “mugged” you in the parking lot…..it would have all been a strange coincidence…

Here’s another threat he made against another member of the same forum:

“I’m with you Hyp. just begging for this piece of shit to dig his hole deeper. Fuck in South Africa, I bet I could hire someone to do whatever I want to his family for less than $5k US. Its amazing what can happen if you have enough money, I don’t even have to see or meet the people who do it. That will be pretty hard to prosecute….”

Yea you never claimed to be anything, because thats exactly right , you are nothing, and never will be for that matter. You hate on people who live the life you wish you had but can never afford. You are honestly the most pathetic person I have ever met, and I have met alot. The simple fact of the matter is you don’t know what I am capable of, and you think you are safe and secure in South Africa, but believe me one day you will see my face. I know where you work, and I don’t think it would be to hard to find out where you live, and who lives with you. Don’t think I’m above bringing this to your loved ones, I will make you regret every fucking word you write, with interest.

I’ve been threatened with violence on the internet in the past and it’s not very much fun. I find it deplorable when people seem so willing to suggest violence and very personal when it’s directed at me. Hopefully people who engage with James in the future will have the benefit of reading his words here themselves to gain insight into his character.

I really truly honestly wish I did not feel the need to blog this post right now. But I’m very upset over the threats of violence suggested by James.

Update: More from James: “Well Tommy, I am “warning” you that you are a over-bloated douchebag ego maniac, and the next time I see you, wether it be late at night, walking to your car, in public on one of your photowalks, or even outside your house. I’m warning you that you are going to need a good set of dentures when I’m done with you.”

If you piss me off I will bring reality to your doorstep, see its what men used to do before we had web anonymity to hide behind. You say shit about me I feed you my fist, very simple….

Update #2: Although I don’t normally censor comments on my site, I just chose to delete some comments on both my blog and Flickr photostreams where James was referencing my daughters by name who are 5 and 6 years old. In one reference he talked about looking up my 5 year old daughter’s dress. While James may be the type of person that is full of hatred, I find it deplorable that he would extend his threats of violence towards me by referencing my children by name in posts about them, innocent parties and young children to make it worse. Further, the perverted remark he made about looking up my daughter’s dress paints the picture of a truly troubled individual who would choose to sexualize someone’s child as a way of spewing hatred out against them.