Data Proposal

For this set of data that I will be tracking and recording for the next two weeks is gonna show me how some of my every day routines affect me and how they change day-to-day.

The categories I will be adding to my report is the amount of sleep I get, how much/what I eat every day, and what type of music I listen to throughout the day. 

For this study, I will track the hours of sleep I get each night and determine if that affects how much I eat for the next day and what type of music I listen to as well. I feel like sleep is an extremely important part of your life and could have big effects on how a person functions each day. Even if it is as little as the kind of food they eat or what type of music in playing on their phone each day, like in my case, it could be interesting what this project shows me about myself and how I react differently during these two weeks.

Sleep

In order to track the amount of sleep I get in the two weeks of tracking data, I am using an iPhone application called "Instant." This app allows me to track where I have been, the amount of steps I have taken each day, and, of course, the amount of sleep I get each night. This will keep a nice and organized log for a pretty accurate recording of the time I spent sleeping.

Food Consumption

For this part of my data collection, I have made notes of what I have eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day during these two weeks. I am trying to get a sense, mainly, of how my sleep would affect my appetite and how much I consume during the day. This may help me figure out the correlation between my sleep and eating habits. 

Music

As a lot of people do, I listen to music every day, multiple times a day. I do not prefer any specific genre of music, but am not a fan of them all. People usually listen to the type of music that matches how they feel at the moment or just in general, so I wanted to see, if together, my sleep and food consumption affect my mood by observing how much and what kind of music I had been listening to throughout two weeks.

Thin Blue Line Analysis

This documentary I watched, titled "Thin Blue Line," is about an unknown man that shoots and kills a police officer during a traffic stop, but a man named David gets convicted anyways. It includes many different ways of visual words and images to give the documentary suspense and even sometimes a sense of clues as to who the murderer might be. For example, one of the scenes in the film shows a map of the area where the murder happened with all of the street names, buildings, etc. and then slowly fades into an areal view of the actual spot in real life. This gives the viewer a good sense of what the area looks like in perspective of where places are located and what the area would look like to be there in real life. Another example of these dramatic scenes made by the producers is when the film talks about the murder for one of the first times. The camera does a close up shot of some words like "murder," "death," and "witness." This gives the watcher a feeling that this is a very mysterious event that has happened in the town and that all of these things have occurred.

Not only do the producers create these senses with words, but with images as well. For example, there were a couple scenes of the camera showing sketches of the courtroom while some of the suspects were on trial for the murder. I feel like showing this helps lets the viewer get a sense of how dramatic and serious this trial was by showing the different images from the room. There are many other times when images or short clips are used to portray a sense of intensity and drama. These would be things like close up shots of police sirens, the barrel of a gun, and a shot from the ground up of the electric chair. Two important and very interesting clips, in my opinion, is when the camera does close ups of a couple suspect cars, including the lights and license plate, to show what kind of car may have been involved with the murder of. The other important clip is one being a close up of the cassette tape during the interview with David. It shows the tape in the middle of the cassette just spin over and over while they talk. I feel like this also helps the reader understand the intensity of the interview and situation as a whole.  Overall, I think that the producers of this documentary did a very good job at portraying different words and images to help depict the feeling of the horrific event that took place in Texas.

Who I Am

My name is Darren and I am a sophomore attending the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown studying a major known as Multimedia and Digital Culture. I grew up in the city of Pittsburgh, so UPJ is not a long way from my hometown. I come from a family of five including my older brother who is 22 and my older sister who is 24. These are some pictures I took/created that describe me and the kind of person I am.

This is a picture of me and a few of my friends after high school graduation. I added this picture because I enjoy spending time and hanging out with them. We will do things like go biking or play sports like basketball and hockey together.

I added this picture into my collage because it is a photo of myself that I edited in photoshop. I have been a fan of graphic design for a long time and edit different types of pictures like this when I have some free time.

Above is a picture I added of my hockey team and I because I really like watching it on T.V. and started playing it in third grade as well. It is something I really enjoy doing with my friends as well as being able to verse other opponents I don't know. It is a great stress reliever as well as just being a fun, recreational sport I love to play.

This last picture that I have added to my collection is a picture from a few years ago when my family and I were on our way to Mexico. I added this because of my fascination in traveling and seeing different places other than the place I grew up. I have never travelled out west but am hoping to go some type of national park like Yosemite or Yellowstone National Park.