Wannabe Celebrity Reflection

For my first reflection, I will be going over my overall experience at Squamish Valley Music Festival in 2014.  

This day in question, is the one day where I actually felt like I was a celebrity.  There were a total of six of us out in the summer heat (30 degrees celsius) and practically every second crowd we passed made some kind of comment.  People constantly wanted to take pictures with us and especially me with the flower beard.  The comments in particular were usually "Nice suits!" or commented on my flower beard.  Above all the main thing that was said to us, however, was "You must be hot in those suits."  That line about us being so crazy to wear is now an inside joke in my friend base because it was said so many times. 

Now going back to when I said that I've never felt like a celebrity more than I did that day.  I truly did, as in by halfway through the day I was legitimately tired of being talked to and asked to pose for pictures.  One because it was just too much, but I was also starting to not be able to even enjoy the music.  Looking back it really makes me empathize with celebrities in how they have to deal with that every day.  I couldn't imagine that.  Like I said before, pretty much literally every second crowd had something to say to us about what we were wearing.  I must have posed for photos with more than 200 people and by the time the sun was setting, I was exhausted.  This is coming from a person who was always voted class clown in high school and has always enjoyed a decent amount of attention.  

We were also interviewed far more than just these two stories but we just never found the articles.  

Above is the way that I posted that interview on Facebook.  I did it as well on instagram but I have far more friends on Facebook than followers on Instagram.  Getting 60 likes at this time was really quite a lot for me and definitely added to the whirlwind of attention we got at this music festival.  I feel like the post itself did a lot to help boost my online persona of a funny guy/goofball in the answers I gave to the reporter as underlined in the article above.  Funny definitely sells on social media, as well as everywhere

This was an interesting post from my high school friend, Kylie Parker.  The fact that I hadn't even spoken to her in like 3-4 years before she posted this on my wall and the fact that she knew it was us, definitely speaks to the reach we had on social media and at the festival in general.  I took this as very high praise because I can't recall ever going to an event where I after said event talked to my friends and others about the role someone at a participants level at the event.  The idea that we were to be spoken about in the same length as performers at Squamish like Eminem and Arcade Fire is really saying something.

I would definitely consider this my main fame spike on social media as we got such notoriety outside our own posts and pictures on Facebook and Instagram.  I started to notice more likes on my posts in general since then.

As it says in the article above done by Yolanda Cole, Arcade Fire (one of the bands that were playing at Squamish Valley Music Festival) had asked for their fans to dress up formally.  The funny thing was, that we had no idea that Arcade Fire had asked their fans to do so.  It was just kind of a lucky coincidence.  We have continually done this at music festivals and especially now that we have garnered such success at this one.  Definitely save it for far rainier days because we were very much "Hot in our suits."

For my second reflection, I'll be talking about a commercial that I did for Galaxy Motors in collaboration with CTV Victoria.

This post and situation made me feel like a celebrity for a couple reasons.  Definitely never felt as much as how I felt in the moment at Squamish, but having a commercial written with me in mind, the entire shooting process which took a couple weeks,  going into CTV Vancouver Island to narrate the video and then having it air on both CTV Vancouver Island and CHEK was indeed in the same boat as at Squamish.  The commercial is still airing today and has been seen by people in my hometown of Mackenzie, BC.  I haven't been back home since the commercial aired, but knowing the town as I do, I would definitely have people talk to me about it on the street.  I'm judging this from private messages and what my parents have told me about what they've heard around town.  That people back home call me Raz these days, too funny really.

Having grown up in a small town, being on TV was definitely a surreal feeling.  A good portion of my friends on Facebook still live in the same sort of areas and to them when considering the feedback in private messages and the comments on my post, thought this was going to be the first of many.  It may yet happen again as Raz may make another appearance having aged a bit.  

Talking about the post in general.  I was surprised when it was posted and only got 54 likes.  My analysis as to why this is the case is because I feel that people are more likely to *like a video if the video is embedded on Facebook directly.  As in that they don't have to go to a separate website to watch it.  I also have evidence in that a video I posted the summer before this commercial aired far outstripped the commercial in attention.

 As you can see, this video received nearly double the other videos *likes and had far more comments.  In my Facebook Post  It is my opinion that the Raz commercial was far funnier and had undoubtedly better production value, but wasn't as popular because people would have to leave Facebook to watch it.  This point especially makes sense because many people are perusing Facebook on their mobile and it is a bigger pain in the ass to switch over to another app to watch something.  There's no doubt in my mind that if the video was embedded into Facebook that it would have gotten more attention.  However, the Raz video was given more shares (a total of 5 if you count reposts) where it was given 10-20 likes on average and some comments.  This video did not receive any shares so I think that the two videos resonated with people in different ways.  The beard video being one that they simply liked but didn't want their friend base to see, but the Raz video was something that some people were willing to subject their owns friends to.

I also underlined a comment done by Lauren Billey on my Raz video Facebook post that actually put into words about the amount of underwhelming *likes the video had received when she said, "How does this not have more likes?"

Looking back at both of these videos today and especially the Raz one, I find that they both did much to add to my online personae of being a goofball/funny guy.  But that my goofballness had finally come to fruition in that it was once again a post that was external to Facebook.  In that it is airing on TV and coming to people in a separate medium

For my final reflection, I will be talking about both of my most liked photos posted to my Facebook.  Both of these photos have a common theme and continue to push my identity of my online identity being that of a goofball.

This one actually fell into my lap in that someone at Kwantlen told me that I should grow out my hair and beard to look like Tormund Giantsbane and that's exactly why I have the flow I do today.  I feel as if it was David Bauerfiiend but I can't be sure.  Anyway, I think this photo got over 107 likes for a couple different reasons.  I thought that my caption of "That moment when you're curious if Tormund Giantsbane was your Milkman..." was quite funny, although I did receive a scathing message from my mother.  Another reason is that I do indeed look like him, but the main reason is that by posting this photo I am connecting to fans of Game of Thrones on my Facebook.  This to me is similar to what was spoken of in the documentary we watched where youtubers would have guests on their channels to connect with their followers and merge the two.  Although I definitely didn't merge fans with the actor that plays Tormund Giantsbane, I definitely got more likes because  I have no doubt that if I would have used more hashtags on both Facebook and Instagram that it would have gotten more attention.  

Also, I have underlined the comment made by Breydon Sharp on the photo showing that the love for the Raz video still lives on.

This photo of me being dressed up as Annie for Halloween, is once again taking advantage of the amount of Annie fans that were on my Facebook.  As well as that, I suppose anytime a full grown man puts on a dress that it may get a decent amount of attention from a comedic standpoint.  For this post, I actually counted up how many girls liked this photo as compared to guys and only 6 of my guy friends on Facebook liked this and the other 104 were solely women.  This may of course mean that more girls like Annie than guys but in my experience of being a red head, I have gotten more feedback in laughs to jokes or posts that are of the red head genre from women in general.  So it may be a little from column A and a little from column B.  

In conclusion, I find that sticking to my online persona of a goofball/funny guy has worked in the sense of receiving a decent amount of likes and comments.  I have in total roughly plus or minus 600 friends on Facebook on any given day and the number is always growing. The point I am trying to make with this number is that for the posts that have received upwards of 100 likes, that is basically 1/6th of my Facebook friends going out of their way to *like one of my posts.  This is not to mention, how many people saw these posts and chose not to *like or comment, not to mention how many of my friends may be inactive.  It would be cool to see some day if social media will put beside the amount of likes, what the percent of *likes to followers is to emphasize better how effective the post was.  It would definitely help show how successful a post for me.  My cousin, who is 14 years old can post a selfie on Facebook or Instagram and get close to 350 likes each time.  However, she has more than 2.5k followers on both.  This is simply the nature of growing up in a high school where everyone has social media and follows/friends everyone they have.  So when I look at my posts from her perspective, my *likes and comments are incredibly low.  

Car deaths in B.C. take dive after drunk driving crackdown

According to the data found on BC's data catalogue, motor vehicle fatalities has dropped by 22.2% in British Columbia from 2010 to 2011.  After seeing the massive drop the decline of fatalities continues to persist through to 2014.   A motor vehicle fatality is characterized as a road user that was injured in a collision involving a motor vehicle on a public highway and died anytime within 30 days of the crash from their injuries.  This data excludes all deaths that occurred on forest service roads, industrial roads and private driveways as well as fatal victims of off-road snow mobile accidents, homicides and suicides.

The reason for this drop can be linked to the introduction of stricter impaired driving laws in B.C. in 2010. 


These changes were enacted by the Motor Vehicle Act (MVA) in 2010 and take drivers off the road if they fail a breathalyzer test where their sample is north of 0.08 per cent they will receive a 90-day driving ban and a $500 dollar fine.  Even more stringently so, drivers caught once between the level of 0.05 to 0.08 on a breathalyzer test will face bans and fines and an increase in the length of the ban and the cost of the fine for each additional offence.  This is known as the "warn" range.

These new tools for police officers and especially the new "warn" range is what Solicitor General Michael de Jong hoped would help curb repeat offenders from staying on the bottle while they drive.  According to de Jong there has been an increase in drinking and driving in British Columbia for some time and with the implementation of the Motor Vehicle Act he is setting a province wide goal of 35 per cent by the end of 2013.  These changes finally came about to honour the death of Alexa Middelaer, a 4-year old who was killed by a drunk driver. 

After seeing the first years results, Langley's RCMP "E" Division Traffic Services was awarded the 2011 National Police Award for Traffic Safety where they saw a decrease of 30 per cent decrease in roadside fatalities.  And now with just 4 years since these new laws and road side assistance programs being put in place there has been an estimated 52 percent decrease in impaired driving fatalities.  The average found of drinking-and-driving related deaths is thought to be now at 54 per year whereas before it was 112.  This drop in the average mimics this data found and portrayed on the above chart.

Interestingly enough, even though the motor vehicle act and immediate roadside prohibition program have undeniably yielded results in dropping the rate of fatalities for vehicles, the laws have been met with criticism from some saying that the new rules gives the police officer to much power.  An article done by the Huffington Post shows critics listing examples that the banning process that is enforced onto a driver under the police officer's discretion is immediate and in the cases of a breathalyzer malfunction or an officer's mistake, the plaintiff is left with no way to remove the ban during his or her's sentence.

While the program seems to have it's faults and inconveniences for people who toe the line with having a few drinks and then deciding to drive, the drop in impaired driving fatalities and total driving fatalities is enough to deem the new regulations as effective.    

Data Update #3

My chart shows the motor vehicle fatalities that occurred yearly on British Columbian highways by motor vehicles and especially accentuates the drop of fatalities from 2010 to 2012.

The information I wasn't able to obtain from my data that I wish I could have would have been more specific motor vehicle user types.  This could include different groups such as motorcycles, trucks, semis, cars, etc. Lumping all motor vehicles into one group is too vague in my opinion and would be better to contrast fluctuations in weight and size depending on the road user type.  Furthermore, this would be interesting and important to know whether laws and regulations in BC affected vehicles with these different attributes differently.  I would also be interested to know if some of the fatalities that occurred did so with the use of alcohol and other mind impairing stimulants.  I could investigate this further with a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to find more specific details to the fatalities in the tickets/fines issued by Police.  Also continue to search for more laws or regulations that could have brought about this decrease in fatalities.

Data Update #2

The most compelling information I found in my data set was the 20% decrease of motor vehicle fatalities between 2010 and 2011. The decrease comes specifically from the road user type "Motor Vehicle Driver" which saw a decrease of 22% in those same years. After the decrease, the fatalities stayed relatively consistent until 2014.

My spreadsheet shows the decrease of these motor vehicle fatalities in total and in the specific motor vehicle type of "Motor Vehicle Driver."  As well as my original data set can be found here.

My relevant news article can be found here.

This article done by the Canada Safety Council explains that in 2010 a program was implemented called Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) Program which was aimed at reducing roadside fatalities. That a year after the program was put into action in BC it won an award for reducing fatalities drastically. This is relevant to my data because my data set contains all the road users that were injured in a collision involving a motor vehicle on a public highway and died anytime within 30 days of the crash from their injuries in British Columbia from 1996 to 2014. As this is a road side assistance program, it is relevant to my data because my fatality data includes this 30 day after the accident period. So this could be used as an example as to why we see a decrease in fatalities in these years. Even though this program doesn't cover all of my data collected. So there is other catalysts to find but this is a good start.

Data Update #1

1. What dataset will you use for your final report? 

The data set that I will be using for my final project is "Motor Vehicle Fatalities by Road User Type."
It can be found here.

2. Describe the dataset. What kind of data does it contain? 

This data set contains all the road users that were injured in a collision involving a motor vehicle on a public highway and died anytime within 30 days of the crash from their injuries in British Columbia from 1996 to 2014.  This data excludes all deaths that occurred on forest service roads, industrial roads and private driveways as well as fatal victims of off-road snow mobile accidents, homicides and suicides.

There are four categories in the data that include:

1. Cyclist
2. Motor Vehicle Driver
3. Other
4. Pedestrian
5. Motor Vehicle Passenger

3. Is there anything about your data that you don’t understand? (i.e. what a column heading means). How will you find this out? 

I'm not sure what the category of "other" stands for at the present time but should be able to look up what the "Motor Vehicle Act" constitutes it as.

4. What are some questions you hope to answer with your data? List at least three. (you don’t need the answers at this point)

Are the amount of deaths on public highways increasing or decreasing?  (Over the 18 years)
Is there a specific year that had more deaths than other years?  Why?
Which road users have more fatalities in British Columbia?

Data Viz Assignment 1

This article done by the Washington Post entitled "The Wizard Shooting Stars" is an interactive data visualization charged with helping Washington Wizard fans compare the type and success rate of the shot selection their team took in 2013.  

The article begins with showing us a rather stimulating graph that has 6,920 lines (1) heading towards a basketball hoop.  Each line illustrates where each shot was taken on the court by the Washington Wizards in 2013.  The use of these lines to correspond to each shot in this graph is both a strong way to show each piece of data/shot attempt in that it follows the same route aesthetically as a ball going towards a hoop as opposed to a chart that shows no similarity to a literal basketball shot.  These lines follow in line with the data visualization rule of simplicity in that no extra detail is put in to detract readers from the actual data.  What this chart lacks is being able to distinguish made field goals and attempts in this chart for there is no explanation as to what the varying colours of the lines mean.  We see a clutter of colour varying from white to orange and no way of distinguishing which is which.

Viewers are then able to further break down the shot selection into individual players' shots.  In doing so, using the same chart but now only showing the lines/shots that correspond to a specific player on the team (2).  This interactive option helps us break down the cluttered data we see in the first graph and see it broken down into 15 different players.

Once viewers have chosen a player, ((2) We picked John Wall in our case) we see a similar graph but now with just the shots John Wall has taken.  On top of the updated graph we saw before, we now have two extra graphs (4, 5) that give us a birds eye view of where the data/shots take place rather than just the length away from the hoop.  Specifically in chart (4), this is a very accurate way of showing exactly where the player is shooting from with each tiny red and white circle symbolising a shot. As well as little bagels to break down how the specific player was taking his shot ie. Jump shots, layups and/or dunks.  This is effective because we can definitely tell the difference between the 3 bagels in chart (4).  Chart (5) is helpful in comparing the specific player to the average player in the NBA and does a good job in showing the data's specificity; however, it brings in new information that isn't directly relevant to the team.  A good comparison but perhaps not one that needs to be there.

 The info-graph continues it's interactivity by selecting all shots (3) and by selecting the other options shots made (6) and shots missed (7)  helps us solve the mystery the different colours of white, orange and red.  As well as finding out what each line colour symbolises, the data visualization does a good job on further simplifying itself and un-cluttering the data.  It shows that it is using colour extremely well to highlight the differences in the data.  By clicking on either (6) or (7) readers change the original graph as well as the new (4) graph.





The static nature of graph (5) is not a failing per say, but probably would have been more effective if it was some data that changed with the different options like the two other graphs.

The truly impressive thing is how many ways they have made the data available to be viewed and while the colours seemed cluttered and complicated before, now very simplistic and easy to maneuver.  Overall the interactive part of the data visualization is very easy to use.

The article then goes into trying to visualize the trend of John Wall's shooting by trying to symbolize the writing "58 percent of Wall's shots came from the 15 to 29 feet range" (8) in the varying degrees of circles corresponding with where he's shooting from the floor.  This is a little too complicated in that the only way of connecting the information being portrayed in (8) by careful inspection.  As well as the failure of the cardinal rule of bubble graphs not needed, as the numbers are powerful enough statistics.  Or perhaps even if they put the numbers in the bubbles.  If they had highlighted (8) with a greyish background it would have been easier to connect.  

Lastly, all the labels of graphs are labeled in full words and not acronyms but here in (9) we see it used here.  For a basketball fan these acronyms would be easily discernible as FGM = "field goal made" and FGA = "field goals attempted" but may be too cryptic for the average sport fan.

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/sports/wizards-shooting-stars/