Also created “Patriots play predictor” where you can select a down, distance and field position to see what plays the Patriots used the most in that situation in the 2011 regular season.

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Since it is a volunteering project and I wanted to use it as a learning experience, I have started to create a WordPress theme that is using responsive web design/”Mobile First” philosophy and built using html5/css3. I came across an awesome starter theme by Eddie Machado, called Bones. It is an excellent, EXCELLENT theme and distributed using the WTFPL License (Seriously!) My theme under development is available to see on my github repo.

One of the best thing that I learned from using Bones stater theme is that the theme has an option to use Less Stylesheet Language (actually it was one of the top reason that I cheese Bones as my starting point). It is amazing. When I started working for Skqueak.com, I had an opportunity to use Sass, (as it is a Ruby on Rails and HAML site) but I was too chicken to try it out (especially on the paid gig.) But now I wish that I had! Now that I have experience with a stylesheet language, I may convert to Sass plus Compass soon or later.

Less, is not Sass, asexplained by this smashing mag.’s article by Jeremy Hixon but they, in my opinion with limited usage so far, are both great. And Developer Drive (which have become one of my favorite blog of late) has a great series by Alex Ball on how to learn Less. I am using CodeKit (with WordPress running locally on MAMP) to flatten the files, as I believe that compiling the less on client side is sort of counter productive, as far as having bunch of files downloaded.

Anyway, css is fun with less!

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Then in 2011, when the new BostonGlobe.com was being developed as the first major site to be build with Responsive Web Design and “Mobile First” philosophy, we, at the Boston Globe Graphics Department, decided that everything will be done in HTML5 or other open standard technologies, and never looked back. In a recent interview with SND, Globe’s Digital Design Director, Miranda Mulligan (my dotted line boss, I don’t directly report to her, but…) talked about that being one of the biggest challenge.

Designing and building interactive information graphics relies on a significant change in the design and development process. Traditionally, most newsrooms have relied heavily on Flash to execute interactive stories and data visualizations. Since Apple’s iOS and Flash do not play together nicely, finding another way to tell these stories is paramount. Also, designing interactives and data visualizations for mobile has, by and large, been an afterthought. Now, designing for mobile must be the first thought.Also, this design process relies heavily on rapidly prototyping and creating the visual design within the browser. The process is smoothest when the experience has been designed and coded using mobile-first techniques, and then designing and enhancing for wider, more fully featured browsers. It seems awkward at first, but gets more and more confortable with practice.

So, practice, practice, practice! I have to say, I am very lucky and honored to be a part of this digital news/story telling revolution.

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Speaking on Shaq-o-meter, it was kind of a joke… It is ironic that that’s the work that people tell me they’ve seen my byline on. I’ve spend hours and hours of work on other projects and, it didn’t get 50th of a hits that it generated… It was not even my original idea, I may add, it was roughly based on 1994 Globe graphic which compared snowfall of that year with Robert Parish, and it was Boston.com editor Ronald Agrella who told me to make one. But I digress…

Some links to my past work (as this new site doesn’t have everything, yet, anyway.):

• My old portfolio page is still alive and kicking at daigofujiwara.com/folio
• My old web design portfolio (older than 2010)
• My baseball writing samples and others (around 2009).
• globegraphics.tumblr.com (By staff on my team at work, not all my stuff.)
• even older Globe work (delicious.com/daigo/globegraphics)
• Remember Adobe Flash? I used to do that.

The theme that I used for this website is Aurelius WordPress Theme and it is an excellent theme. Very impressed.

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I have used the similar code to produce this map about voter registration and party affiliation by the towns in Massachusetts.

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