That’s me. But don’t hire me just because I'm devastatingly handsome. Scroll down to see some things I do. You can also hover the mouse over "QUICK LINKS" for a secret gratuitous key :-).

I'm Dan.

I do a lot. I put this page together as an online collection of some of the things I do. Perhaps a digital brochure of sorts for possible employment/freelance work. While a lot of it, especially the web work, does not require my in-person presence, I mostly focus on the Schenectady, NY and New Haven, CT areas. But I'm available to freelance/teach in any suitable area. While I wouldn't consider myself the best at any one category, I'm very good at a lot, and the fact I do so much makes me well-rounded, and able to look at projects from a different point of view. My attention to detail makes me a great planner/leader, as well as someone who can spot problems quickly. Below is some of what I spend my time doing, in no particular order. If you're really interested, feel free to check out my resume.

A web developer spends a lot of time looking at code. Here is Safari's Web Inspector for this site as it was being created.

Web developer

I started in web development much earlier than most (my first website was created in 1994). I've had the advantage of learning web technologies as they were created (the Apache web server, JavaScript, CGI scripts, AJAX, the transition from table-based layouts to style sheets, from HTML to XHTML and finally to HTML5, jQuery, etc). I've been creating websites professionally for more than 15 years, and I understand just about every aspect of it. From editing the .htaccess server config files, to writing CGI scripts that allows you/your browser to share information with the server and vice versa. A lot of my webwork lately has been internal web applications at The Daily Gazette, but feel free to check out the public DailyGazette.com, as 90% of the code (HTML5, Javascript/jQuery, Perl CGI, CSS, etc) was written by yours truly. In 2011, I designed and coded MemoriesByJess.com, a nifty crafts site that makes words out of photographs, the preview is entirely JavaScript-driven, and entirely HTML5-valid. In the first week of 2013, I wrote a small Ultimate hat team creator, which is a simple one-page site that just does some magical (at least to some) number-crunching. If you want to go back to 2005, the site I made for ska band (now on hiatus) Monkey Gone Mad is still live. And even further back, the 2004 design for music site Rkstar.com is still being used (I'm working on a huge new overhaul as we speak). One of my strongest skills is creating a searchable database-driven website with a clean user-friendly interface from scratch. If you're interested, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Most pictures of me playing were from far away, so of course a close-up would require my head to be partially chopped off.

Ultimate player

This is a unique topic on the page in that I actually pay to play Ultimate, where in every other category I'm the one being paid. I include it because it's a pretty big part of my life. If you don't already know, "Ultimate" is short for "Ultimate Frisbee," a sport similar to football... but played with a disc (don't call it a frisbee), has a lot more running, and many fewer concussions. Anyone who plays at least semi-seriously in the capital district has played with me. I play with SCUFF (which I run), Albany Ultimate, Troy UFC, Saratoga Ultimate, Shen Ultimate, New Haven Ultimate, Niskayuna Ultimate, and Burnt Hills Ultimate, as well as going to tournaments and being a player/coach status member of USA Ultimate. So, yeah- ultimate!

A screenshot of video editing in Final Cut Pro. In this staged image, it appears I am mixing concert and ultimate footage. Clearly, the result would be the most awesome video known to man.

Videography & editing

Digital videography/video editing is another skill I picked up long before most, starting with QuickTime 1.0 back in 1994. Most computers couldn't handle even playing video, so it was just novelty until 1999, when Final Cut Pro 1.0 came out and I was hooked. I immediately bought a digital camcorder and started shooting and editing video, teaching myself the artistic sides to it, how scenes should flow, how the FCP's non-linear editing works, advantages and disadvantages to the various codecs, etc etc. Since the 1990s, I've shot and edited over 1,000 videos- from short clips, to concert footage, to ultimate frisbee footage, to weddings, to videos of a journalistic nature that have been used by The Gazette. You can see my coverage of the Rotterdam Junction cleanup as an example of that.

Suite 24-bandmate Angela Bove and I playing with Albany rock stars Sirsy at Revolution Hall back in '09. You can watch the video here.

Musician

Built on a strong foundation of music theory, I play piano/keyboard, bass, guitar, and pretty much any instrument that doesn't require putting my mouth on it. I'm most known as a piano player, though- usually in the pop-rock/Ben Folds/Billy Joel style. I was a piano concentration music major during my time at SCCC. I've also played both bass and guitar for over a decade, have played in a few bands. and regularly sit in with performers at open mic. While I'm really not looking for any new musical projects at this time, feel free to check out a few videos of my band Suite 24 on YouTube or without leaving the page, you can watch us play a song with Sirsy..

Graphic design, somewhat ironically, as a topic doesn't easily lend itself to a scalable iconic image. So I just made an artsy conversation piece with a quote about fonts. Font-astic!

Graphic designer

I've been doing graphic design for as long as I can remember. In high school, I loved fonts and studied what makes them look good. Later, though when print media still ruled over the web, I studied Graphic Design at the College of St. Rose. Most of my earlier jobs were in graphic design and page layout where I used Adobe InDesign, QuarkXpress, and Photoshop. I've designed countless concert posters, concert tickets, album artwork, college club logos, Ultimate Frisbee flyers, band bios, and about a dozen magazines on old work computers that no longer exist. I also use Photoshop to adjust photos, like color-correcting a teammate's red BU jersey, or putting a ska band in Egypt.

A photo I took of Genevieve Schatz of Company of Thieves performing at Albany's Pearlpalooza 2011.

Music journalist

I got my start taking journalism classes in high school and at the College of St Rose, occasionally writing for the school newspaper at each. While a student at RPI, I wrote for The Polytechnic doing CD reviews, concert reviews, and band interviews. That eventually turned into a personal website/zine as a showcase of my writing. I've had the opportunity to interview acts like Ben Folds Five, They Might Be Giants, Jill Sobule, Nada Surf, Lucky Boys Confusion, Goldfinger, and so many more. While I don't do much feature writing these days, I still see myself very much a music journalist. The site has become what is now Rkstar.com, perhaps the longest-running webzines in the capital district, and one of the longest-running in the world. The occasional article I've written has been picked up for publication in other zines as well.

To handle the repetition of layout code and to make updating easier, most of the content of this page is output from a Perl script read in from a XML file. This is the code that does the magic.

Perl programmer

As with most programmers, I do code in several languages, but Perl has been the one I use the most simply because it's the one I know the best. I tend to see solutions to a lot of life's little problems in algorithms. Algorithms that can be expressed and solved in Perl easily and quickly. My very first program was to solve a problem that came up a lot when I was making mix tapes (remember those?). I had a 90-minute tape, with 45 minutes on each side, and 90 minutes of music to put on it. But it was always ended up something like 47 minutes on one side and 43 on the other, which just didn't work. A quick Perl script took all the song times and spit out two matching-length playlists, usually within a second or two of each other. Revolutionized my mix-taping, right before burnable CDs became mainstream. Since then I wrote scripts to analyze my iTunes library, search for new apartments, create MIDI files, shorten URLs, calculate ultimate frisbee teams, and so much more. It's amazing how much little custom scripts can make life easier. And when you combine Perl with web CGI, the possibilities are endless.

Web designers also need to keep browser compatibility in mind with every line of code. These are the big six browsers I use for testing, nestled into the familiar HTML angle brackets. Can you name all six?

Web designer

Web design is where art and the technical branch of web development meet. You need an eye not only for good design, but user interface as well. You have to know how users interact with websites, know what's possible, and know how to implement it all. You need to understand that modern websites aren't static images, that they should react to the user's action in a way to make navigation easier and more enjoyable. You need to understand that modern websites aren't all viewed on computers- tablets and mobile phones are quickly becoming just as common. Responsive design is a modern technique used by designers to make sites look good on any device. You may notice, if you're on a computer instead of a mobile device, when you resize the window, some layout features and positioning change with window size for the best appearance for that view size. Even if you have a pop-up image or video showing. That's a simple example of responsive design. Modern web designers also need to have an immense understanding of HTML5 and CSS3. You'll find that all my code written since 2010 are HTML5-valid, and everying starting in late 2012 is also 100% CSS3-valid (some thanks to Lea Verou's great -prefix-free script). Designers also need to know websites aren't static pages anymore, JavaScript and jQuery are important tools to add interaction to a site. On this page for example, the image/video pop-ups are done with JavaScript, as well as the smooth scrolling, and the left- and right-arrow key bindings that can trigger the scrolling. You can see the web development section for a few links of sites I created.

This is what my music theory cheat sheet looks like. Well, at least the top of it.

Music teacher

I love teaching. And I love music. It only makes sense that I love teaching music. I've played piano/keyboard for 20+ years, and bass and guitar for over a decade. I was a music major during my time at SCCC. Even though private lessons is just something I do occasionally on the side, I've had over a dozen students through the years. I teach piano/keyboard, beginner bass, beginner guitar, and music theory. All my students are given "Dan's Music Theory Cheat Sheet" on the first day. I've shared it online, and music teachers around the world have emailed me saying they use it with their students. It's pretty handy.

A few of my favorite toys.

Apple/Mac support

I've been in Mac tech support since before the web existed. From helping classmates in high school, to my first job being Mac support for the RPI campus computer store, to being the Mac network administrator for the Scotia-Glenville school district, where I was in charge of about 500 Macs, making sure they all ran properly for the teachers and students. Since then I've mostly been an occasional on-call freelancer fixing the occasional issue that may arise for both personal and business-owned Macs around the Schenectady area.

The front of the t-shirt that my sister gave me for Christmas. Did you know that gifts only count as presents if are “present” when they are given? Oh, the joys of the English language.

Editor & proofer

Being the editor for a weekly webzine for the past 15 years has given me a lot of experience writing, editing, and proofing copy. I also regularly proof stories at The Daily Gazette, correcting errors before the paper goes to press. For whatever reason, written errors, either in text or computer code, tend to jump out at me off the page. So I tend to be pretty good at catching them. In my free time, I like to proof and correct spelling and grammatical errors that my friends post on Facebook. Ha! Could you imagine, though?

Icons for a few of the mobile web apps I wrote.

Mobile / web apps

I've been writing web apps since before they were called web apps. A web app is essentially an mini-application you can access through your browser. In 1999, I wrote a ticket support system for Scotia-Glenville School District's teachers to request computer help and prioritize urgency. I've also written a lot of internal web applications for Gazette staff over the years. In 2013, I wrote the Ultimate frisbee hat tournament team calculator, a web app allowing league and tournament directors to skip the painstaking process of trying to create even teams. Lately, mobile apps have been becoming popular. Those are web apps designed for mobile devices, where links to the apps can be saved as icons right to devices' home screens. I've been toying with writing a bunch of simple mobile apps lately, with my two most complete apps being AccuDan (weather app) and Anniversary Calculator (to mark the less significant milestones).

The Behringer Eurorack UB1002 was my first personal soundboard for smaller live shows. I still occasionally use it for home recording.

Sound engineer

I'm not sure where to begin when it comes to sound recording/engineering and I. As a kid I recorded songs I wrote to audio tape. In high school, I started working with digital sound, learning the basics of bit-depth, frequency, lossy compression, etc. Later, I was one of the first people posting audio to the web with my music zine' music samples and interview clips. I became the sound guy at The Larkin and The Van Dyck, where I ran the sound for acts like Erin McKeown, Andrew Bird, Vienna Teng, Michael Glabicki (of Rusted Root), Sarah Slean, Ember Swift, Patti Rothberg, Sean Rowe, Paddy Kilrain, Monkey Gone Mad (you really don't earn your "sound guy chops" until you mix a 10-piece ska band), Jes Hudak, Sirsy, David Poe, Westbound Train, Ari Hest, Mieka Pauley, Stephen Kellogg, and literally hundreds more. I've run the sound for the Rkstar open mic for over a decade, where the number of performances are pushing 10,000. And my recordings of open mic performances to the performers over the years are in the hundreds, some of which even got commercial radio airplay. I've also "studio" multi-track recorded and mixed my own bands' songs with GarageBand, using both its line-in and MIDI recording.

Here you can watch a sample ~30-second video that I shot of Company of Thieves. You will likely notice its near-HD quality and almost-instantaneous play time, even on slower connections like a 3G phone.

Video compressionist

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was the go-to guy in the capital district (or anywhere really, second only to the legendary Ben Waggoner) for video compression. Video took up a lot of data, a lot of people were still on 56K modems, good video compression was really difficult. I could often squeeze the videos down half the file size with no noticeable visual or audio difference from what consumer compression software at the time could do. Fast forward to today, and with modern codecs like H.264 and AAC, modern standards like MP4, and plenty of quality consumer compression options, my abilities aren't quite as impressive by comparison. But they're still better. I could be handy for any of the following: 1) You're someone who wants the best quality video compression possible, 2) Aspect ratio, B-frames/keyframes, MP4/H.264, WebM/VP8, Flash/H.263, two-pass, bit rate, pass-through, VBR... all mean nothing to you and you just want a video compressed for web or archive, 3) You regularly upload videos to your site and you want to be taught a workflow that would give you or your employees a good consistent-quality videos every time (software purchases may be needed).

This photo was taken moments after the team I captained won the Albany Social League championship. Second year in a row where my team was top-ranked in the league.

Ultimate captain/coach

Again, combining two loves, this time- ultimate frisbee and teaching. I'm a registered USAU coach and I teach at the beginner/youth/junior level- the basics of the game, how to have fun, the spirit of the game, basic plays and strategy. What I've seen from other captains/coaches, is that they take the game too seriously and players lose interest. While it's important to play hard and give 100%, the all-or-nothing attitude should be reserved for the super-competitive levels of ultimate. To me, ultimate is having fun, and that's how I teach it. A good coach should be able to demonstrate a lot of patience as someone learns, and be able to clearly explain to a player what they can do to improve. And if a player improves and wants to join a serious club or pro team, I can give them guidance there as well. I'm particularly proud of my 2012 captain review (typos and all), where the league secretly polled the players about their captains as part of the end-of-season review, and I ended up with the new "best captain of the league" superlative.

There have probably been over a thousand different performers during my time running open mic. Here are just some of the many familiar faces seen performing.

Open mic host

It's hard to believe I've been running the open mic every week for over ten years now. More than 500 open mics in all. Over 5,000 performances that I announced, ran sound for, and/or had some part in putting together. If you're interested in reading about its history, there's a write-up at Rkstar.com from the summer of 2012 when we celebrated the 500th open mic. I've all but stopped promoting the weekly event, yet every Sunday there's a line of people waiting to sign up to perform when I arrive. Some of the talent there is amazing, over at Facebook you can watch hours of video of dozens of the performances. Or, if you prefer, there are a lot of them over at YouTube as well.

A few photos from the 2012 Capital District North Pick-up Mini-Tourney. It was a great day. Be sure to watch the video.

Tournament director

I have been called "the most organized guy in ultimate." I guess it's true on some level, seeing how most tournaments and teams are run. I just like it when things run properly. I tend to approach things with a computer-programmer mindset, preparing for all scenarios and making sure all involved are well-informed ahead of time.

Years ago, when I started playing with a lot of the local ultimate pick-up groups, I was surprised that so few knew that the others existed. And even though they all loved playing, no one wanted to go play with people they didn't know. So I decided to organize a tournament for the local groups to play each other and called it the "Capital District North Pick-up Mini-Tourney." It was a social event to get local players to meet each other, while still playing with those they know. It was a huge success and it's now an annual event that draws about 100 players every year. And not only that, once people met other local players, they started attending each other's games, bettering overall attendance, giving players more chances to play, and improving the general local ultimate frisbee community. The only downside it is no longer obvious who plays for which pick-up group at the tournament (the players/groups have to decide for themselves). Watch the video of the 2012 tournament.

The concert poster for The Bumrock Show 2003. Even though it was all local bands, this was one of the bigger shows I put on, as it was a two-day festival with ten really great acts.

Concert promoter

It feels like I've been putting together concerts for as long as I can remember. From some big concerts at RPI in Troy while I was on the UPAC Concert board (like They Might Be Giants, Sponge, and Cracker), to hundreds of concerts while I was booking shows seven nights a week at The Larkin in Albany (like Erin McKeown, Andrew Bird, Vienna Teng, Sarah Slean, Ember Swift, Patti Rothberg, Sean Rowe, Jes Hudak, Sirsy, David Poe, Westbound Train, Ari Hest, Jenny Owen Youngs, Mieka Pauley, and Stephen Kellogg), to when I was putting on the Van Dyck concert series (with acts like Michael Glabicki and Sean Rowe), to my own one-off shows (featurings bands like The Toasters and The Slackers), to booking tons of concerts of bands I manage myself (like Monkey Gone Mad, Paddy Kilrain, Suite 24, and Late Like Us). A good concert promoter is one who can understand the needs of both the performers and the venue, able to get the word out about the show, and make sure everyone leaves happy at the end of the night. That's what I do.