TicketStubDiary.com

TicketStubDiary is a new way to catalog concerts that you have attended. Built in Ruby on Rails, it currently has every venue in NYC and Boston and the top 12,000 artists (ranked by ticket demand) in its database.

A concert is a link between a venue and a group of bands at a given time. Any logged-in user can create a concert. If a user tries to create a concert that already exists, the user will be added to that concert.

This project is still in development, but it is available in a fully-functioning beta version at TicketStubDiary.com.

URMusicNetwork.org

URMusicNetwork was a fully functional social network targeted to University of Rochester students interested in music that I built. Using Wordpress and Buddypress, I implemented custom PHP functions to create a "walled garden" and limit the network to those with a University of Rochester email address.

The site featured a centralized forum, event calendar, and full user profiles with advanced roles for leaders of campus organizations. Users could select their specific areas of interest in music, as well as the instruments that they played. An advanced search form allowed for anyone within the network to search for other users with specific attributes, such as a drummer who likes bluegrass and wants to form a cover band.

I stopped maintaining the website when the University implemented similar functionality into their core student organization system, but I am planning to rebuild it in Ruby on Rails and relaunch it for the 2015-2016 academic year.

DBShar.es

One day I decided that I wanted to track the different links that I share with people. I had been working more in Ruby on Rails, and ended up building a link shortening service that archives all of them and records click counts.

It has a basic passphrase that is needed to shorten a link. Since I like to make things a bit fun, I made the shortener URL DBshar.es - a combination of my initials and the word "share". I think this gives the shared links a more personal touch.

You can check out the link shortener at DBShar.es.

MTG Proxy Generator

When people are playing the card game Magic: The Gathering for fun, they will often print out copies of cards that they do not have, which is called "proxying". I decided one evening that I wanted to both proxy a few cards and practice working with API calls.

I spent a few hours building my own proxy generator for the card game. The program queries an open API for information about requested cards, makes sure the cards exist, and hotlinks the requested number of images of that card onto the page. I used media-specific CSS to hide all elements but the cards when printing the page.

You can find this project at mtgproxy.davidbendes.com.

Climax Showcase

For CMJ 2014, Digital Daruma worked with some of our friends in the music-tech arena to host a showcase. I oversaw all day-of-show logistics and interfaced with the band management, the sponsors, and the venue.

You can find out more about the Climax Showcase at the official website.

Roc Thursdays

Roc Thursdays is a non-profit concert production group that I founded with two University of Rochester classmates of mine in February 2010. We aimed to enliven the music scene on the University campus and to give students the chance to gain real-world experience both working directly with artists and in concert production. My role was equal parts CEO, business manager, promotions chair, booking agent, and sound and lighting engineer.

When I graduated, I transitioned Roc Thursdays into a joint venture between the campus radio station and the organization that books larger acts. Roc Thursdays continues to excel in its mission.