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AARON GILES 

I am a freelance Seattle-area pro­gram­mer, mu­si­cian, web de­vel­o­per, and
gra­phic de­sign­er.

I have at various times worked for Microsoft, Connectix, LucasArts, and have a
long history of creating free software and other stuff. See my programming page
for detailed work history.

I am also an active musician, singing in several local groups and tinkering with
the lute. See my music page for more details on what I’m up to musically.


THE LATEST

If you’d like to stay up to date with my current projects and activities, there
are a few options:

 1. Follow my Mastodon account for frequent updates and technical details
 2. Follow me on my Ko-fi page for less technical updates (or buy me a beer!)
 3. Follow my largely inert twitter account for significant announcements only


ACTIVE PROJECTS

DREAMM
A universal emulator for classic LucasArts games, from the original SCUMM
adventures, to the various flight sims, to early 3D games, and everything in
between. Builds available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux!
Latest stable release is version 3.0. Already working on plans for a follow-up!
ymfm
A BSD-licensed open source library, written in C++17, with highly accurate
emulators for Yamaha’s famous FM-based synthesis chips. Supports OPM (YM2151),
OPN (YM2203), OPL (YM3526, YM3812, YMF262), OPLL (YM2413), and OPZ (YM2414),
along with many variants.
In active use in MAME, DefleMask, and other projects. Occasional bug fixes still
happening.
postcardware.net
A site documenting the 6000+ postcards I received for my shareware program
JPEGView back in the mid-1990s. Follow @postcardware@botsin.space on Mastodon
for random postcards 3 times a day.
All postcards scanned, over 5000 tagged; bot posts them 3×/day. Search interface
now works!

rehearsaltracks.net
A JavaScript and WASM-based site for interactively learning vocal parts in
choral music, using my own SoundFont library for realtime playback.
Opportunistically adding new works; more features pending further interest.

Summer Fling Singers
A summer choral group that I started in 2016, performing once each year in
August (pandemics permitting). We officially became a non-profit in 2019, and I
currently serve as board president and artistic director.
Our 2023 season, Truth From Above, is complete!

Greater Seattle Choral Consortium
A great organization that helps Seattle-area choral groups connect with each
other and with the community. I served on the board of directors for 8 years, 5
as treasurer, and continue to run the website.



PAST PROJECTS

MAME
I contributed to the MAME project for over 17 years, and even ran the show for 6
of them. For more details about my work on the project, you can read some of my
“War Stories”, see a summary of my extensive contributions, or check out my old
“MAME Memories” entries.

Vicars of Christ Church Compline Choir Hymnal
I sang tenor with this small compline group for over 3 years, cantoring
occasionally. I also did all the engraving and copyright research to create a
complete, free compline hymnal, with over 100 musical TTB selections curated by
our director.

Seattle Bach Choir, My Spirit Sang All Day
I was an active member of the Seattle Bach Choir from 2015–2019, where I sang
tenor and got to tour the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. During my final
year, I coordinated and helped edit a major recording project for the group,
resulting in the release of a CD, My Spirit Sang All Day.

Microsoft Hyper-V / Windows on ARM
I spent the majority of my career at Microsoft, from 2003 until 2021. While
there, I helped develop the first version of Hyper-V, and then moved on to work
on Windows directly, where I co-led the effort to port Windows to the ARM
architecture—twice! For more details check out my Microsoft War Stories.

Connectix Virtual Game Station
Shortly after joining Connectix in 1998, I co-created a Sony PlayStation
emulator for the original iMac called Connectix Virtual Game Station. While at
Connectix, I also created the first version of Virtual PC for Windows before we
were acquired by Microsoft. Read some fun stories over on my Connectix War
Stories page.

LucasArts Mac Ports / Outlaws / Mysteries of the Sith
I had the pleasure of working at LucasArts from 1995–1998, where I ported 11
different games to the Mac, then went on to work on Outlaws and the Jedi Knight
Expansion Pack, Mysteries of the Sith. You can read more about my time there on
my LucasArts War Stories page.

JPEGView
I created JPEGView for the Macintosh back in the early 1990s, just as the web
was starting to take off. Because of this fortuitous timing, JPEGView became the
de-facto image viewer for web browsing (before the browsers took that over
themselves). JPEGView was the first postcardware utility, and netted me over
6000 postcards from around the world.



MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS

About Me
I’ve put up some general background information describing how it all began. I
have also taken to writing up “year in review” summaries for the past few years,
which you can access here: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018. (Mappy is my
favorite arcade game, hence why you’ll often see me sporting a Goro avatar.)

Concerts I’ve Attended
In the before times, I used to enjoy going to a few rock concerts every year.
Since I was starting to forget who I saw when, I decided to document them here,
going all the way back to the first concerts my dad took me to when I was a
tween.

My Beer Glassware Collection
I love visiting breweries when I travel (and when I’m home, of course!) Whenever
I encounter a memorable place or find some interesting glassware, however, I
have a bit of a problem.

The Final Rip
A few years back I decided to do one final lossless rip of my massive CD
collection. I documented my efforts here, along with a catalog of all the rock
CDs I processed. Occasionally I’ll go and update it to include new acquisitions.

Messiah Time Calculator
I took a sampling over 10 different recordings of Handel’s Messiah and computed
statistics on how long each movement was. Then I assembled the results into a
page that you can use to ballpark how long a subset of movements might run.
Useful if you’re planning a performance!

Old Stuff
This site has seen several incarnations over the years. If you’re looking for
older material, you might start by looking over here. The really old stuff is
now archived over here.


 


This site and all contents Copyright © Aaron Giles