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:
- Follow my Mastodon account for frequent updates and technical details
- Follow my BlueSky account for less technical updates
Like my projects? Consider a small donation:
Active Projects
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 3.0.3. Already working on plans for a follow-up!
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.
A site documenting the 6000+ postcards I received for my shareware program JPEGView back in the mid-1990s.
Follow @postcardware@cyber.ms on Mastodon for random postcards 3 times a day.
All postcards scanned, over 5000 tagged; bot posts them 3×/day. Search interface now works!
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.