Glenn Hughes
 Glenn came into the world with too much hair, and never looked back. His first experimental musical composition was realized at the age of 6 with the help of some blocks and a motorized crane and was inspired by an episode of the Partridge Family. Since then things have become slightly more complicated, but Glenn still spends much of his time devising mechanisms that aid in the production of organized noise. |
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| How did you personally get into using the Macintosh family of computers? |
I wanted to use computers to create music. Back at the time when I was getting involved in this stuff (around 1987), the music applications available for the Mac were head-and-shoulders above anything available on other platforms. Still are! | |
| Status: | I don't suck at programming as much as I used to. | |
First Mac:
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Original Mac 128 with a Mac Plus upgrade board installed... A whopping two megs of RAM! | |
Current Mac:
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PowerTower Pro 225 with 300 some odd Megs of RAM. | |
| When did you get your first modem? | Around 1989. I think it was a 1200 baud. | |
| Who did you call first? | used the modem to deliver software to a client. | |
| Present Occupation: | Senior Software Engineer, Mark of the Unicorn. | |
| Claim to Fame: | Wrote MOTU Audio System (Digital Performer's audio engine.) Invented maximally efficient method for putting away groceries. One day I'll be known for playing guitar for Christine Zuffery and Monika Baenninger. | |
| Dream Job: | Hmmm... Already there in the programming world. I'd really love to make my living from music at some point. |
| Not So Random Thoughts... | |||
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| Was there ever a time in your life that you had to "Think Different?" What was the situation and what did you do? | |||
| More like, was there ever I time when I didn't! Being a good engineer constantly requires that you reassess preconceptions and try to look at things in new ways. This is especially true given the incredible speed increases computer hardware has been seeing. I constantly have to ask myself "Well, what can you do with this box that you couldn't 5 years ago?" Thinking Different implies looking at things from the users perspective. I try to eliminate unnecessary details of a feature's implementation from the user experience. For example, MIDI is based around a 16 channel protocol. Every sequencer on the planet before FreeStyle, required that you select a MIDI channel for each track of music. I realized that the software could dynamically allocate the channels, thus eliminating the need to manually choose them up front. This had two benefits: 1) It took the notion of "MIDI channel" completely out of the user interface. 2) It actually made the sequencer more powerful. Since the program dynamically reassigned channels on the fly, the user could make sequences with more than 16 tracks that would play correctly as long as no more than 16 actual instruments were playing at once. I think that these are two "genetic markers" of the Macintosh Way: More Simple AND More Powerful. | |||
| How has using the Macintosh computer changed your life? | |||
| Well, it's given me something to do 40 or 80 hours a week, made me a hill of cash, found me new friends (and a few enemies) and helped me record a CD. | |||
| What is the weirdest thing in your office right now? | |||
| Three bizarre creatures made from aluminum foil purchased from a odd individual in Harvard Square. | |||
| My Passions are: | |||
| Wine women song, The philosophy of information science, Making things work. | |||
| If you could have dinner with one person dead or alive who would that person be and what would you ask them? | |||
| I'd have dinner with someone who was one of the last people left alive on earth, and ask them how the story ends. | |||
| Do you play a musical instrument and/or are you in a band? | |||
| Yep, guitar in the band Sabot. I've been playing since I was 12 and doing multi-track recording since I was about 13. | |||
| When I grow up I want to be: | |||
| Do I have to? | |||
| The question never asked: | |||
| If I come up with a question, then someone could ask it, and then it will have been asked. It's easy enough to come up with questions that don't make any sense to ask, like "Why am I not asking a question?" or questions that are probably rarely asked like "I wonder what it will be like outside of the womb?" or questions about things that don't exist like "What's the specific gravity of Flondlalian 96?" or questions that aren't really questions like "Could you excuse me?" or "Do you HAVE to do that?" but although there are many questions that never have been asked and never will be asked as soon as you name any one of them, they leave that set... For example the question "What is the integer that follows the number 987981923879876128731872938791283707123687546273?" is a question that has probably never been asked before... but there it is now... Tell you what, if you can name me three words that are never used together, I'll ask a question never asked. |
| Just The Facts, Please... | ||||
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| Biographical Tidbits: | Vegetarian and Zen-nihilist. Camped out in the woods in the Grand Tetons with my girlfriend for two months at age 15. Like jumping off cliffs in my mind. | Education: | K-8 Long Ridge School (Stamford CT) 9-12 New Canaan High, Graduated 1998 Hampshire College, BA Music and Computers. | |
| Location at Birth: | New York, NY. | Current Location: | Somerville, MA. | |
| Where you've been in between: |
Lived around CT in the Greenwich/Norwalk area 'till I was about 14... Then I traveled around a bit (Wyoming, Colorado, New York) 'till I wound up going to college at Hampshire in Amherst. Did a little more traveling after school (all across the country, lived in Bay Area awhile) Been to Europe a few times... Been living in the Boston area since 1992. | Astrological Sign: | Scorpio on the cusp of Sag. | |
| Available? | Single | Chat Nick: | Alerea | |
| Favorite Books: | Non fiction: Godel Escher Bach, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed Fiction: Wind in the Willows, Goodnight Moon, Fox in Socks, the Hobbit | Favorite Music or Band: | Ha! Yeah right... Here are a few: PJ Harvey, King Crimson, Lida Husack, Jethro Tull, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bach, Prokofiev, 3rd Base, David Bowie, Miles Davis, Depeche Mode, Throwing Muses, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins.... | |
| Favorite Food: | Anything spicy that does not contain dead animal bits. | Cat or Dog Person: | Cat (I grew up with 24 for the little beasts and no brothers or sisters... Meow.) | |
| Glenn's Professional Web Site - Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU) Sabot - Glenn's Band |
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| Favorite Web Sites: | Mac OS rumors Brain Games and Puzzles Vegetarian Resource Group The SF College of Mortuary Science Voodoo of CD mastering Scientology Ridicule Page Uselessness of Microsoft 50 Greatest Conspiracies Musical instruments of all varieties |
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| "The map is not the territory." | ||
Created Wednesday, November 11, 1998; Edited: 1/30/99