About David - David F Glidden

Meta page that covers the About Me stuff: Who am I & what have I done? Also included: contact information; sites I use; computers and software tools; things I’ve worked on; psychological profiles.

For the meta page on this site’s content please see Site.

I. PERSONAL
II. TOOLS
III. PROFILE
IV. CONTACT
V. SITE

I. PERSONAL

Avant-propos

I was born into an artistically minded family in Manhattan NYC in 1974 and spent my early years travelling between Europe, Canada, and the United States with my parents who practice the Spanish art of Flamenco—an art form of intensely energetic and emotional song and dance from the region of Andalusia. In spite of this nomadic lifestyle, my early interest in Western European Classical music endured and upon settling in Canada in 1983 I began my formal musical training at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Encouraged and given the means by my family to have the widest possible perspective (ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία), I developed an interest in philosophy, philology, semiology, epistemology, aesthetics, informatics, history, and biology. Finally deciding that music would be my central discipline, I continued my formal education at Wilfrid Laurier University, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. I am fluent in English and French.

So much for the carefully worded biographical blurb that is considered the mainstay of identification in today’s world. Of course most of this kind of information is mostly useless to predict the kind of person I am, so if you are genuinely curious as to my personality and moral character my results from standardized & validated psychometric instruments can be found below in Section III[^1].

Education

Besides studying with Martin Beaver, Eugene Kash, David Stewart, Jerzy Kapłanek and Pavlo Beznosiuk, I have also participated in masterclasses with Steven Staryk, Jaap Schroeder, Anner Bylsma, the Orford Quartet, Arvo Pärt, and George Crumb.

I have attended the Royal Concertvatory of Toronto, the University of Manitoba, Wilfrid Laurier University, and the Koninklijk Conservatorium, Den Haag.

Work

I was founding member of the period-instrument ensembles Harmonie Universelle and Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, and often play with such ensembles as Capriccio Stravagante—Les 24 Violons, Les Nouveaux Caractères, and Opéra Fuoco. I currently lead the viola sections of Les Musiciens du Louvre, and Le Concert des Nations.

My chamber music partners have included The Penderecki String Quartet (Canada), The Cambini Quartet-Paris (France), The Salzburger-Haydn Quintett (Austria), Hiro Kurosaki (Austria), Florian Deuter (Germany), Francesco Corti (Italy), Balazs Máté (Hungary), Dr. Herbert Lindsberger (Austria), Chouchane Siranossian (France), Josetxu Obregón (Spain), and Jos van Immerseel (Belgium).

I have recorded for many music labels including Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Productions, London Decca, Virgin Classics, CPO, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Paradizo, Accent, Glossa, and Alia Vox.

In 2015–2016, I conceived of, organized, and recorded Mozart’s two Piano Quartets, K.478 & K.493, and several unknown fragments on the composer’s instruments at the Mozart-Wohnhaus in Salzburg as part of the Mozartwoche in co-operation with the International Mozarteum Foundation for the new edition of Mozart’s complete works, Mozart225, on Decca.

In 2016, as member of the Salzburger-Haydn Quintett, I was awarded the ORF Ö1-„Pasticcio-Preis“ for our recording of the Complete String Quintets of Michael Haydn.

Also in 2016, I was one of the recipients of the Förderpreis für Kultur der Stadt Salzburg for my work on the documentary film Saudade on the life of Salzburg-born composer and diplomat Sigismund Neukomm.

Notable Recordings

Michael Haydn—Complete String Quintets, CPO
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—Piano Quartets, London DECCA

Documentaries

Saudade, Rendezvous in Brazil

Honours

ORF Ö1-“Pasticcio-Preis, Austria
Förderpreis für Kultur, Stadt Salzburg

Public Speaking

alter Oper Frankfurt, radio

Websites

Github
Discogs
Social news/discussion
- Less Wrong
- Reddit
- RSS feeds (OPML)

II. TOOLS

Tools are the instructor of man

Hardware

MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
iPhone 12 mini

Software

I run macOS 11 and use the macOS GUI extensively but also have CLI-centric habits. I spend most of my time in iA Writer or BBEdit editing Markdown, Firefox (extensions: HTTPS Everywhere⁠, uBlock origin⁠, Privacy Badger, Privacy Possum, 1Password⁠, ClearURLs)/Safari, or iTerm (shells: zsh/bash). Miscellaneously: I use Mnemosyne for spaced repetition⁠, Reeder for RSS, Drafts/Notes.app for clippings/notes, Transmit for remote file transfer, Audirvana for audio media playing, pen & 100mmx150mm index cards/notebooks/paper for scheduling/reminders, Redshift for screen tinting at night to help bedtimes⁠, and SuperDuper for backups.

Sometimes I only have my phone to work with. There are times when this is done on purpose. I have tried to make the environment as similar to my Mac as possible with the notable exception of the CLI tools :(. Drafts and iA Writer exist on iOS thankfully. Browsers are the same. For git on mobile, I use Working Copy.

Analogue

I mentioned above that for scheduling and reminders I use pen/pencil and paper. For many years I was a diehard Omnifocus user and had developed a complex system so that nothing would “fall through the cracks”. However, productivity implemented with complex digital tools always runs the risk of becoming productivity solely for productivity’s sake and I found that as time progressed, I was spending too much time tweaking the system too little time with what was in the system. I was distracted by all of the tempting possibilities that automation brought to Omnifocus. I had been suspicious that going back to basics would be a smart thing to do as I was becoming anxious that perhaps my well-tuned task management system was not as trustworthy as I had believed. I also found it unhealthy that I was waiting for my task manager to tell me what to do rather than doing the stuff in a flexible way.

In 2019 I went back to pen & paper and haven’t looked back. I remember things more easily, I look at my phone or my computer much less than previously, and I am less anxious.

I’ve always got a small notebook and pocket pen with me for general notes or jottings on the go. Task management happens on 100x150mm index cards. I use a cherry-picked aspects of a number of systems that will seem Frankenstein-ish to purists. The basic underlying system is the tickler file. Scheduling happens in a weekly spread agenda (not a Hobonichi weeks, but a French equivalent—l’Agenda de la Pléiade if you’re curious). I spend a few minutes in the mornings and/or evenings reflecting on the day—a strong educational and motivational tool.

III. PROFILE

Coming soon

Personality

Coming soon

Philosophy/morals

Coming soon

Politics

Coming soon

IV. CONTACT

Email: d@davidglidden.eu. I don’t use Zoom.
Bitcoin: 1E1itBAUEdYiKNjw8GXEeNcYLQgoaoF4wu
GPG Key (fingerprint 6B1BC020D66A948E81D71625D1ABEA25B68717DE)

V. SITE

Hosting & Engine

Hosted by Github
Theme based on the Klisé theme.
Articles and links are published through Jekyll.
Articles written in Markdown in iA Writer.

Typography

The $base-font-size is currently set at 20px with the $base-line-height of 1.3, or 26px. 400 and 700 font weights are used for regular or bold text respectively.

All fonts are available from Google fonts

The body text is set in EB Garamond:

EB Garamond is a free and open source implementation of Claude Garamont’s Antiqua typeface Garamond and the matching Italic, Greek and Cyrillic characters designed by Robert Granjon. Its name is an acronym for Egenolff-Berner-Garamond which refers to the fact that the letter forms are taken from the Egenolff-Berner specimen printed in 1592.

The code blocks are set in IBM Plex Mono:

When we set out to create a typeface that was unmistakably IBM, our own history was our greatest source of inspiration. IBM has always served as a medium between mankind and machine. Between the natural and the engineered. The emotional and rational. The classic and the cutting-edge. Our most important job is to help humanity and technology move forward together. IBM Plex® brings these relationships to life through letterforms.

Current Version

20.2

Went live: Paris FR | 2020-05-12 | 22.41.35 UTC+1 Latest Edit: Paris FR | 2021-05-23 | 09.45.39 UTC+1

Changelog:

Resolved some grammar and typographic errors.
Updated biographic data