John Spahr

Greetings, and welcome to a blog thing! LGR joke aside, it’s Weekly Update time again! I have been hard at work on a couple projects this week, and I have news to share for both of them. So, without further ado, let’s get started! Violoncello News I am pleased to say that Violoncello's development is going quite well! There have been some challenges along the way, but I have been able to overcome them and make some serious progress. Over the last few days, I have spent a lot of time working on it. As a result, you can expect to see more updates on Violoncello soon! New Site Updates I have been making a few updates and improvements to the site over the last few days. I am pretty happy with how it has turned out! The Conclusion That is about it for this week! I mainly plan to work on Violoncello this next week, and I am hopeful that it will be released soon. As always, thanks for reading, and have a wonderful day!

If you have been following the blog for the last few days, you'll know that I have been working on moving to a new website for Tectra. The domain is still tectrasystems.org , but the new site has been written from scratch. Today, I am glad to announce that all the current pages have been completed, and the website is finally able to stand by itself! This means that I can retire the old Tectra site for good. Anyway, I hope you like the new site! I look forward to seeing how it evolves and improves in the future.

This is it! The day I've been anticipating for quite a while now: the day in which I would leave Weebly and start a brand-new site. Yes, the new site is finally here! You can visit it at tectrasystems.org . A lot of the pages aren't done yet, but I am working hard to complete them. Unfortunately, this site is still a major work-in-progress because of that. With that being said, the old Tectra site is still up, and you can visit all of the pages on it. I hope you're excited about the new site! I'll keep you posted on its progress.

Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the new blog and the Weekly Update. More accurately, it’s the “Every-Few-Months Update”, but I hope to release it a bit more frequently than I have in recent months from here on out. So, without further ado, let’s dive into what’s new! Violoncello Updates I have been working on Violoncello for a little over a week now, and I have made some pretty significant progress. Though I have been a bit busy over the last couple of days with school and the new blog, I have been able to work on it some every day. I’ll continue to keep all of you updated, so you can expect to see more news on Violoncello soon! The New Website The other big project I have at the moment is creating the new Tectra site! I just got started last night, but I already have an idea of what I want this new site to look like. Just like Violoncello, I’ll keep you updated on how things are going! Wrapping Things Up I must say, both of these projects are pretty major, so I can’t exactly say when t

Violoncello 10/14/2020   A few days ago, I announced that a major new Android app was in the works. When I was writing that post, I thought I knew what this new app was going to be. However, after a day or two of trying to get that idea to work, I realized that it wasn’t going to work out. So, I began to start thinking of a new app idea! Thankfully, that idea quickly came! I was looking at some of my existing projects, with the hope that I could bring one to Android. It was then when it hit me: Why not make a version of Cello for Android? As a reminder, Cello is a text-based browser for Windows that I wrote. I felt like it could make a ton of sense on mobile, so I started making the app. It was a bit challenging to get everything working at first. However, after a couple hours, I successfully loaded a couple of websites in all of Cello’s text-based glory! Now, in order to distinguish itself from its Windows counterpart, I decided to call the Android version of Cello  Violoncello . For

A new major Android project! 10/12/2020   It feels like LifeBoard was released just yesterday. In reality, however, it’s been well over a month since LifeBoard first appeared on the Play Store. Personally, I think it’s time for a massive Android project again! Project plans and whatnot... Here are my plans for the project as of right now. Keep in mind that they may be subject to change. ​ My plan is to have this app out by the end of November. I know that sounds like a long time, but LifeBoard took several weeks to write as well. ​ I probably won’t work on very many other things while I’m writing this new app. I might release a minor update here and there, but I’m really going to try to focus solely on getting this app done. Finally, I still will be writing stuff on the blog. I intend to release update posts every week, if possible. After all, there’s likely going to be a lot to share. Wrapping things up... I expect this app will be very interesting, and also incredibly useful. As usua

QuickLinks v1.2 has been released! 10/11/2020   It's been a little while since I updated QuickLinks. As a result, I am excited to announce that a new version, v1.2, has been released! This update makes several improvements to the user interface and overall experience. In this post, I'll cover the biggest changes that come with this update, so keep reading to learn more! ​ Updated user interface One of the biggest changes I have made in this update is the user interface. I'll admit, up until now, QuickLinks has had a pretty boring UI. As a result, in this update, I have made some major changes and improvements to it! You can see some of them in the slideshow below. ​ I have also improved the definition file editor UI a lot. The icons help it look a lot nicer now! QuickLinks now appears in the bottom-right corner of your primary screen. I think it makes sense to have QuickLinks located near the notification area, and I think it looks quite nice Small improvements This update

SpeechLab Wear is here! 10/3/2020   Happy Scary Month, everyone! To kick off October 2020, I am excited to announce that I have released a new Wear OS app. This new app is called SpeechLab Wear, and it’s a text-to-speech app for your smartwatch! What makes this particularly exciting is that I believe that this is one of (if not) the first TTS apps for Wear OS on the Play Store, at least available in the United States! ​Like its Android counterpart, SpeechLab Wear has a simple but useful user interface. You can easily enter text and have the artificial voice say it back to you, but the functionality doesn’t end there. If you swipe up, you can access a handy little drawer that has several commonly used words and phrases. If you want to say “Hello” for example, you can swipe up and tap the “Hello” button. It’s simple and it saves time! SpeechLab Wear is now available on the  Play Store ! Thanks for reading, and I hope you like this new app. ​