John Spahr

I wasn’t expecting to work on an update for one of my apps today, but I finally found some spare time to do just that! While I’m not as interested in software development as I used to be, I still occasionally enjoy working on Violoncello, a text-based browser that I made for Android. So, with my evening free, I was finally able to create and release Violoncello 2.0. I started by changing Violoncello’s color scheme. While I knew that some people would prefer the lighter pallet of earlier releases, I figured that a darker color scheme would be more popular and easier on the eyes. Thus, Violoncello went to the Dark Side. Much easier on the eyes. 😌 While that was the main tweak I made with this release, I also introduced some more subtle changes. Dialogs, input fields, and many other parts of the UI were greatly refined and adjusted to better match the new dark theme. It was a somewhat tedious process, but I’m pleased with how things turned out. To be honest, that’s about it for Violoncel...

Hey, everyone. A little over a year ago, I acquired a Panasonic SL-S361C portable CD player from 1999. It had a few minor cosmetic flaws, but it seemed like a solid option for listening to CDs on the go. However, I recently discovered that the batteries in it had corroded, and I knew that I had to address this issue before the player was ruined. So, I decided to give it a much-needed cleaning. After taking out the problematic batteries, I found that the corrosion was even worse than I had expected. Even after wiping down the contacts with some isopropyl alcohol, there was still a lot of corrosion caked onto the contacts. Yuck, something needs to be done about that nasty corrosion. So, I decided to take the CD player apart, as it would make cleaning the contacts much easier. I was hoping that this would be a fairly quick and easy process, and surprisingly enough, it was! The whole thing was held together with just a few screws. There are four screws on the inside of the player that hold...