For the past few years, I’ve been balancing a range of creative and technical interests — pedal steel guitar, app development, retro computing, and more — all while working full-time at Sweetwater in Fort Wayne, IN. I’ve been part of both the mobile and desktop teams there for over five years, helping build the tools customers use every day. I’ve also moved the blog to a new domain: johnsmusicandtech.com. The name reflects what this space is really about — the intersection of sound and software, strings and code, music and machines. It’s still me writing, just under a name that better fits the shape of things going forward. ...
GFI
Two historic guitars are on display in the GFI room. This belonged to Ralph Mooney: This was a Gene Fields guitar: Gene was a great innovator. It was interesting to see his work in person.
Texas Steel Guitar Jamboree
I am in Dallas for my first Jamboree! I am halfway through Doug Jerningan’s seminar. There is a lot to take in, but it has been very informative. Doug is a great player and teacher. He has prepared an extensive course for today’s seminar.
Android Development with Linux and Ryzen
Apple macOS is my primary environment these days but I have a PC I like to work with that has gone through quite a number of upgrades over the years. I recently upgraded to an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU and motherboard. Even though Android has not been my primary development platform I have kept up with Android development going back to the days of Eclipse then Android Studio when it became the official Android development tool. I have been a little frustrated with the Android development environment after spending a lot of time in Xcode and Visual Studio over the years. The Android Studio version 2.0 release seemed very good to me but the emulator performance and build times had still been a little disappointing. ...
Progress with Android
I have been working on the Android version of Steel Sidekick and in the process I feel I am making some real progress learning about this platform. One thing that has been intersting to me is how similar Auto Layout on iOS and Constaint Layout on Android is. While searching for more information on how to better use Constraint Layout I stumbled upon this article: https://www.bignerdranch.com/blog/constraintlayout-vs-auto-layout-how-do-they-compare/ It looks like Auto Layout and Constraint Layout are both based on research documented in " The Cassowary linear arithmetic constraint solving algorithm". Interesting! Anyway, at least we have a layout system very similar to each other on both platforms. ...
Preparing Steel Sidekick for iPhone X
I just pushed an update of Steel Sidekick to the App Store to support the iPhone X screen resolution. The new “notch” for the camera was causing some issues. I used the new safeAreaLayoutGuide on the UIView to determine where to display the fretboard. if (@available(iOS 11.0, *)) { CGRect safeRect = [self.view.safeAreaLayoutGuide layoutFrame]; left = safeRect.origin.x; } After trying a few different layouts I ultimately decided to move the fretboard into the safe area and extend the strings under the notch. ...
Thoughts On Cross Platform Mobile Development
I have been experimenting over the last few years looking for the definite answer to cross platform mobile development. These are some of my thoughts after evaluating some approaches. Hybrid - Cordova/PhoneGap Write the app in HTML5 with Javascript. Most of the user interface and code work across Android and iOS. I have done a lot of this at work recently. The big issues are on older version of Android without an updated HTML5 webview. I have also found JavaScript not to be a very good language to write a large, scalable application in although TypeScript/ES6 may change my mind about this. This approach I feel gives advantage to the developer and takes away from the user by not giving them a full native experience on the platform. ...