ni li nimi mute pi toki pona lon lipu "sadale.net"

Toki Pona content on sadale.net

Recent Blogposts of Toki Pona

Toki Pona has Gained ISO 639-3 Language Code!

Jan. 28, 2022, 2:38 p.m. Toki Pona

Congratulation on Toki Pona language for successfully applying for the "tok" ISO 639-3 language code!

Toki Pona is a minimalist constructed language invented by "jan Sonja" back in 2001. The first official book describing the language, Pu, was published at 2014. Unlike most other constructed languages, Toki Pona has less than 130 words. Due to the simplicity of the language, it attracted lazy people like me who don't want to invest too much time into learning a language. Personally I've learned it in 2018. And the speaker of language has been growing steadily. As of today, Toki Pona is the second most spoken constructed language in the world, only after Esperanto, with the amount of speakers estimated to be about 300-1000 and counting...

Since Toki Pona language were invented, three ISO 639-3 Language Code applications were made, including at 2007, at 2017 and at 2021. With the 2007 and the 2017 request failed, Toki Pona had finally made it in 2021 and gained the "tok" language code.

I have learned Toki Pona in 2018 and have been using it since then. The one thing I've learned from Toki Pona is that, context is everything when it comes to communication, and it ain't a good idea to always take words at face value. It enabled me to talk with others more efficiently. I've also made quite a few friends speaking Toki Pona along the way. In addition, since I've learned the language, I've developed a hardware device and a game that feature the language. I've also joined Toki Pona Day 2021 showcasing another DIY Toki Pona counting device. As of this moment, yet another Toki Pona related hardware device is under development that's to be released some time in this year.

Last year I was invited to join the "Toki Pona ISO 639-3 working group". I wasn't quite active there. Right before the deadline of the application in 2021, the main applicant called for filling in the form collaboratively. I'm very glad to have involved in assisting in doing write-up of the missing parts required for application of the code along with other people in the working group. After that, the members of the Discord group "ma pona pi toki pona" were contacted and they helped editing the existing content into perfection. Just earlier today, it was officially announced by ISO 639-3 that the application was successful.

The success of this application is significant. It means that toki pona have a standard language code that can be used for localization of programs. Without a code, each program and website would have to come up with a custom code for toki pona language, assuming that it's even supported by the site in the first place. With a standard language code, it makes localization much easier. Believe it or not! Websites like Wikipedia only allows adding new languages that has an ISO language code. The lack of language code of Toki Pona had been a limiting factor of the growth of the language. With the new language code, I hope that Toki Pona language will continue to thrive!

If you haven't learned the language yet, do take a look at it! Here's a nice free online course for learning it:

o kama sona e toki pona! ona li musi a! (Translation: Go learn Toki Pona! It's fun!)


Ilo Nanpa (Toki Pona Calculator) - Release Announcement and Technical Details

nimi mute ni pi toki pona li lon. o pilin e ni.

Good news guys! The Ilo Nanpa project is completed! It's a calculator for Toki Pona numeral.

Media coverage:

What's Toki Pona?

Toki Pona is a minimalist constructed language invented by jan Sonja. It has less than 130 words. It has an obscure numbering system.

How does Toki Pona Numeral Work?

Unlike the numeral of most languages, Toki Pona Numeral is a not a base-10 numeral system. There're two numbering system in Toki Pona, they are the simple system and the complex system. Here's the simple one:

  • ala - 0
  • wan - 1
  • tu - 2
  • mute - 3 or more
  • ali - infinity, all, everything.

Obviously there's no point making a calculator for the simple system. Here's how the complex system work. It's similar to coin-counting. Numbers are made up by adding up existing numeral words as follows:

  • ala - 0
  • wan - 1
  • tu - 2
  • luka - 5
  • mute - 20
  • ali - 100

For example, 37 would be mute luka luka luka tu because 20+5+5+5+2 is 37.

This Ilo Nanpa calculator is designed for working with the complex numbering system of Toki Pona.

Feature of Ilo Nanpa

Ilo Nanpa has the following feature:

  • Capable for performing addition and subtraction operations
  • Capable for performing multiplication operation (with a bit of hack)
  • Can be used as a stopwatch, counting to up to 80s or 1600s depending on the selected precision
  • Can be used as a timer, with maximum time set being 80s or 1600s depending on the selected precision
  • A memory space for saving and loading value
  • 16 LEDs numeral display
  • Calculation range: -1600 to 1600
  • Power source: either three AAA batteries or USB micro B, selectable with a slider switch
  • 30~120 hours of battery life with 5~11mA power consumption depending on the number of LEDs lit

Using Ilo Nanpa

Ilo Nanpa has 16 LEDs, 9 push buttons, an en/weka (addition/subtraction) slider switch and a power slider switch. A photo of Ilo Nanpa is shown below:

A photo of Ilo Nanpa

Powering Ilo Nanpa

The power slider switch can be used for switching between battery power and USB power. To power off the device, remove the USB and slide the slider switch to the USB position. Alternatively, remove a battery and slide the slider switch to the battery position.

Reading the Current Value using LEDs

As shown above, it has an LED for "weka anu ala" (negative or zero), an LED for "wan" (1), a couple LEDs for "tu" (2), three LEDs for "luka" (5), four LEDs for "mute" (20), an LED for "ali" (100), a couple of LEDs for "ali ali" (200), and a couple of LEDs for "ali ali ali ali ali" (500).

Reading the number is rather straight forward. You just add up the numbers of the lit LEDs and that's it. For example, if three "mute", two "luka", a "tu" and a "wan" lights up, that'd make "mute mute mute luka luka tu wan", which is 73. If an "ali ali ali ali ali", an "ali ali" and a "wan" lights up, that'd make "ali ali ali ali ali ali ali wan", which is 701.

If the displayed value is zero, only "weka anu ala" would be lit. For negative numbers, the shown LED would be the same as positive number, except that the LED "weka anu ala" would also be lit.

Operating Ilo Nanpa

There're nine buttons (ala, wan, tu, luka, mute, ali, pana, kama, tenpo) and an en/weka (addition/subtraction) slider switch. They're used for operating Ilo Nanpa.

Resetting the value to zero - ala button

The "ala" button resets the current number to zero.

Performing Addition and Subtraction Operations - wan, tu, luka, mute, ali buttons

The buttons "wan", "tu", "luka", "mute", "ali" behaves in this way: When the slider switch is in "en" (addition) position, the button pressed would add its value to the current value. When the slider switch is in "weka" (subtraction) position, the current value would be subtracted from the value of the pressed button.

This design makes sense in Toki Pona numeral because, for example, when you're trying to add 31 to the current value, as 31 is "mute luka luka wan", you'd just slide the slider switch to "en" position and press "mute", then "luka", then "luka", then "wan". If you want to further add 3 to that number, you'd just press "tu" then "wan" after that. If you want to subtract a number from current value, you'd slide to "weka" position and type in the number with the buttons.

Saving and Loading Value - pana, kama buttons

The "pana" button saves the current value displayed on LED. The "kama" button behaves like the "wan", "tu", "luka", "mute" and "ali" buttons, except that it adds or subtracts the current value with the previously saved value depending on the slider position.

Multiplication can be performed by using "pana" and "kama" buttons. For example, if you want to compute 137x5, first you resets the value to zero using "ala". Then you slide the slider switch to "en" position. After that, you type in 137. Then you press "pana". Then you press "kama" four times, which is one time less than the desired multiplier. And you'd get "ali ali ali ali ali ali mute mute mute mute luka", which is 685.

The saved value of "pana" persists over power cycles.

Stopwatch and Timer - tenpo button

This is the most complicated function of Ilo Nanpa. For simplicity, let's consider only positive value for now. I'll cover negative value later.

After the "tenpo" button is pressed, Ilo Nanpa would enter timing mode. It adds or subtracts the current value by one for each second elapsed, depending on the position of en/weka slider when the timing mode started.

During timing mode: pressing "wan", "tu", "luka", "mute", "ali" and "kama" would have no effect. Pressing "tenpo" would leave timing mode without doing anything to the current value. Pressing "ala" would leave timing mode and reset the value to the one before entering timing mode. Pressing "pana" would save the current value without leaving timing mode.

If you're using Ilo Nanpa as a timer, it would be counting towards zero. When zero is reached, it would stop the timing and the "weka anu ala" LED would blink. The brightness of the LED would be higher than usual. Pressing either "tenpo" or "ala" would leave timing mode and reset the value to the one before entering timing mode. Pressing "pana" would save the current value, which is zero. Pressing all other buttons would have no effect.

If you're using Ilo Nanpa as a stopwatch, it would be counting towards the limit (i.e. 1600 for positive number). When the limit had reached, it would stop timing and the LEDs would show the limit value and blink. The brightness of the LEDs would be higher than usual. The behavior of all buttons are the same as the one during timing mode.

If timing mode is performed with a negative value, the value update would perform 20x faster, which means that the value would get updated for every 0.05 seconds instead of every 1 second. Other than that, the behavior are the same for positive and negative value.

Distribution Plan

UPDATE : some info in this section is outdated, including production time and the way to obtain a unit of this device. Please refer to this new blogpost for the updated info: Future Distribution of Ilo Nanpa with Time-Efficient Production Method

I'm interested in distributing this Ilo Nanpa device to Toki Pona speakers.

The material cost is cheap. It only costs around $5 for a unit, including shipping fee to my home. The shipping cost to the recipient would costs <$5. However, it takes me 2 hours to manually produce a unit of Ilo Nanpa, including soldering, flashing the program and quality control. That's a lot of work for producing each unit.

If you're interested in getting an Ilo Nanpa, please fill in the form in the official website of Ilo Nanpa. At this stage, I only offer this device to Toki Pona speakers. I'll personally verify if you're capable for written communication using Toki Pona by using the contact methods you provide in the form. I ask about how much you're willing to donate in the form. It's ok to fill in any amount. At this stage I mainly want to estimate the demand and the amount that the recipients are willing to donate. If you don't have any spare money, don't be ashamed to fill in 0 there. Just tell me your situation in the "sina wile toki e ijo ante, la o toki tawa mi kepeken lupa nimi ni:" text box and there's still a chance that you may get one. :) No commitment is needed to fill in the donation amount. It's understandable that one may change their mind on the amount to be donated. However, please do not deliberately lie because that would screw up my budget.

If you have the money, please kindly donate some to me as it takes a lot of time to develop and produce this device. The extra money will be used for sending units to those who're donating less, or who have no spare money to donate.

I'm not sure about the total demand of this device. If the demand is small (maybe less than 10 units), I'd be happy to manually produce the units as long as I can recover the shipping cost and material cost.

It'd be very embarrassing if the demand is between 10 units and 50 units. There's no way that I'd go for mass production, and it wouldn't be fair for me to do the work with zero labor cost. If the demand is somewhere in between 10~50 units, I'd like to get $40 for my two hours of work (shipping fee and material cost not included), which is quite expensive and I doubt anyone would be willing to spend this amount of money for this simple device. :( I don't know. Perhaps I could get another Toki Pona speaker to share the workload and help doing the soldering and send the device to other Toki Pona speakers. Of course, anyone doing that would get a share of donation for the units that they've soldered. Please contact me (Sadale) on the Toki Pona IRC channel if you're interested in helping.

If the demand is high (perhaps more 50 units), I'd possibly pay a PCB assembly to do that for me, maybe I can start a crowdfunding campaign for that. Anyway, it may not be easy to get a PCB assembly to produce this device. Unlike conventional electronic devices, this device uses unusual electronic designators. Conventionally, resistors are labeled as R1, R2, R3... Capacitors are C1, C2... LEDs or diodes are D1, D2... For this device, resistors are awen1, awen2... Capacitors are wawa1, wawa2... and LEDs are suno1, suno2... This can be a problem for PCB assembly to produce it. If I go for mass production, perhaps I have to do a bit of compromise on the designator names.

If you're interested in getting a development kit, and you're willing to cover the material and shipping fee, I'd be more than happy to send you one. That's because most of the time involved in distributing the device are spent on soldering. It'd be a good thing if you're willing to do that on your own. Of course, I'd even be happier if you're donating a bit extra for the development effort. :P Almost all components of the device are the SMD ones. Fortunately, most of them doesn't have small pitch. The only difficult part is the USB port having a pitch of around 0.65mm. The microcontroller is having a pitch of 1.27mm, which isn't difficult. Other than that, there're just a lot of 0603 components, some SMD buttons, a 3-pin male header, a battery holder and a couple of mini slider switches. They aren't difficult (to me :P) to solder at all. I'll also ship a programmer to you so that you can program the microcontroller.

Technical Details

Project Objective

The objective of this project is to experiment with working with low-end microcontroller. After some research, it's found that STM8S001J3 is one of the cheapest microcontroller in the market with a cost of only $0.2 per unit at a quantity of 10k. This microcontroller has nice amount of flash, RAM, EEPROM and peripheral. It has 8kB flash, 1kB RAM, 128 bytes EEPROM. Compared with microcontroller series like the ATTiny or the PIC ones, this one is both cheaper and better. The only shortcoming of this microcontroller I've found is the voltage range. It's a bit narrow compared with other low-end microcontrollers.

STM8S001J3 only has 8 pins, with 5 IO pins. They have another model that's a bit more expensive with 20 pins. I intentionally pick the 8 pins one to practice IO multiplexing.

Technical objective aside, this would probably be the first electronic device designed for Toki Pona language in mind.

IO Multiplexing

The most interesting aspect of this project is that the microcontroller only has 5 IO pins, yet it's capable for interfacing with 16 LEDs, 9 push buttons and a slider switch. One of the 5 IO pins doesn't even have push-pull output capability. It makes the project even more challenging.

The schematics of the project is shown below. Click the image to open it in a new window:

Schematics of Ilo Nanpa

IO Multiplexing - Charlieplexing LEDs

Charlieplexing is a technique of multiplexing output pins for driving many LEDs with small number of pins.

Conventionally, an output pin can only have two states, they're either high or low. Pins on modern microcontroller often have one more state in addition of the two states, which is high-impedance state. In high-impedance state, the pin behaves as if it's disconnected from the circuit.

To perform Charlieplexing, one would list out all of the possible pin pairs of all available pins to be used for driving LEDs. For example, if I have 5 LED pins, A, B, C, D and E, the pin pairs would be AB, AC, AD, AE, BC, BD, BE, CD, CE and DE. After that, we connect two LEDs to each pin pairs. One of them is forward-biased. Another of them is reverse-biased. Since there're 10 pin pairs, 5 pins would be able to drive 10x2 = 20 LEDs.

To light up an LED, we'd set all irrelevant pin to high-impedance state, which "disconnects" the pins from the circuit. After that, we set a pin to high, another pin to low, then the desired LED would be lighted up. For example, if you wish to light up the reverse-biased LED connected to the AB pin pair, set pin C, D and E to high-impedance, then set pin B to high and pin A to low. Then the LED would light up.

For this particular microcontroller, one of the pins is not capable for high-sink output. It means that it is not possible to output the kind of high signal that's required for Charlieplexing. That would take away 4 LEDs. Therefore, this device has 16 LEDs instead of 20 LEDs.

For this device, one LED is lighted up at a time. Then it switches to another one. This continues and repeats. At high switching frequency, it gives the user an illusion of multiple LEDs being lit at the same time.

IO Multiplexing - Multiplexing Input

The input buttons are multiplexed using voltage divider. There're 9 buttons and a slider switch.

The slider switch is attached to a dedicated pin. One of its position is connected to Vcc via a 470k resistor. Another of them is connected to ground via a 470k resistor. A high resistance is chosen to minimize the interference with the LED circuit.

For the 9 buttons, they're divided into three groups. Each group is having three buttons. The first group is ala-wan-tu. The second group is luka-mute-ali. The third group is pana-kama-tenpo. Each group is connected to an ADC pin of the microcontroller.

The microcontroller has two pins connected to ADC out of the box. To connect the third pin to ADC, an option byte has to be programmed. With three ADC-capable pins, we can have three button groups each handling three buttons.

Each ADC pin is pulled down by a 470k resistor. A high value resistor is chosen so that it would minimize the interference with the LED circuit. When a button is pressed, the ADC pin is parallelly connected to Vcc via a 10k (ala/luka/pana), 10k+20k (wan/mute/kama), or 10k+20k+20k (tu/ali/tenpo) resistors. Holding any button would cause the Vcc resistor and the pull down resistor to form a voltage divider. The reading of the voltage divider is fed to the ADC pin of the button group. The value chosen on the Vcc side is significantly lower than the pull-down side because there's a limit of input impedance of the microcontroller. If the is input impedance is too high, the ADC wouldn't work.

IO Multiplexing - Connecting Input and Output to the Same IO Pin

Is it alright to share the same IO pin for both input and output? Yes, it is. But it's more complicated than I thought. I ran into a few issues due to the sharing of input and output pins.

Button Detection Issue

I thought that the ADC reading for each button group would simply be a voltage divider as long as I've set all output pins to high impedance state. For example, pressing "ala" would makes the ADC reading to be MAX_ADC_VALUE x 10k/(470k+10k), pressing "wan" would be MAX_ADC_VALUE x 30k/(470k+30k) and pressing "tu" would be MAX_ADC_VALUE x 50k/(470k+50k). I was mistaken.

This thought is wrong because it doesn't consider that the input pins and the output pins are sharing the same pin. It means that when a button is pressed, the Vcc connected to the 10k/30k/50k resistor would get to the ground via both the pull-down resistor of its own button group and other button groups via the Charlieplexed LED network. That's because the Charlieplexed LED network is connected to all button groups, which is pulled down to the ground. In addition, the en/weka slider is also connected to the Charlieplexed LED network. All of these would affect the ADC reading.

Due to manufacturing tolerance, the forward voltage of each LED on the Charlieplexed LED is not known. Therefore, there's no easy way to calculate the value of ADC reading when a button is pressed. For this reason, I've included ADC reading calibration mechanism in the factory mode of the firmware.

The ADC calibration scene would require the user to press a button. It records the ADC reading of the button. The operator is required to press each of the buttons for a few times. The ADC readings of each button press are averaged out and the ADC threshold values for each button are calculated and they're saved to the EEPROM of the microcontroller. After the calibration, the microcontroller is ready for detecting button presses.

It's empirically determined that the effects of holding buttons of other button groups is negligible to the ADC reading. However, the en/weka slider does have substantial effect to the ADC reading. For this reason the ADC reading calibration are to be performed for both "en" slider position and "weka" slider position.

en/weka Slider Detection Issue

Unlike other buttons, this slider is connected to either Vcc or Ground via a 470k resistor. As the resistance is high, lighting up any LED or pressing any button would affect the detection of en/weka slider for a while. For this reason, the firmware is designed in a way that it won't perform en/weka detection when any button is held. It also stops lighting up the LEDs for a short time once a while for detection of en/weka slider position.

LED display issue

Holding a button would connect Vcc to the LED network with a resistance of 10k/30k/50k. That causes some LEDs to light up.

As a workaround, a model of LED with lower brightness is chosen. It's empirically found that the one with lower brightness is less vulnerable to this issue. With this kind of LED, the brightness caused by pressing button is far lower than the LEDs lit by the display of number. Therefore, it wouldn't be a problem for normal operation at all.

Way to Go!

Since all these issues have got a solution, there isn't a problem anymore. The device works with input and output pins multiplexed! I managed to get 5 IO pins to control 16 LEDs plus 9 buttons plus a slider switch! :D

Factory Mode

Factory mode can perform ADC reading calibration as mentioned above. In addition of that, it's possible to perform key press tests and LED brightness adjustment using this mode.

To enter factory mode, hold down "ala" on power up for 5 seconds. After that, three "mute" LEDs and the "ali" LED would light up. It means that the device is now in password mode. By pushing the correct button sequence, the user would enter factory mode. If the user had typed in a wrong button sequence, he'd be led to normal mode. This design is to prevent unintentional access of factory mode. That's because if the user had mistakenly entered factory mode, he could screw up the ADC calibration values, which would break the button detection mechanism of the device until a proper recalibration.

Please refer to the README file of official Github repository of Ilo Nanpa for understanding how to work with factory mode.

Programming Mode

Since we've got a low pin count microcontroller, we couldn't dedicate a pin for programming and debugging. The programming pin shares the same IO pin as luka-mute-ali button group and a few LEDs. This is a problem because we need a mechanism to reprogram the microcontroller in case it's needed.

To get the microcontroller to stay in programming mode, hold "pana" key on power up. As long as the button is held, the device would stay in programming mode. Once it's release, it'd enter normal operation mode.

The pana-kama-tenpo button group is intentionally chosen as the programming button. That's because it's a bad idea to pick any other button groups. The luka-mute-ali button group is shared with the programming pin, which means that holding only of these buttons may affect the signal of programming pin. The ADC of ala-wan-tu button group is only available after the option bytes are programmed. In case the engineer had forgot to program the option bytes, the button press of ala-wan-tu wouldn't get detected. That would cause the microcontroller to get locked up and it wouldn't be possible to reprogram it anymore.

Since using any of the other button groups is a bad idea, the pana-kama-tenpo group is chosen as the programming button group.

Let's not worry about debugging. It just isn't possible to spare a pin for debugging, unfortunately.

By the way, when I was trying to implement this mode, I screwed up a few times and permanently locked up a couple of microcontrollers. I had to throw them away and solder a new microcontroller onto the PCB. :(

Printed Circuit Board

This is the second PCB I've designed. The first one was for ilo musi (the game console that I had been developing). In fact, the third prototype of ilo musi is mostly completed. It's soldered on a PCB. I've never got the time to blog about it, tho.

The PCB was designed using KiCad. I use it mainly because it's free. As a bonus, it's open source. :)

The PCB of Ilo Nanpa is 50mmx50mm. I keep it small because some PCB fab offers a cheaper price for 50mmx50mm boards. I ordered 10 boards for $4 (shipping fee not included), and somehow they delivered 18 boards to me. :D

The PCB is a double layer one. There's a layer on the frontside of the board and another layer on the backside.

Other than that, there's nothing very interesting about the PCB of this project.

What I have Learned from this Project

I've learned quite a lot from this Ilo Nanpa project, including:

  • Working with low-cost microcontroller
  • Working with a system with wide range of power supply voltage without using external voltage regulator
  • Working with Charlieplexing circuit
  • Using single ADC pin to detect button press of one of the multiple buttons
  • Multiplexing input and output using the same IO pin

This is also my first completed electronic project having a PCB! :)

Moving Forward

Now the Ilo Nanpa project is officially completed. All I need to do is to distribute the device. :)

I'll continue to work on ilo musi, which is the game console project that I had been working on and blogging about. See you!


mi pana e kalama musi "mi ken ala moli e pipi" tawa jan ali | Release Announcement of Toki Pona Song "Futile Attempt of Killing Mosquito"

toki! ni li nimi mute mi pi nanpa wan pi toki pona lon lipu mi. tenpo suno ni la mi pana e kalama musi "mi ken ala moli e pipi" tawa jan ali a! tenpo suno luka tu wan la mi pali e kalama musi e sitelen tawa. tenpo pi mute wan la mi pali e sitelen tawa a!

tenpo pini pi tenpo sike ni la mi pali e kalama musi mute tan tenpo "Global Game Jam 2018". kalama musi wan pi ona mute li pona mute tawa mi. mi pona e kalama musi ni li pali e sitelen tawa pi kalama musi ni li pana e sitelen tawa ni tawa jan ali.

tenpo pini la mi pali e kalama musi. taso mi pana ala e ijo ni tawa jan ali. jan jo ala e ijo ni la ona li ken ala ante e kalama musi.

tenpo ni la mi pana e ijo ni pi kalama musi tawa jan ali a! sina ken ante e kalama musi ni.

Hey guys! Today I'm releasing a toki pona song "Futile Attempt of Killing Mosquito" along with an animation. I've spent 8 days and nights on this piece of music and its animation! It's also my first serious animation project in my life!

This music came from Global Game Jam 2018. I decided to be a musical guy for the event. So I've made quite a few pieces of music as a practice. That's because we're required to get the work done within 48 hours in the event. So I have to get familiar with the tools. A few months after the event, I found that I love one of those musical segment particularly. Then I elaborate this part and enhance it and I've made an animation for it. And here we have this musical animation.

Unlike my previous music, this time I'm providing source files of music publicly and direct download link to a few variants of its animation. That makes remixing and editing the music and animation much easier compared with my previous works!

sitelen tawa lon lipu Jutu | Animation on Youtube

o lukin e sitelen tawa ni pi kalama musi lon lipu Jutu!

Check out this musical animation on Youtube!

kalama musi lon lipu "SoundCloud" | Music on SoundCloud

[o kute e ni! | Click here to listen to it]

ante pi sitelen tawa en ante pi kalama musi | Derived Works of this Project

sina ante e sitelen tawa e kalama musi la o toki e mi. ona li pona la mi wile pana e lupa pi pali sina lon lipu ni a!

If you distribute a remix of any resources from this project, feel free to inform me. If it's a good one I'd be happy to put up a link to your work right in this blogpost!

sina wile ante e sitelen tawa e kalama musi e kalama uta pi kalama musi la o kepeken e ni! | Resources for Remix, Vocal Swap and Other Modifications

lipu lawa pi "CC BY 4.0" li lawa e sina la sina ken kama jo e ijo lon sewi lipu.

License of the resources above: CC BY 4.0. Please attribute to this blog post or sadale.net. If you do not want to do the attribution, please contact me and let me know what you're going to use these resource for. It's very likely that I'll grant you attribution exemption.

o ante e kalama uta! | Possible Modification with the Resources Above: Vocal Swap

sina wile ante e kalama uta la o kepeken e ijo "kalama musi" anu "kalama musi pi kalama uta". sina pini kalama uta la o kama jo e ijo "kalama musi weka kalama uta" kepeken ilo sona kalama. ilo sona kalama li ilo "Audacity" anu ijo ante. ijo "kalama musi weka kalama uta" en kalama uta sina li kalama musi pi kalama uta sina.

sina ken kalama uta e nimi mute pi kalama musi ni kepeken toki ante a!

If you want to do vocal swap, first, download the resource "Music" or "Vocal Assist". While playing any of these, sing along and record what you're singing. Then download "Instrumental Music" and align your recording to the Instrumental Music track with software like Audacity. Then you've got your voice into this piece of music.

With vocal swap, you can even sing this song in another language!

o ante e nimi toki! | Possible Modification with the Resources Above: Modifying Subtitles

sina wile ante e nimi toki la sina ken kama jo e ijo "sitelen tawa weka nimi Inli" e ijo "nimi pi toki Inli pi sitelen tawa". sina pini ante e ijo "nimi pi toki Inli pi sitelen tawa" kepeken ilo "Aegisub" la sina ken pali e sitelen tawa sin kepeken e ilo "FFMPEG" anu ilo ante. sina jo e sitelen tawa pi nimi pi toki ante a!

sina pana e ijo tan "Aegisub" tawa sitelen tawa lon Jutu la jan ali li ken lukin e nimi pi toki sina a!

If you want to modify the subtitles of the vid, download the resource "Animation without English Subtitles" and "SubStation Alpha English subtitles". Modify the resource "SubStation Alpha English subtitles" with software like Aegisub. With FFMPEG, you can combine the subtitles and the video. Then you get a video with subtitles in another language.

If you provide that subtitles file to the video hosted on Youtube above, other users can view your subtitles.

o ante e kalama musi! | Possible Modification with the Resources Above: Remixing the Music

nasin nanpa wan li ni: sina wile kepeken e ilo "LMMS". o kama jo e ijo "ijo pi kalama musi pi ilo "LMMS"". sina pini lukin e nimi mute lon ona la o kama jo e "kalama uta". tenpo ni la sina ken ante e kalama musi ni.

nasin nanpa tu li ni: sina kama jo e ijo "kalama musi" e ijo "kalama musi weka kalama uta" e ijo "kalama musi pi kalama uta". sina namako e kalama musi ni kepeken ilo sona kalama.

There're two ways to do remix. The first way is to use LMMS to remix the music. Download the resource "LMMS Music Project Source File". Follow the instruction in the file and download "Vocal (for LMMS)". Then you can modify the music right inside LMMS.

Another way is to use other audio tools. After downloading the resources "Music", "Instrumental Music" and "Vocal", you can do operation on the audio to remix it. For example, one can add some drum and stuffs to it, or add some effects to it like adding filters or reverb effect or pitch change or something like that. Just do whatever you want with them!

nimi mute pi kalama musi ni li toki seme? | What's the Language of the Lyrics of this Song?

nimi mute pi kalama musi ni li toki pona. :P

It's Toki Pona. It's a minimalist, constructed language invented by jan Sonja. The entire language is made of 123 words! It's rather easy to get fluent on it. I learned this language like two or three months ago. It took me like a month to learn it.

Long time ago I've attempted learning another constructed language Esperanto. I didn't have much success. Mainly because it really takes a bit of time to learn those vocabularies. I had to look up the dictionary from time to time. But Toki Pona's different. Once I learn all those 123 words, it isn't that difficult to understand any Toki Pona text and conversations. Even if I don't completely understand it, at least I'd have an idea on what it's about because I understand every single word. It's just that I don't understand the combination of words.

If you've nothing to do and interested in learning a useless language, Toki Pona is the language to go! Toki Pona community does exist. It's a bit small, tho. Still, it's rather fun to chat in a language that others couldn't understand. That's how do you talk shit about others without drawing any unwanted attention! :P

jan Sate li pali e sitelen tawa ni tan nasin seme? | Behind the Scenes

nimi mute li pona lili. sitelen lukin li pona mute. o lukin e sitelen ni:

A image's worth thousands of words. Take a look on this pic for an overview of how this vid were made:

An image showing the workflow of using the software for the creation of the animation

mi kepeken e ilo mute a! mi wile ala toki e ilo ali. mi toki e musi ona.

I'll not go thru all of the software above. I'll just cover the interesting parts.

kamala musi | Music

mi pali e kalama lili kepeken e ilo "Palette MCT". mi wile kepeken e ilo "Wine" lon ilo "Linux" tan ni: ilo "Linux" li ken ala kepeken e ilo "Palette MCT".

I made the melody and chord with Palette MCT. It's a great free tool for doing chord progression and designing melody. Since I lack knowledge on music theory about chord and stuffs, this tool is very helpful to me. Previously I did chord progression by trial and error. I adjusts each note tediously until I find the one that sounds right. With this software, it helps me to filter out those inappropriate chord immediately. Then I can focus on the one that sounds good.

Unfortunately, it doesn't support linux. I had to run it on wine. And it's the only non-FOSS tool I've used for this project.

Screenshot of part of the music composition software Palette MCT

As you see, there're those musical notes. The pink notes are non-chord notes. The black ones are the chord ones. And the colored rectangles with letters and numbers are the chord chosen for the measure.

This part was done before Global Game Jam 2018. Once again, this music is a enhancement of a piece of music made during my practice for the jam. :P

sitelen tawa | Animation

mi pali e sitelen kepeken ilo "Inkscape". ilo "Inkscape" pana e sitelen, tawa ilo "Synfig". mi pali e sitelen tawa kepeken e ilo "Synfig". mi kama sona e ilo ni kepeken tenpo suno wan kepeken sitelen tawa ni: [sitelen tawa "How to create animation in Synfig (3rd edition)"]. ona li pona mute.

I made the graphic with Inkscape. Then it's imported to Synfig and turned into animation. I learned its basic within a day using this video course: [How to create animation in Synfig (3rd edition)]. Synfig itself is free. But the video course isn't. Still, it's very affordable. If you're interested in learning it and cannot afford it, I'd be happy to buy a copy for you.

Screenshot of the animation software Synfig

ilo "Synfig" li pona. taso tenpo mute la mi pali e sitelen tawa kepeken ona. mi pini pali la ona li pali e sitelen tawa kepeken tenpo mute mute.

Synfig is a great piece of FOSS animation tool. It's easy to use. But it's rather time consuming to make animation with it. After making the animation, it also takes quite a bit of time to render, especially for video that uses the "Curve Warp Layer". It takes an hour and half to render an animation with like 500 frames on my Bay Trail Pentium laptop. The Curve Warp Layer was used to make the swinging arm animation in our video.

tenpo kama la seme li kama? | What's next?

mi pini pali e sitelen tawa ni la mi pali e ilo sona musi.

pali pi sitelen tawa li pona tawa mi. pali ni li musi. taso mi pali e ona kepeken tenpo mute mute. mi jo e tenpo sin la mi wile pali sitelen tawa sin.

The completion of this video marks the end of the break of my Portable Game Console Project. I'll get back to that project soon.

I enjoyed making this animation. The catch is that it takes far too much time to make one. I'll make another one in the future if I have the time.