O. M. G. – in my obsessive spree (that rhymes!) I moved on to create yet another tool in the field of Hànyǔ Pīnyīn! Now I have like 7 projects parallel in the cooking, er, kitchen… in the making! …is what I’m saying!

This one was a really tuff cookie. I had many problems to solve. It took me the better part of the entire month. Next to sleeping – and a daily short session of self-Feldenkrais for self-preservation – there was not much else I did. But here I am, here we are!

My transcription tool, even in its early prototype stage, is already on par with Google translate, ChatGPT and Deepseek… Deepseek! of all large language models, in terms of transcription quality — which is not very difficult because they are very sloppy in this regard; nobody seems to care about Pīnyīn orthography, not even the machinese.

I use the Made-In-Japan rakutenMA for segmentation (which works in any browser and is purely javascript based), paired with some simple lookups from creative commons dictionary CC-CEDICT (which is second by a wide margin to the great ABC-Dictionary by Hawaii Press, but it’s all we have for now, and for that I’m grateful), a frequency based table for single character Chinese morphemes, and a smooth working user interface (overall design still needs to be created.)

Next, I will need to focus on my actual work as a Feldenkrais teacher, for the last week of the month, and produce two Feldenkrais videos. Despite my crazy work hours due to my software projects, I still need to pay the rent. The upcoming two videos will probably be the slowest and deepest I’ve produced so far in the past 15 years; I hope to be able to get closer to live-class experience in my videos.

For the theme of the upcoming video, I’ve made my pick in the beginning of the month already (dealing with lingering shoulder pain due to sitting in front of the computer too much). Looking forward to teaching and filming!

And then, next month, I will start implementing the official government rules (GB/T 16159-2012) for Hànyǔ Pīnyīn into my new transcription software, making it the best in the world, second to none!

Also, I’m planing to wrap my colorful Pīnyīn Colors app into a MacOS app, or maybe even an iPad app, register and pay for an Apple developer account (walk of shame), and put it on the Apple App-Store (for free, as most of my work is, so is my plan.)

Ok, now, no time to proof-read, ok, but just one run through, no time Toulouse, I need to get on with it!