I have a new phone!
It’s an HTC Tytn II, aka HTC Kaiser, running a custom light ROM of Windows Mobile 6.1, none of which means anything to me. Olly SIM- and ROM-unlocked it for me, besides flashing the custom ROM onto it to replace the crappy 3 bloatware that was on it before (this makes marginally more sense). It’s like my previous HTC Alpine, smaller but chunkier, and without the volatile memory, mayfly battery life, dark screen, broken speaker, and incapable wireless.
Features include a radio transceiver that runs every form of wireless ever, a resistive screen (ie, uses a stylus and fingernail jabs, rather than the fingertip-smeared capacitive nonsense that everything uses now), micro SD card slot, and best of all a flip-out tactile response hardware keyboard. With the ROM Olly loaded for me, it runs wicked fast. I am very pleased with it. Now it just needs a name.
Thanks in part to playing a weird, very good Age of Empires knockoff called Fate of the Dragon, in part to then playing AoE3: The Weeaboo Dynasties, and in part to becoming aware of the South-Pointing Chariot, I’m getting more and more obsessed with ancient Chinese history, particularly the Three Kingdoms period. I rather want to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it’s an intimidating 800,000 words long. (For those who aren’t sure what this means, a nice thick novel is 60-70k.)
Off to Scotland tomorrow, a week in Elgin and a week in Edinburgh; hopefully there’ll be internet at both, though no promises. Travelogues to follow.
Also, I reviewed Alien Swarm for The Solitary Bee. There’s plenty of good non-me stuff there, including pics of a weird, massive firing range up on Dartmoor, so give it a visit.
underneath the open sky 
HTCs are awesome. i really want one! stuck with mine for another year though…
i live about 20 miles from elgin! i didn’t realise anyone went there for holidays though, haha. what are you gonna be doing there?
“General Family Holiday”, it seems. Not sure of the reason exactly… Recommend me somewhere fun to go, plox?
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
If you really want to get the best parts of ROTK and not worry about the endless cast and equally endless story, I suggest the abridged version translated by Moss Roberts. It’s a good translation, though he doesn’t use Pinyin. He DOES give you the best parts.
Re: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I’ll look for it, thank you! (Out of interest, how did you find this journal?)
Re: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I think I followed a link from Robyn Paterson’s site and both of you happened to be talking about Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I’ve written a historical fantasy based on ROTK (I haven’t found a publisher yet, but I do have agent interest), so I keep an eye out for other folks talking about the games, books, movies, etc. It’s all good. ;D
Re: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Wonder why he would be linking me… sorry, this sounds like an interrogation. Just wondering about how and why traffic comes here; the internet moves in mysterious ways. Still, always cool to get comments from new faces.
Do you know if there’s an ebook of Roberts’ version floating around? I loved Mitchell’s abridged Epic of Gilgamesh, so it sounds very promising, but being a piss-poor student might be a problem?
Tell me more about this historical fantasy!
Re: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
I just looked and there’s not an e-version, sorry! It will probably be awhile before things like that get uploaded.
My book’s called “Mourn Their Courage” which is taken from a line of poetry in the book. Since my novel’s main themes are courage and self-sacrifice, it seemed like a good title. :) There were a lot of instances of inexplicable wind in the original story and I made the cause a kuei (ghost) who haunts a fictional character serving my Liu Bei character. Since I’d already made it a fantasy, I did change my characters’ names from the original and I didn’t use all of the plot twist and turns. There are too many and too many people for most modern readers. ;D So far the ms has finaled in an international contest and won some interest from literary agents, so here’s hoping! Thanks for asking. :)