Kongming’s Archives’ Update Archive: 2010
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Archived Documents and Information. This page contains archived site wide updates for the year of 2010. Some information below may be out-of-date and some links may be broken. If searching for missing content, please use the regular site navigation or search for best results.
January 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through January 2010.
1/21/10 (James): Big Fix Day!
Some big fixes today. Our Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia has been updated: numerous bug fixes (including a bug which prevented numerous officers from showing in results) have been applied; Scholars of Shen Zhou related forum discussion thread links will appear again (gradually, as our cache refreshes over the next three days); more officer ‘kingdoms’ are available in searches and results; novel links have been repaired; and finally, usability and aesthetic goodness.
Our Scholars of Shen Zhou Discussion Search Page has been repaired. Use this tool to search eight years of discussion history in our forum to aid in your research or satiate your curiosity.
And finally, our Novel Appearances Page—a searchable index of characters featuring the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel chapters in which they appear with links to the novel online—has also been fixed and cleaned up.
1/26/10 (James): Biographies Sanguo Yanyi and Sanguozhi
Qu Hui, member of our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou, has recently prepared some new Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel biographies: Xun You (Gonda), Jian Yong (Xianhe), Fa Zheng (Xiaozhi) and Lü Qian (Zike).
As many of you know the Three Kingdoms community once included a site called the Three Kingdoms Frontier. It was among the earliest successful Three Kingdoms sites published in English. If you recall this website you probably also remember when it went offline a few years ago, rendering much of its forum’s content—including some excellent Sanguozhi translations—difficult or impossible to find. We were asked some time ago to rescue this content to Kongming’s Archives. Although it has taken some time I’m going to begin with a few biographies today, and will follow up with more as time permits. From Stephen So (you may know him by his internet handle, Shu-Han Zhao Lie Di) some Sanguozhi biographies of Wei officers: Hao Zhao (Bodao), Li Dian (Mancheng), Wen Pin (Zhongye) and Xiahou Ba (Zhongquan). Additionally, co-translated by Stephen So and The Historian (another knowledgeable member who frequented The Frontier), Cao Zhen (Zidan).
1/28/10 (James): IRC Three Kingdoms Online Chat Room
Would you like to chat with other Kongming’s Archives viewers and members from our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou? We’ve recently launched an IRC chat room (in IRC terms, a ‘channel’) which allows you to do just that! All you need to do is download an IRC client and enter our channel’s connection information. Not familiar with IRC? No problem! Click here for step-by-step instructions.
Our IRC channel is young so there may not be much activity—at least initially. Join in, chat, and leave it open in the background. If enough people participate it should evolve into a lively discussion room before long. We hope to see you there!
Simulated RTK, the online Romance of the Three Kingdoms role-playing game, also has an IRC channel. If you participate at SimRTK you probably already knew this—the SimRTK channel has been lively with discussion for years now—but regardless, we’ve also included detailed step-by-step instructions on how to join SimRTK’s chat group as well.
February 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through February 2010.
2/18/10 (James): Officer Style Name Reference Updated
Our Three Kingdoms Officer Style Name Lookup/Reference Project has received a massive overhaul. In addition to cross-referencing officer names and style names, as you could before, you can now see styles in Wade-Giles, Pinyin with tones, and in traditional or simplified Chinese. Additionally, you can jump directly to the officer’s Encyclopedia Project entry by clicking their name.
This page actually represents a massive re-write of all the code behind these project pages—something which will allow for some very cool things down the road. For now, you can enjoy some cool benefits like searching within a kingdom (example), or searching in Chinese (example).
2/26/10 (James): Three Kingdoms Officer Name Reference
Today brings an update to our Hanzi Project, now named the Three Kingdoms Officer Name Reference. Once called the Hanzi Project as it served as a simple cross-reference between officers in our database and their names in Traditional Chinese, the project has been expanded to include names in Wade-Giles and Simplified Chinese as well. Decimal-encoded versions of their Chinese names are also available for use in non-Unicode websites and forums, like phpBB 2. Chinese searches (traditional or simplified) are supported (example). Enjoy!
March 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through March 2010.
3/11/10 (James): Romance of the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia
Big update today for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Officer Encyclopedia. It has been re-coded from the ground up to take advantage of all the new site advancements we’ve mentioned earlier. Numerous bugs have been fixed and ease-of-use and performance have both been drastically improved. Also new are a large collection of small features (e.g. Chinese language searching, clickable kingdom/category links, improved color coding, searching, relations).
To fully appreciate everything the new encyclopedia has to offer please enjoy it in a new browser aside from Internet Explorer, which does not support all of our features. Suggested web browsers include newer versions of Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome, and Mozilla’s Firefox. In fact, the whole internet looks better in these browsers.
Although numerous bugs have been squashed with this update I’ve surely introduced some new ones. I also have no way, at this moment, to test in Internet Explorer 7, so I’m not sure what sort of layout issues might exist in that browser. If you encounter any sort of problem please send me an email.
April 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through April 2010.
4/2/10 (James): Barack Obama Descended from Cao Cao
April Fools 2010. I hope you enjoyed it. I almost pulled this one at the last moment fearing it might be too lame, but it seems people really enjoyed it! It would have been a shame to miss out on a fun tradition. Forum Discussion. Archives.
4/2/10 (Qu Hui): Cao Cao’s Tomb Discovered
In December 2009, a tomb thought to be Cao Cao’s was discovered in Henan Province. Since then, archaeologists have confirmed that it indeed Cao Cao’s tomb due to tablets bearing inscriptions identifying the tomb as belonging to “King Wu of Wei,” which was Cao Cao’s title when he died in AD 220. Contents of the tomb included weapons, armor, pottery and other articles, which are thought to be the warlord’s everyday belongings and are in accordance with his final wishes that he be buried simply and without treasures. Learn about the discovery of Cao Cao’s tomb.
4/6/10 (James): Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch
Buy Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch from iTunes ($9.99)
For those who have not already noticed, Koei has released the Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch app for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. It costs $9.99 and is largely based on the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms for the NES. The interface is highly polished and very easy to control by touch, though as you might expect the game has been simplified for the mobile platform. You may only perform one action per territory per turn but that action may involve multiple officers and battle are waged between up to five officers on either side. If you are a fan of the Three Kingdoms series this is definitely a worthwhile purchase.
Some notes worth learning about the game: ‘Charge’ is a brutal battle tactic that always results in one combatant losing. The loser permanently loses war while the winner permanently gains. The loser may be killed. It will play a large role in key battles. ‘Rumor’ is highly effective, as is ‘Arson’ for weakening opponents outside battle. Governors may be recruited though their subordinates will not come along. Disasters are overpowered (sometimes even imbalancing) so maintain multiple war parties. Officer deaths and resignation take place in January. Money and food are both collected in July. War costs money. Keep a small or you will suffer an automatic defeat. Merchants are not always present in cities. Keep this in mind, especially while drafting. Rulers aside, captured officers can always be recruited. Romance of the Three Kingdoms Touch (Forum Discussion)
4/9/10 (James): Romance of the Three Kingdoms Wordles (Wallpaper)
Just for fun—have you ever played with Wordle? Well, we have, at Scholars of Shen Zhou, and you are welcome to view our collection of Romance of the Three Kingdoms Wordles and participate in the discussion or share your own. Wordle, by the way, is a site where you can create an artistic mesh of words, sized by prominence and colored to a theme, based on any sort of textual input (including websites). We’ve been creating Wordles with text from Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms (read online; book selection guide).
In addition to the Wordles being shared in our forum, I’ve created a special Wordle using the entire contents of the novel. I had a lot of fun with colors and word placement. I’ve added it to our wallpaper section in high-resolution in two forms, colored and ‘paper’-themed. More information is available in the download. I’ve saved my original creation online, at Wordle’s site, so you can create your own Romance of the Three Kingdoms Wordle based on the novel’s text.
4/28/10 (James): Featured Website: Sanguo Guide
It isn’t often that a good new Three Kingdoms website hits the scene, and even rarer that a new website, seemingly full of potential, evolves into a worthwhile resource. Sanguo Guide, a relatively new Three Kingdoms website, is just that. With officer/character profiles and biographical information (with properly identified information from both the novel and history) and various Three Kingdoms stories it can serve as a useful or pleasant resource, and with original artwork, a gallery, and a clean layout, it is quite fun to browse as well. Thanks, Andrew!
May 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through May 2010.
5/13/10 (James): Lü Bu’s Horse—the Red Hare
Lü Bu’s famous horse, the ‘Red Hare’ (aka. Chituma) has spawned many discussions over the years. People wonder if the horse existed, where its name originated, when it died, where it came from, and who owned it. I’ve attempted to piece much of this information together for you in a new encyclopedia entry: Read about the Red Hare in the Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia.
You can also read more about the Red Hare in one of two forum discussions. If you have any additional information to share, or would like to suggest any corrections, please reply or contact me directly. I hope to write a similar entry for Liu Bei’s Dilu Horse. Enjoy!
5/17/10 (James): Featured Website: Three Kingdoms Audiobook
Back in October 2009, D.J. Raspe contacted me to share that he is recording a Romance of the Three Kingdoms audiobook based on the 1925 Brewitt-Taylor translation found at ThreeKingdoms.com, and is sharing the chapters online as he goes along. He has continued along with the project since that time, has recently completed chapter 49, and it looks like this project might be seen through to completion. If you would like to listen to the audiobook chapters yourself or follow this project, visit The Brookhaven Chronicles for a blog-like presentation of this work-in-progress.
5/21/10 (James): Featured Website: The Three Kingdoms Wiki
Description: “The Three Kingdoms Wiki is an online encyclopedia focussing on the historical aspect of the Three Kingdoms, featuring biographies and battles as primary categories, as well as terminology, items, media and more. Currently still in the early stages, with the goal of becoming a reliable source for everything concerning the Three Kingdoms.”
As is often the case with a website before I link to it, it has been around for a little while, and is now starting to become a good Three Kingdoms resource for various topics. Why not Wikipedia? Wikipedia is a great source for information on the most popular Three Kingdoms characters, events, topics and historic figures (and should be a part of a researcher’s toolbox for these things), but a terrible source to rely on for nearly everything else due to regular inclusion of fictional events without distinguishing from history. The Three Kingdoms Wiki is still young and still needs to be adequately sourced, but a smaller centralized group has the potential to address these problems. Such could be the case for any independent well-managed Three Kingdoms Wiki.
This is also the reason why our Three Kingdoms Encyclopedia isn’t open to public editing. We wish to preserve accuracy between historic and novel-based events. If you would like to participate in that, please contact me! We’d love to hear from you.
August 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through August 2010.
8/16/10 (James): Kongming’s Archives is now on Facebook
Kongming’s Archives has joined Facebook. We know, we know, we’re terribly far behind the times. If you’re a fan of Facebook yourself, why not swing by the Kongming’s Archives Facebook page and have a look? There’s not yet much to see, but we’re looking forward to suggestions on how we can put a fan page together which will be enjoyable for everyone. If you’ve got ideas to share, we would love to hear them! Share your thoughts on our page if you’re interested.
8/30/10 (James): Imperial Warlord: A Biography of Cao Cao
Rafe de Crespigny new book, Imperial Warlord: A Biography of Cao Cao has been published by Brill Academic and is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com. It carries a price tag of $248 (at the time of writing), but offers 600 pages of what is certain to be the finest history of Cao Cao available to the English reader (if not everyone), and an excellent opportunity to learn so much more about one of the Three Kingdoms’ most important and misunderstood players. We would definitely love to read this one. Update: $167.40 at Barnes & Noble
Remember that you can join us for discussion in our forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou, on Facebook, and even on IRC. We look forward to hearing from you.
September 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through September 2010.
9/29/10 (James): Dynasty Warriors 7
Koei Tecmo has announced Dynasty Warriors 7 (Shin Sangoku Musou 6) with more details to come on October 26 after a Koei press event. It sounds like it might be exclusive to the PlayStation 3. We’ll share an update when we know more. For now, we invite you to discuss Dynasty Warriors 7 in our discussion forum, Scholars of Shen Zhou.
October 2010
Site-wide updates to Kongming’s Archives made through October 2010.
10/12/10 (James): New Three Kingdoms Television Series Fansub
The new Three Kingdoms television series is currently receiving some English fansub love, with many thanks to Jiang Hu Fansubs for taking up the 95 episode project. Follow the project, receive updates, and download the episodes for viewing in the Three Kingdoms Television Series Fansub Project Topic at our forum. Also, if you have something to contribute to the effort, please do reply! Projects like this require a fair degree of time and dedication.
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