For those who feel the probabilities matter, but find yarrow stalks are unavailable or inconvenient, there is a method that still uses three coins but has the same probability distribution as the stalks. You can find it in "The I Ching Handbook: Decision Making With and Without Divination" by Mondo Sector pp.45-48 (which were visible on Google Books when I had a look).
Re: Writing, I-Ching