Fixing The Fixes

Riddles within conundrums, Batman.

This site might be all new and improved behind the scenes, but from where you’re sitting I bet it looks pretty much the same. Well, aside from the stupid question mark diamonds all over my archived posts. If you’re wondering what those question mark diamonds are, well… so was I. But after a teeny-tiny bit of research I’m no longer wondering.

Instead, I’m frustrated and angry.

You see, it turns out that when the backend of this site was updated to my new and improved blogging software the text encoding of my posts changed from ISO-8859-1 to utf-8 which caused some individual character substitutions due to inherent differences between the two disparate encoded character sets.

What you talking about, GeekMan?

Basically, due to the differences in how my new versus old blogging software, any of my old posts that contained quotation marks, apostrophes, ellipses, or other special characters, will now display the question-mark-diamond instead of the quotation marks, apostrophes, ellipses, or other special characters.

Sucks to be me, huh?

The easy way to fix this, of course, is to simply change the way my new software handles encoding my posts so that it matches the way my old software did it. In effect, change it from utf-8 to the old ISO-8859-1. But I like to be difficult, so I say nay to the simple, easy and effective way! Instead, I think I’ll try to find a way to change all my old posts from ISO-8859-1 to utf-8! And if I fail, well then, I’ll just cross that bridge when it floods.

BTW, anyone know where I can get a cheap inflatable boat?