MySQL and Unicode (or the lack thereof)

AARGH! I have just spent an entire day reading about how to get my website to go from "Trang chủ" to "Trang chủ". Did you know that the version of MySQL that I'm using is non-Unicode compliant? I did, I discovered it last week. I thought that this wouldn't cause too much grief, a random tag here and there not changing or something. I didn't realise that it meant that I could not translate ANY frigging headings/labels/site names/etc. I've got NCRs all over the place (no, I don't know what NCR means, something character something probably, I just know that the ủ thing is an NCR, &# defines it's an NCR, the number is the actual unicode code for the letter and the ; closes it off).

Anyways, what I have to do is convert the entire database into a new format (a unicode compliant one) which sounds like it'll be a nightmare. I read quite a number of articles on how to do it and usually got stuck after it said "step one". Ah well.

On a lighter note, all of you who are using RSS feeds will have just been re-sent ALL of my blog posts. Why this is I do not know, but har har.

Happy Festivus all! It's the festival for the rest of us!