How do you program foreign (namely the Turkish ones - ı, ş, and ğ) characters into a laptop keyboard....? [more inside]
posted by ryanbryan on Oct 12, 2009 - 16 answers

What are some or how can one best find science-fiction novels that are good by general literary standards? [more inside]
posted by colinmarshall on Aug 18, 2009 - 74 answers

What animated movies star awesome female characters? Bonus points if it's appropriate for a younger children (a 3 year old and a 6 year old), extra special bonus points if it's not utterly irritating to adults. Scary bits may need a certain amount of skipping over.
posted by Artw on Jun 15, 2009 - 55 answers

I work in a public library and I have a library user that comes in and she wants to be able to type an email to her family in Greek using the regular keys on our keyboard and then transliterate the text into Greek characters. Any ideas about an application web or otherwise that will do that for her?
posted by zzazazz on May 22, 2009 - 16 answers

How chinese characters are formed? [more inside]
posted by red_rika on Apr 29, 2009 - 14 answers

I'm directing a farce with a bunch of high-schoolers, and would love to give them some movie suggestions to look at for characters. They are pretty classic comic archetypes, but my brain is reeling a bit trying to think of all of them, and though I'd put it out to the hive mind. The only catch is that I can't really suggest any R-Rated movies, because most of them aren't old enough to watch them... [more inside]
posted by rawredmeat on Mar 13, 2009 - 22 answers

I'm writing a novel. Help me research characters! [more inside]
posted by Lord Fancy Pants on Mar 7, 2009 - 4 answers

I am developing a English/Vietnamese site but some characters in Vietnamese don't go over well, especially on Windows. For other sites there is no problem: what do I need to change to make it work? [more inside]
posted by Timen on Mar 6, 2009 - 12 answers

What are some good ethnic-neutral last names? [more inside]
posted by razdrez on Jan 19, 2009 - 45 answers

I'm looking for some relatively modern fiction that is mostly about how people think, or see the world, or become who they are. [more inside]
posted by salvia on Jan 12, 2009 - 25 answers

Fiction or film recommendations with characters that undergo serious catharsis [more inside]
posted by brandnew on Jan 2, 2009 - 28 answers

Whenever I try to type ä's, ö's and å's (or any character that requires Alt + x), my tabs in Firefox go crazy, and no character results. I presume this is because Alt + x is a preprogrammed shortcut in Firefox to switch tabs. Any idea how I can turn this off?
posted by ryanbryan on Jan 2, 2009 - 6 answers

Character Study. The mean little weakling mastermind and the big tough goon who does the dirty work. I need film reference or specific TV episodes. [more inside]
posted by ElmerFishpaw on Nov 3, 2008 - 29 answers

Short Story Suggestions: I need a short story for a specific lesson. Criteria inside. [more inside]
posted by gursky on Oct 25, 2008 - 10 answers

I'm looking for theoretical / psychological explanations of how and why people identify themselves with characters in books or with pop cultural figures. [more inside]
posted by LucretiusJones on Oct 8, 2008 - 5 answers

Please recommend some interesting media (specifically articles, books, movies, documentaries, mini-series) about the people working for FEMA. [more inside]
posted by np312 on Sep 24, 2008 - 1 answer

Complicated Excel formula question involving text-search and Japanese characters. Can you help? [more inside]
posted by Vorteks on May 27, 2008 - 2 answers

Who created those 8-bit pixel art graphics of many famous characters? [more inside]
posted by stevil on Apr 3, 2008 - 3 answers

What fictional characters or real people would you say are defined by their sleepiness or tiredness? [more inside]
posted by kepano on Mar 4, 2008 - 70 answers

Can you recommend books, movies, or essays with good portrayals of friendships or people's social circles? [more inside]
posted by salvia on Jan 27, 2008 - 30 answers

What non-letter character sets would translate well into tattoos? [more inside]
posted by Glitter Ninja on Nov 30, 2007 - 31 answers

Adobe Acrobat question: Is it possible to show nonprinting (invisible, hidden) characters? How? [more inside]
posted by fiercecupcake on Oct 17, 2007 - 3 answers

What are some movies that feature a character from another movie, played by the same actor -- but the movies do not have sequel or spinoff relationships, and are not written or directed by the same person? Does this ever happen? [more inside]
posted by luser on Aug 7, 2007 - 46 answers

In order to assist with a business plan, I'm looking for examples (within the last 5 years) of character-driven memes or products that "came out of nowhere" and rapidly built wealth for their creators (and/or licensors). [more inside]
posted by fishfucker on Jun 27, 2007 - 23 answers

Please help me find some good small town/quirky character movies [more inside]
posted by dogmom on May 20, 2007 - 81 answers

I love movies with large ensemble casts, especially ones with funny and/or surprising cameos. [more inside]
posted by kidsleepy on May 15, 2007 - 38 answers

I've invented a complete imaginary world. Am I insane? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Mar 30, 2007 - 83 answers

Roger Zelazny's Roadmarks... [more inside]
posted by edgeways on Aug 8, 2006 - 12 answers

Does any language have a one-character expression for "today"? [more inside]
posted by andifsohow on Aug 4, 2006 - 23 answers

How does a web browser decide whether it can display a numerical character reference? [more inside]
posted by Nothing on May 31, 2006 - 5 answers

Help me figure out these weird Spanish, Danish, and Portugese characters in an address given to me via the Internet. I don't think what I see is what is meant. [more inside]
posted by chef_boyardee on May 30, 2006 - 9 answers

Why does Windows think I want to permanently type in "accent character" mode? [more inside]
posted by Jimbob on May 17, 2006 - 7 answers

I'm presently working on a set of Pimsleur Mandarin CDs, and the Pimsleur system is spoken-only. I'm dying to write down what I've learned (I'm addicted to practicing with note cards, I don't feel that I'm really working hard on a language until I have a thick deck of dirty, dog-eared note cards.) But I'm nowhere near ready to write stuff down in Chinese characters. Is there a standard or widely used way of transliterating Mandarin into Latin characters, and somehow also indicating the tonal content?
posted by jfuller on May 9, 2006 - 9 answers

I've got a database of names, many of which have international characters (e-acute, c-cedilla, o-umlaut, etc). I want the search routine to be clever enough that if I search for "Celik" it'll find c-cedilla-elik, even though "c" and "c-cedilla" are entirely different. [more inside]
posted by Pericles on Apr 13, 2006 - 16 answers

I've given up. I can't seem to find this anywhere. Perhaps MeFi can do it? I'm looking for an English-Chinese dictionary for my Nokia N70 phone that has pinyin pronouncations listed for the characters. I want characters, too, but the pinyin is pretty key if I'm actually going to be able to say anything. I'm running Symbian 60 OS. You would think this shouldn't be that hard to find but everything I find either doesn't have pinyin or is for the wrong Symbian OS.
posted by riverjack on Mar 19, 2006 - 0 answers

Is this website really Russian? [more inside]
posted by shannymara on Feb 14, 2006 - 9 answers

What does the Japanese writing on these two packages mean (in English)?
posted by onshi on Feb 7, 2006 - 13 answers

Anybody have a good list of Quark characters with diacritical marks that would include such specialized items as an o with a line over it and an r with a hacek (as in "Dvořak")?
posted by languagehat on Feb 25, 2005 - 4 answers

I'm looking for fresh examples from literature (short stories, poems, or parts of larger works) that involve characters who stick to a set of good principles and are admired, even though sticking to the principles may involve some sacrifice for everyone else. A good example would be Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". I'm also looking for examples in which people stubbornly stand by good principles when they are clearly getting in the way of some greater good. [MI] [more inside]
posted by ontic on Jan 17, 2005 - 28 answers

The Geico Caveman TV commercial.
Is it racist or just brilliant?
posted by Fupped Duck on Jan 8, 2005 - 24 answers

Need help making an analogy. Can anyone think of pessimistic, self-berating characters from books, TV, etc. - especially ones that know they aren't that great or brilliant to begin with but announce it to the world anyway (unlike, say, Marvin the Paranoid Android)?
posted by casarkos on Jan 1, 2005 - 25 answers

Why does Firefox insist on loading pages with Unicode character coding, when I prefer Western character coding? The former turns high-ASCII characters like § into question marks; the latter displays these normally. Does this happen to anyone else, and can I fix it?
posted by PrinceValium on Jun 27, 2004 - 14 answers

According to the IMDb there are only 231 films (or tv series) in which the title is spoken by a character therein. That number seems rather low -- I thought there would be a lot more than that, especially considering that society that claps and walks out whenever this happens. But other than 'The Truman Show' I can't think of any more. Any other ideas?
posted by feelinglistless on May 2, 2004 - 41 answers

[MT question] My blog is configured to publish in Unicode. I frequently use Chinese characters in my posts. The posts are published just fine, but when I go to edit a post, what comes up aren't the Chinese characters, but rather the Unicode coding for the characters. Is there some way to configure MT so that when I edit an older post, I can see the characters instead of the Unicode coding?

I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens with Japanese/Korean/Arabic/Summerian.
posted by alidarbac on Apr 11, 2004 - 3 answers

Do any of you -- as adults -- have imaginary friends? [more inside.] [more inside]
posted by grumblebee on Dec 15, 2003 - 20 answers