robert hahn

a darn good web developer

April 02, 2007

Friday, April 13th: International Unicode Screen Name Day

Last October, I was chatting it up with this guy and we came up with the idea of having a special day a few times a year where you change your screen name on your IM client so that you spell it out with Unicode characters, much like this:

✪✪ṚøƂЗЯڃ ḧἄħᾑ✪✪

The next Unicode Screen Name day is this Friday, April 13th, and we’re celebrating Unicode goodness every Friday the 13th!. It’s about time someone took back that unlucky day and put it to some good, fun, use!

Quoth Justin:

If the International Talk Like a Pirate Day folks can pull this off, so can we. It’s easy! If you’re a windows [sic] user, just open up your Character Map utility and start copying characters from anything listed under the “Unicode” character set. If you’re on Linux or Mac, you’re likely enough of a smart-ass to just figure it out yourself. For bonus points, google around a while and find funkier symbol sets like Thai and Cherokee. (seriously: those two are amazing! –Ed.)

Remember – it’s fun AND your moral obligation as a human being!

Truer words were never spoken!

For the Mac people who don’t fit under Justin’s rather hasty generalization, you can pull up your character map in a few steps:

Go to System Preferences, click on International, then click on Input Menu.
Make sure the Character Palette is clicked ‘On’. You should see either a flag or the character palette icon in your menu bar towards the right.
Open up your favorite text editor, click the aforementioned icon, then click “Show Character Palette”

If you’re on Linux you’re likely enough of a smart-ass to just figure it out yourself. ☺

Or you can go to this Unicode generator instead!

It’s only the 2nd of April, so that’s, like, 11 days from now. Get the word out, and get ready to sport YOUR Unicode screen name!