Comments on: ?Backwards Day!

?Backwards Day!

loquacious — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:56:15 -0800

?Let today - the eleventh day of the twelfth month - henceforth and forever be Backwards Day! ?Fun with Unicode
Via the wonderfully nerdy 74 68 65 20 64 69 67 69 74 61 6C 20 6D 65.??‭

By: Buzz

Buzz — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:00:38 -0800

wow

By: randomination

randomination — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:05:04 -0800

FTW

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:07:06 -0800

Neato. Shame it gets stripped out in comments.

By: routergirl

routergirl — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:09:22 -0800

‮‮So funny - I just saw this a few minutes ago and wondered where I could go to test it out.

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:10:55 -0800

huh. did not know that

By: greycap

greycap — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:12:02 -0800

[caffeine-addled brain explodes]

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:12:40 -0800

‮‮ Well, this is rather fun. Woot!

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:15:16 -0800

FYI: I don't think it works in IE. It might in 7. If you use Firefox and note that your text cursor has a dangly bit, worry not. It's just Firefox indicating that reverse mode is in use on this page. It'll go away when you navigate to a non reversed page. It doesn't seem to pass through tags or RSS headers properly, but on preview it looks like routergirl managed it in comments. It should be able to be passed and there are many international usability cases and arguments that support that it should. It may be edgecase here, though.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:15:25 -0800

‮jack_mo: You must be using IE7. Ah, well, serves you right for going the MS route. Those of us in Firefox don't get stripped in comments...

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:15:39 -0800

8238;Confused.

By: OverlappingElvis

OverlappingElvis — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:15:53 -0800

Irritating.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:16:11 -0800

8238;i have a fish. in my pants.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:18:22 -0800

8238;i have a fish. in my pants. yo.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:18:44 -0800

alas, i have no mirror character in my pants.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:20:28 -0800

8238;fish. pants.

By: bob sarabia

bob sarabia — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:20:43 -0800

I'd try to write something backwards but I'd just fuck it up and look stupid. I forgot how many different hoops you have to jump through to get unicode characters to work on here.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:20:52 -0800

.ti kcuf

By: scodger

scodger — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:22:56 -0800

‮‮That is pretty cool. I like that it hits the bottom posted by as well.

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:25:43 -0800

.senel wef a retfa ysae ylgnisirpruS .sretcarahc eht esrever dluoc ew if nuf erom eb dluow tI

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:27:40 -0800

koeselitz: Nah, I'm using Firefox 2.0...

By: jam_pony

jam_pony — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:27:40 -0800

d: tih a sekat gnillepS .noos oot ekops I

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:27:49 -0800

bob sarabia: "I'd try to write something backwards but I'd just fuck it up and look stupid. I forgot how many different hoops you have to jump through to get unicode characters to work on here." Ah, come on, sourpuss. All it takes is a copy and a paste.

By: bbuda

bbuda — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:29:23 -0800

‮‮A man, a plan, a canal, Panama Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog

By: hydrophonic

hydrophonic — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:33:49 -0800

‮‮ God? Hey, meta ate my... eh.... dog.

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:34:51 -0800

‮‮Hello World. Wow that is really wierd. ABLE WAS I ERE I SAW ELBA. HAH

By: absalom

absalom — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:38:37 -0800

ow.

By: randomination

randomination — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:39:43 -0800

‮‮ .sdrawkcab lla er'yeht won dna egap stnemmoc ym ot tnew I

By: chairface

chairface — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:40:54 -0800

8238; Don't forget the code is "8238;".

By: chairface

chairface — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:41:20 -0800

Dang. Unicode shows up in preview but gets stripped in posting.

By: defenestration

defenestration — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:42:47 -0800

8238;Haha, this is great. May Backwards Day live forever!

By: defenestration

defenestration — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:45:21 -0800

Well, that's one way to make yourself look silly.

By: spaceman_spiff

spaceman_spiff — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:45:41 -0800

8238; So, why December 11th? Or just 'c uz?

By: spaceman_spiff

spaceman_spiff — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:47:05 -0800

‮‮so why does it work if its pasted and not if you just type in the entity? After all, it seems to work in the preview box.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:47:05 -0800

Don't feel silly. I can't seem to get it to work in comments, either. I'm not sure what folks are doing to get it to work.

By: reventlov

reventlov — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:47:30 -0800

‮.tuoba si ssuf eht tahw ees t'nod I ,yllaeR

By: reventlov

reventlov — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:49:34 -0800

(Blast you, randomination!)

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:50:31 -0800

Right on.

By: randomination

randomination — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:59:56 -0800

‮‮LOL

By: modofo

modofo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:03:15 -0800

8238;wow

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:08:50 -0800

‮‮So how does this work?

By: utsutsu

utsutsu — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:12:03 -0800

Everyone who has posted in this thread has a backwards comments page now.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:12:07 -0800

‮‮this is pretty cool but sort of disconserting‮‮

By: Mwongozi

Mwongozi — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:13:51 -0800

Whatever you're doing doesn't appear to work in Safari.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:13:52 -0800

Everyone who has posted in this thread has a backwards comments page now. Not me

By: thecaddy

thecaddy — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:14:28 -0800

Oddly enough it works in the title bar (in Safari) but nowhere else.

By: utsutsu

utsutsu — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:14:54 -0800

Sure you do. That's how it looks to me anyways.

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:15:47 -0800

OTTO...NOON

By: knave

knave — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:20:10 -0800

8238;This is the best thing I've ever seen! This post should win the December contest.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:27:06 -0800

It's totally bizarre to me how the mirror character gets passed through some areas of the site and not others. When I compiled and previewed it, it seemed to be escaping properly as it didn't spill outside the post, and it didn't break the front page. But I had no idea that it would pass through and show up in favorites and other places on MeFi. I'm tempted to start a MetaTalk thread to help ferret out the numerous places it's being improperly passed. Waxing metaphysical, it's interesting how complex and dynamic systems can be broadly effected by very small things. In this case, one character - supported by well intentioned behavior across multiple domains of interacting technology. (Unicode + modern browsers + international language support + database-driven website and engine.)

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:28:45 -0800

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:30:49 -0800

loquacious writes "I'm tempted to start a MetaTalk thread to help ferret out the numerous places it's being improperly passed." Or just strip it period depending on whether just posting in a backwards contain thread is enough to mess up your comments page. I'm checking right after this comment.

By: octothorpe

octothorpe — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:32:04 -0800

Sure you do. That's how it looks to me anyways. Oh yea, you're right. Just the first page though.

By: deborah

deborah — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:39:10 -0800

‮Whoa.

By: Phantomx

Phantomx — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:41:48 -0800

truly fun and headache inducing at the same time!

By: MikeKD

MikeKD — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:44:04 -0800

I believe the entity doesn't work because Matt is stripping all numeric HTML entities (due to securityish issues).

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:51:15 -0800

This should be better.8238;

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:51:25 -0800

haha

By: MikeKD

MikeKD — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:51:29 -0800

Found the MeTa thread.

By: Spike

Spike — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:58:10 -0800

‮‮Is it weird that I can read all of this almost as easily as left-to-right text?

By: freebird

freebird — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:04:08 -0800

(This should include the Right To Left encoding character. For details on what's goin on here, rather than the Mirror Character magic, check the specs - it's pretty neat stuff, with real application: http://unicode.org/reports/tr9/

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:11:05 -0800

This is exactly how AIDS got started.

By: Spike

Spike — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:14:05 -0800

‮‮I stole quonsar's fish.

By: phylum sinter

phylum sinter — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:23:27 -0800

(‮‮( lol

By: sdrawkcab

sdrawkcab — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:26:00 -0800

.daerht siht evol gnikcuf I

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:29:33 -0800

You can also use the bdo tag to make things backwards. It is probably the best tag ever.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:38:14 -0800

‮‮So, what are the people who can do it doing to make it work?

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:40:38 -0800

‮‮Huh?!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:42:56 -0800

8238; that is seriously badass

By: Colloquial Collision

Colloquial Collision — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:48:46 -0800

‮‮It works in the form field on Firefox, but not on Safari or Webkit. ‮ Test‮‮‮‮Though Safari and Webkit will still display the mirror character and the text affected by the mirror character correctly.

By: Colloquial Collision

Colloquial Collision — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:50:39 -0800

‮The (tseT) in my previous comment is an error made on preview...Ah, what the hell, no one will read it anyway.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 17:53:56 -0800

At first I thought loquacious actually registered a new user just to make this post.

By: kalessin

kalessin — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:07:44 -0800

‮‮Very Interesting.

By: jason's_planet

jason's_planet — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:15:54 -0800

!‮‮This is some wacky shit

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:27:28 -0800

8238;Neato!

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:27:42 -0800

Doh!

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:31:34 -0800

‮‮There we go.

By: cerebus19

cerebus19 — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:32:17 -0800

‮‮A man a plan a canal Panama.

By: sdrawkcab

sdrawkcab — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:34:42 -0800

I just want to add that if you read these closely, this is one of the most profane threads of all time. Also, bask in the one-time awesomeness of my MeFi name... tomorrow, I'm just a fist-smash mash of letters again...

By: quonsar

quonsar — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:03:11 -0800

‮‮(i have a fish. in my pants.)

By: brundlefly

brundlefly — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:17:42 -0800

‮Ha! This is awesome!

By: danb

danb — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:22:46 -0800

What the cockass is going on in here?

By: MonkeySaltedNuts

MonkeySaltedNuts — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:38:18 -0800

(‮‮(ecin yrev

By: Effigy2000

Effigy2000 — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:46:35 -0800

?ereh ni no gniog si ssakcoc eht tahw: reltifateM.

By: bumpkin

bumpkin — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:48:42 -0800

‮‮(whoa. that's some strong medicine

By: Pink Fuzzy Bunny

Pink Fuzzy Bunny — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:50:06 -0800

‮‮‮‮otto abba otto

By: hojoki

hojoki — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:58:55 -0800

(‮‮(I don't know how to get this thing to work so screw you guys, I'm going home!

By: eriko

eriko — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:14:25 -0800

What, no comments from eiwohtam?

By: bumpkin

bumpkin — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:18:21 -0800

How do I make it stop?

By: Opposite George

Opposite George — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:29:11 -0800

I think my browser is broken. I can get it to work on the following words: ‮‮ METATARSAL OSTINATO OVALTINE :no ton tub WOW MA'AM TOT ".MYTH" ,egami rorrim sti syalpsid ylegnarts "HTYM" dnA Somebody please hope me.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:44:44 -0800

What the hell is going on here?

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 20:53:16 -0800

‮‮Hell if I know!

By: Anything

Anything — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:21:02 -0800

‮‮¡Wow!

By: jiawen

jiawen — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:38:42 -0800

(‮‮( Weird, now my birthday will be known as "Backwards Day." Oh, and I heard a cool palindrome yesterday, this one for people who work in the food service industry: Stressed? No tips? Spit on desserts!

By: champthom

champthom — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:39:10 -0800

.zihW zeehC stae nataS

By: Vindaloo

Vindaloo — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 21:49:18 -0800

.su ot gnoleb era esab ruoy llA

By: Joeforking

Joeforking — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:08:36 -0800

Done with bdo tag

By: Cironian

Cironian — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:36:53 -0800

‮‮You should have used reversed tags too.

By: Chunder

Chunder — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:00:58 -0800

There's a Flickr user who's used unicode in their user name - it confuses the crap out of me, and by the looks of it, the Flickr layout engine (the reversal carries on for other words in addition to the user name). Pretty cool once you get your head around it... but I can't imagine that it will ever catch on.

By: Opposite George

Opposite George — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:48:46 -0800

‮‮ Happy birthday, jiawen! And did you notice your username backwards looks like a homonym for "New age?"

By: rogerh

rogerh — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:55:49 -0800

There are some nice instructions here For more flexible use.

By: Skorgu

Skorgu — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:58:17 -0800

(‮‮(This is cool.

By: mrzer0

mrzer0 — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 07:04:55 -0800

"This is bloody disgusting! My brain hurts! :laer roF !thgiarts gninrut ti fo sepoh ni sdrawkcab ecnetnes siht epyt ot gniog yllaretil m'I woN 0rezrm rof hcraes dna F+lrtC tih dna tihs siht no ecruos egap eht weiV Also, I'm totally LAME. Confused??

By: ddf

ddf — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:00:51 -0800

Im in yer site reversin yer txt.

By: jimmy

jimmy — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:28:48 -0800

‮this is MADNESS

By: meehawl

meehawl — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:01:05 -0800

Hebrew confuses the operation: ‮‮ פרשנו רעבתן שבדבש נתבער ונשרף تُوْت خَوْخ لَيْل Νίψον ανομήματα μη μόναν όψιν 我愛媽媽，媽媽愛我上海自來水來自海上枯眼望遙山隔水，往來曾見幾心知。壺空怕酌一杯酒，筆下難成和韻詩。迷路阻人離別久，訊音無雁寄回遲。孤燈夜守長寥寂，夫憶妻兮父憶兒 tattarrattat saippuakuppinippukauppias Koortsmeetsysteemstrook Kuulilennutunneliluuk

By: tehloki

tehloki — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:21:21 -0800

I was going to refrain from posting in this thread because it gives you a backwards comments page. Then I realized I could just post another comment in a different thread with the closing reverse tag, and all would be well. ‮‮...shit.it's a unicode character, not a tag. WHAT DO I DO NOW?!?!

By: meehawl

meehawl — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 10:59:42 -0800

the closing reverse tag Does that really work? ‮‮

By: meehawl

meehawl — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 14:08:15 -0800

12345 8238; 12345 8237; 12345

By: meehawl

meehawl — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 14:29:06 -0800

12345 ‮‮ 12345 ‭ 12345 Ah, it's all become çłεმл.‮‮

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:15:15 -0800

8238; evil did I dwel ,llewd I did live

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:18:31 -0800

I guess posting the unicode is the escape character on here?

By: edverb

edverb — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 21:18:58 -0800

Or not.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:10:14 -0800

For the historical record, the original post here was rendered entirely backward - including the "posted by" description tag - as some of the in-thread comments are backwards. I had Matt (admin, site owner, mathowie, etc) try adding the closing tag to get the post to stop reversing stuff in people's my comments and in other on-site indexes but it broke the original reversed formatting. Attempts to recreate it via manually entering the unicode as an HTML entity or as a direct paste have failed to bring it back. Ah, well. I'd like to thank Matt for being a good sport about it, since it effectively broke much of the site for 24 hours or more.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:34:18 -0800

it seems like Metafilter breaks fairly easily... I nearly broke the frontpage with the tag, but jessamyn convinced matt to fix it before anything horrible could happen.

By: tehloki

tehloki — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 16:35:24 -0800

although, it looks like if you type < plaintext> in the comment window, it breaks the preview but is apparently stripped out of the actual posted comment, like above.