Geek Trivia: The Non-English Characters Featured In The “Falling Code” Prominent In The Matrix Were?

Hebrew Half-width Kana Cyrillic Script Egyptian Glyphs geek-trivia-the-nonenglish-characters-featured-in-the--and-8220;falling-code-and-8221;-prominent-in-the-matrix-were photo 1

geek-trivia-the-nonenglish-characters-featured-in-the--and-8220;falling-code-and-8221;-prominent-in-the-matrix-were photo 2

Answer: Half-width Kana

The Matrix, the iconic 1999 American sci-fi action film, was the second film from The Wachowskis (director siblings Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski) and the one that put them on the map as a directorial powerhouse.

The film was strongly influenced by Eastern philosophies, Japanese animation and sci-fi, cyberpunk, and, of course, martial arts movies (with a very strong influence from Hong Kong action cinema). The subtle touches and nods to the Eastern influences on the movie are sprinkled liberally throughout the film and even found in the very code of the Matrix, which film viewers experience as the water-fall-like effect wherein green computer characters fall down the screen of both the terminals within the rebel ship the Nebuchadnezzar and when the main character, Neo, is able to see the Matrix simulation for what it is: a bundle of code.

At first glance the falling code might look like just a bunch of random ASCII characters (and, to be certain, there are plenty of regular letters, numbers, and characters like question marks and back slashes), but within the stream of code you’ll also find a very distinct nod to the cultures that influenced The Matrix: half-width kana.

Half-width kana are a type of katakana character (the elementary pieces of the more complex Japanese kanji they are derived from) and were an innovation from the early days of Japanese computing. Rather than display them in their true square 1:1 aspect ratio, the half-width kana are designed to fit into the monospace font system used by Latin characters and are compressed into a half-width form so that their ratio is 1:2 (just like Latin-language letters such as T, H, or L).

Although half-width kana have been phased out for the most part with the development of more appropriate fonts and more advanced computers, they made for a perfect little Easter Egg in The Matrix when designers wanted to put a subtle nod to Japanese culture into the Matrix code.

Article Geek Trivia: The Non-English Characters Featured In The “Falling Code” Prominent In The Matrix Were? compiled by Original article here

More stories

How to Optimize Google Chrome for Maximum Privacy

Google Chrome sends personal data to Google by default, but it doesn’t have to. We’ll show you what information each feature sends to Google and why, so you can get the goodness of the Chrome browser without sacrificing privacy.

How to Fix (and Adjust) Automatic Updating in Google Chrome

By default, Google Chrome automatically updates itself to make sure you’re running the safest and best optimized version of Chrome. Sometimes the auto-update process hiccups, however, and you need to manually adjust it. The process is more complicated than it should be, but don’t worry: we’re here

How to Completely Delete Your Microsoft Account

If you only pay attention to the headlines that Microsoft wants you to keep your eye on, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Windows 10 has been a universal success. So far, Redmond’s latest OS has been installed on around 72 million systems around the globe, and for the most part, has been met with

Notes for 2015-09-06

Apple applies for patent for fuel cell system that could power a MacBook “for days or even weeks”

How to Stop Auto-Playing HTML5 Videos in Your Web Browser

Click-to-play plug-ins allowed you to prevent video plug-ins from starting as soon as you load a web page, but more and more websites are moving to HTML5 video. Thankfully, it’s still possible to prevent autoplay in many browsers.