C#

WidmarkRob wrote:

it would be nice to know how to convert a literal character to Unicode programmatically.

char strCharacter = 'Q';              // a single character
Console.WriteLine(strCharacter);      // display it
int value = (int)strCharacter;        // get its numeric value
Console.WriteLine(value);             // print the value in decimal
Console.WriteLine("{0:X}", value);    // and in hexadecimal

WidmarkRob wrote:

what does that exactly mean?
"\u0041"

/// <summary>
/// Calculate the starting time for Unix epoch (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time).
/// </summary>
public const long unixEpoch = new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc).Ticks;

static DateTime toDateTimeUtc(
    long unixTime)
{
    return new DateTime(unixTime + unixEpoch, DateTimeKind.Utc);
}

static long toUnixTime(
    DateTime dateTime)
{
    return dateTime.ToUniversalTime().Ticks - unixEpoch;
}