quoting Rhetorica:
In theory it's a matter of setting the right country for the collation order, but I haven't figured out what it is yet or how to make it actually obey.
utf8_bin or
utf8_general? The former collates by character codepoint, AFAIK, so it should be unambiguous.
Also, after editing this post, I was forwarded to *
http://atlas.runi.ca/?id=87&posts_pagenum=0#428, however, it should be
http://atlas.runi.ca/?id=87&posts_pagenum=60#428, i.e.
$post_pagenum = int($posts_in_thread/$posts_per_page)*$posts_per_page.