The strange characters (usually the actual representation is ) are called Byte Order Mark (aka "BOM"). There are many threads on this board that contain a more detailed explanation how they creep in, how to get rid of them and what editors to use. I suggest using the board's search feature and use "Byte-Order-Mark" or similar as keyword.
You (queequeg) have changed the default encoding from utf-8 to iso8859-1: why on earth did you do that? Not a bright move - I suggested undoing that (you can not simply switch back to utf-8 (unicode) in coppermine's config though, as the textual content in your database that has been added from the moment you switched to iso8859-1 is in that encoding as well. Any non-lation characters will look distorted if you switch. If you have used special chars at all, you can savely switch. If you are using special chars (like German Umlauts ä ö ü Ä Ö Ü) or accented chars (à á è é È É etc.), they will break and need to be converted. If your last name is actually "Stucki" (as your URL suggests), your ancestors probably came from Switzerland or Germany, so maybe there are Umlauts on your site (haven't checked in detail, nor could I check fully).
Both issues (Byte Order Mark and improper use of encoding) are not related to this mod and should therefor not be discussed in detail on this announcement thread. If you have questions on those two subjects, please start a separate thread on the "regular" support board with a reference to this thread.