MySQL connection character set problems

I'm using velosurf with MySQL on a Mac, without any encoding problems, but when I switch to a Linux machine, the values I get from velosurf are not encoded correctly.

I found out it might be a problem with the default connection character set. On the Mac I got:

mysql> show variables like "collation_%";
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value             |
+----------------------+-------------------+
| collation_connection | utf8_general_ci   |
| collation_database   | utf8_general_ci   |
| collation_server     | latin1_swedish_ci |
+----------------------+-------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> show variables like "character_set_%";
+--------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                                                  |
+--------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
| character_set_client     | utf8                                                   |
| character_set_connection | utf8                                                   |
| character_set_database   | utf8                                                   |
| character_set_filesystem | binary                                                 |
| character_set_results    | utf8                                                   |
| character_set_server     | latin1                                                 |
| character_set_system     | utf8                                                   |
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/local/mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86_64/share/charsets/ |
+--------------------------+--------------------------------------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

While on the linux machine, I have:

mysql> show variables like 'collation_%';
+----------------------+-------------------+
| Variable_name        | Value             |
+----------------------+-------------------+
| collation_connection | latin1_swedish_ci | 
| collation_database   | utf8_general_ci   | 
| collation_server     | latin1_swedish_ci | 
+----------------------+-------------------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> show variables like 'character_set_%';
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name            | Value                      |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client     | latin1                     | 
| character_set_connection | latin1                     | 
| character_set_database   | utf8                       | 
| character_set_filesystem | binary                     | 
| character_set_results    | latin1                     | 
| character_set_server     | latin1                     | 
| character_set_system     | utf8                       | 
| character_sets_dir       | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ | 
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

The database collation and character set are set when I create the database. My problem is that I can't change the default character sets for the client/connection/results.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any way to set the charset with velosurf when the connection is initiated.

Any suggestions?