python codec can't encode character u'\u25c4'

Solution http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5141559/unicodeencodeerror-ascii-codec-cant-encode-character-u-xef-in-position-0

he actual best answer for this problem depends on your environment, specifically what encoding your terminal expects.

The quickest one-line solution is to encode everything you print to ASCII, which your terminal is almost certain to accept, while discarding characters that you cannot print:

print ch #fails
print ch.encode('ascii', 'ignore')

The better solution is to change your terminal's encoding to utf-8, and encode everything as utf-8 before printing. You should get in the habit of thinking about your unicode encoding EVERY time you print or read a string.