como podria modificar la configuracion de mysql para que no salgan caracteres raraos

[albertrc]

yum install httpd php mysql-server php-mysql
no he tocado nada de la codificación es la que coje por defecto

base de datos tengo otras tablas a parte de esta

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS categoria (
id_categoria SMALLINT (2) UNSIGNED ZEROFILL NOT NULL,
nombre_categoria VARCHAR(25) UNIQUE NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT pk_id_categoria PRIMARY KEY (id_categoria)
)ENGINE=InnoDB CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;

INSERT INTO categoria (id_categoria,nombre_categoria) VALUES (0,'pantalla');

la pagina web de productos tengo esto
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

aun me salen caracteres raros


show variables like "c%";
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
| character_set_client | latin1 |
| character_set_connection | latin1 |
| character_set_database | latin1 |
| character_set_filesystem | binary |
| character_set_results | latin1 |
| character_set_server | latin1 |
| character_set_system | utf8 |
| character_sets_dir | /usr/share/mysql/charsets/ |
| collation_connection | latin1_swedish_ci |
| collation_database | latin1_swedish_ci |
| collation_server | latin1_swedish_ci |
| completion_type | 0 |
| concurrent_insert | 1 |
| connect_timeout | 10 |
+--------------------------+----------------------------+
14 rows in set (0.00 sec)