X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

Sir Terry Pratchett has had a knack of foreseeing the future in his novels. Often writing about something only for it to happen very soon afterwards.

Even after his death his writings has caused ripples into the future. In his novel Going Postal he talked about code in the Clacks echoing backwards and forwards along the wires.
The Clacks is the Roundworld equivalent of the Internet.

A post on Reddit initially drew on the idea as a way to keep the writer’s name permanently in flotation on the internet. An echo chamber of "GNU Terry Pratchett" posts followed.
Soon users started posting actual code to embed on websites. It doesn’t do much -- simply causes the phrase GNU Terry Pratchett to appear in headers or in the background data of a page.
A poetic way to keep Pratchett alive.

 

Website Coding

If you wish to add the code to your own web site this site has good instructions for many platforms and scripts.

 

Seeing the messages

Add-ons are available for the browsers which will indicate that the GNU code is present.

Chrome - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clacks-overhead-gnu-terry/lnndfmobdoobjfcalkmfojmanbeoegab

Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gnu_terry_pratchett/

 

Going Postal

There was GNU, and I know that’s a code, and then just a name. It was John Dearheart.

His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying

‘A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken?’

Pratchett, Terry. Going Postal extract