From 93d602ecc5fb6c347ae4860f72b14da3afafa811 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Gabe Venberg Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:41:54 -0600 Subject: [PATCH] First draft of clacks article. --- .../the-clacks-overhead-a-hidden-memorial.md | 102 ++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 102 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/posts/the-clacks-overhead-a-hidden-memorial.md diff --git a/content/posts/the-clacks-overhead-a-hidden-memorial.md b/content/posts/the-clacks-overhead-a-hidden-memorial.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80ec44f --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/the-clacks-overhead-a-hidden-memorial.md @@ -0,0 +1,102 @@ ++++ +title = "The Clacks Overhead, my hidden memorial" +date = 2026-02-26T15:44:14Z +draft = true ++++ + +```bash +curl -I gabevenberg.com +``` + +Dean Hansen, a dear friend of my family and of mine, died last week. + +This isn't the first death I've experienced in my life, +but it was the first unexpected one. +It hit me hard. +I ended up flying back to the US on short notice to attend his funeral. + +Other than attending his funeral and being there for his family, there... isn't a whole lot I can do. +But I have to do *something*. +So for the first time in my life, +I added the name of someone I knew personally to the Clacks Overhead. + +## Pratchett and Going Postal + +> "A man is not dead while his name is still spoken." + +Going postal, Ch 4. + +In the book *Going Postal* by Sir Terry Pratchett, there is a system of sephamores invented by Robert Dearheart across the contenent that serves as a loose analogy for the modern internet. +These are called the Clacks. +In the Clacks system, messages are preceeded by headers roughly giving instructions on how to route the message. +In particular to the story, three header letters are important: + +*G*: Send the message on +*N*: do not log the message +*U*: Turn the message around at the end of the line. + +In *Going Postal*, Dearhearts son, John, dies while working on a Clacks tower, +Dearheart sent a message prefixed by `GNU` into the network, +causing it to bounce along the network forever, memorializing his son for as long as the network stands. + +## Pratchett's death and the Clacks + +On the 12th of march, 2015, Sir Terry Pratchett passed away. +The same day, on the reddit announcement thread, +somone [posted](https://reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2ysv26/sir_terry_has_gone_for_the_long_walk_across_the/cpcmru1/) a quote from going postal explaining John Dearhearts name living on in the overhead, along with the signoff **GNU Terry Pratchett**. + +2 days later, [somone](https://old.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/2yt9j6/gnu_terry_pratchett/cpcvz46/) posted instructions on how to make apache send the `X-Clacks-Overhead` header, +and others quickly chimed in with how to do it for a myriad of web servers, email servers, email clients, browsers and web frameworks. +A [browser extention](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/gnu_terry_pratchett/) for viewing `X-Clacks-Overhead` headers +and [website](http://www.gnuterrypratchett.com/) explaining the header and how to set and view it were quickly setup. + +Breifly, a fair few websites sported the header, +though the number soon reduced, and it has been a few years since I have seen it in any websites other than my own. + +## The Clacks in my homelab + +My Clacks Overhead headers are not new. +I first added them when I learned of the death of them, +adding just the name of Terry Pratchett. +Then, I added Bram Moolenaar, the creator of VIM. +They went undisturbed for years, +staying there even as my homelab setup moved from Proxmox to NixOs. + +Since then, I added the name of Ken Bartz, +the former owner and operator of Kens FM, +a radio station that we listened to every day when we lived in Fargo. + +And now, Dean Hansen, who had been a fixture of my entire life, +a kind, generous, and joyful man, is there too. +He and his family always welcomed me, +he would drop everything to help somone who needed it. + +It is likely that if I had not written this, +the Clacks Overhead in my sites would have sat there, +transmitted as part of every call, +parsed by every computer that visits here, +and yet never been seen or inspected by a human. +I... I guess the intent is not to be seen or noticed. +It is the digital equivalent not of a gravestone, +but a name carved into the cornerstone of a building. +A message left on the blank space of a PCB or silicon die. +They are part of our infrastructure, +and yet serves no practical purpose. + +That does not make it useless, though. +These small gestures keep us human. +They are small gestures of remembrance, +little rituals to help us process our grief. +And whenever someone does notice them, +it might give them a little pause, +a little contemplation over those we have lost. + +If you want to join me, put the following lines in the root of your NGINX config, +replacing the names with those you want to be remembered in the Overhead. + +```nginx +add_header X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Terry Pratchett"; +add_header X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Bram Moolenaar"; +add_header X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Ken Bartz"; +add_header X-Clacks-Overhead "GNU Dean Hansen"; +```