{"id":1168,"date":"2015-03-29T08:21:49","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T22:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2015-03-29T08:21:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-28T22:21:49","slug":"gnu-terry-pratchett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/2015\/03\/gnu-terry-pratchett\/","title":{"rendered":"GNU Terry Pratchett"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The news is a little old now, but I wanted to acknowledge Terry Pratchett&#8217;s passing.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\"><p>Terry took Death\u2019s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/terryandrob\/status\/576036726046646272\">March 12, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>He meant a lot to many of us, and his was the first celebrity death that affected me emotionally. His brand of fiction\u00a0shaped the way I think about the <a title=\"Happy Hogswatch\" href=\"http:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/2006\/12\/happy-hogswatch\/\">importance of fantasy to our humanity<\/a>. That phrase \u2013 &#8220;where the falling angel meets the rising ape&#8221; \u2013 \u00a0is crucial to the way I see myself, and humanity. If we have the humility to see ourselves as closer to earth than heaven, then we are moving upwards to greatness. That&#8217;s a positive message, and gives me hope for myself.<\/p>\n<p>As my own little remembrance, I am offering a little <a href=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/daedalist\/e2a77cf37764f6c477a7\">code snippet<\/a>. Webmasters can all contribute to an ongoing commemoration by setting the following HTTP header: <code>X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett<\/code>.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I looked around and couldn&#8217;t find that anybody had written the code for <a href=\"https:\/\/webapp-improved.appspot.com\/\">webapp2<\/a>, which is the common web server framework for App Engine for Python. You can bet that it will be going in my soon-to-be-announced next project. Here&#8217;s the <a href=\"http:\/\/clacksoverhead.discworld.us\/\">RFC<\/a>, and there are\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gnuterrypratchett.com\/\">configs for other platforms<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You know they&#8217;ll never really die while the Trunk is alive[&#8230;]<br \/>\nIt lives while the code is shifted, and they live with it, always Going Home.<br \/>\n&#8211; Moist von Lipwig, Going Postal, Chapter 13<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ll close with a few things I wrote on Facebook, the day of his passing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;And, hand in hand with the anger, like an angel and a demon walking into the sunset, there is love: for human beings, in all our fallibility; for treasured objects; for stories; and ultimately and in all things, love for human dignity.&#8221; \u2013 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2014\/sep\/24\/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman\">Neil Gaiman: \u2018Terry Pratchett isn\u2019t jolly. He\u2019s angry\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is the most important lesson I learned; that we can be angry with the world, but we should use it to drive wit, and that we should keep our love for all things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Farewell to a man who very strongly influenced my view of the world, literature, and humanity. I learned the difference between parody and satire, puns and wit&#8230; and that I prefer the latter in each case. He taught me that you can question and laugh at something, and still believe in it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Finally, I think it&#8217;s fitting that I echo the <a href=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/lordmortis\/d817e44b075106ae3fb6\">friend who introduced me to Terry Pratchett<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;d like to thank him for his works, and the joy and friendships he brought to me via discussions about those works.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The news is a little old now, but I wanted to acknowledge Terry Pratchett&#8217;s passing. Terry took Death\u2019s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night. \u2014 Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015 He meant a lot to many of us, and his was the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,15],"tags":[310,601,602,598,603],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/terry.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p149Qe-iQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1176,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions\/1176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daedalist.com\/conjunction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}