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While I’ve tangentially heard of the X-Clacks-Overhead header, I was recently reminded of it on Hacker News. In short, it’s a HTTP header included in web server responses to keep alive the memory of someone who has passed, in reference to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

A man is not dead while his name is still spoken.

This is very easy to add with Cloudflare Pages by just including a _headers text file:

1/*
2    X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU <name here>

I’ve added this header to this blog, though not with Terry Pratchett’s name. One of my high school friends was killed in a motor vehicle accident while serving in the US military in Germany. We were in band together for many years as well as Spanish class. She was incredibly kind, smart, and a talented flute player. I remember reading of her passing on LinkedIn and it hit me like me a wall of bricks, a bright light having been snuffed out too soon.

Rest in peace Lt. Hodsden.