This is just a strange little story. I’ve wanted to add some time markers to the spectrum display on my grabber at http://qrss.info, but really didn’t want to link in any kind of fancy graphics code. Really, if I had the data for a simple 8×8 pixel bitmap font, I could plot the characters myself (after all, that’s pretty much how we had to do it back in the old days). So, I typed “8×8 bitmap font” in the Google search bar, found that a gentlemen named John Hall had made just such a thing, and said that it was free for any use. Very good, say I. I downloaded the PNG file that had all the characters, massaged it in a couple of ways, and three minutes later, I had a font definition file that I could use in my revamped version of my beacon app.

Later, I thought that it would be nice if I acknowledged the largess of my font-benefactor, only to find something odd: John “Overcode” Hall had passed away back in 2005 after a battle with melanoma. Here’s one of the announcements. Oddly enough, the website that I got the font file from earlier seems to be down. Very strange.

In any case, thanks John. I hope that after my time has come and gone, maybe some of this will live on, and inspire others. Or, at least help them hack together a program.

Addendum: Here’s the link that Google sent me to.