Added unicode support and proper height offset

This commit fixed unicode decoding errors, replaces the assumed vertical padding with a calculated offset, and extracts the `get_initial` functionality.
Might want to select first and last initial rather than first two:
![image](https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1124536/5338979/c99dbe9a-7eda-11e4-800f-761a352ad4d2.png)