“Who ya gonna call?” “CODEBUSTERS”
No.
But the metaphor of Ghostbusters crossing the streams was inversely appropriate to a little bit of code action over the holidays (of which the actual action was nil).
But this was fun.
This nice tweet from John Johnston (who spawned the idea) reminded me of a WordPress plugin I had made
The WP Posted Today plugin is meant to offer a short code you can put on a site and it will list all previous posts on the current calendar day (this of course is useful if you actually still blog regularly) (cough) (cough).
Just for grins I checked the page where I use my own plugin. Yikes. Red Alert. It displayed all the ones for December 29 in years past, but the part where it should list how many there were was blank.
I dug into my own code… and found myself a bit lost. Crossed. I was not even sure where I got the sprintf functions (John’s original code?) that were aimed to be compatible if anyone every wanted a language translation (maybe, or it’s just that thing when people code things differently).
Taking the path of least resistance, I took out the code where I think the problem was occurring and did it a more simple, but brute force way.
And it worked.
So I updated the version on GitHub and felt at peace with the world. In the off chance someone stumbled into my little corner of code, they would find something that works (or should work).
And then (here comes a stream crossing) Michael Hanscom @djwudi — someone I don’t think I’ve ever communicated with — tweets that he had seen pretty much the same bug and offered a fix.
In looking at his post I saw the fix he made, and said– that’s better than mine! So I decided today to roll back my changes in place of Michael’s solution (but also keeping a modification I had made to remove extraneous calls when not needed for singular versus multiple results).
I noted the extra change he made in hos own version
Plus, I’ve made one other tweak to the plugin, so that it adds a link to the end of the excerpt to better handle “microblog” style entries that don’t have titles, so I still get to feel good about that part, as well. 🙂 My coding skills may be underdeveloped and rusty from lack of regular use, but they’re not entirely atrophied!
In this case, these microblog type entries (see Michael’s demo page) lack titles, so yes, a link is needed at the end of the post excerpt.
Yet I could see that regular posts (like on my site) did not need the extra link, and also, not everyone might want the arrow Michael likes.
I solved this cleverly by creating an additional shortcode parameter more which defaults to a blank string. In the shortcode function, we convert any attributes passed to variables with
extract(shortcode_atts( array( "month" => '', "day" => '', 'excerpt' => 1, 'more' => '' ), $atts ));
So on my site, where I just used the shortcode There are 26 posts previously published on September 26th
- 2020
- Presenting at Hey Pressto! while I was doing something else… Psss, there are ways to do online conferences that do not require The Zoom. It sounds unlikely, but I have been part of two Twitter based WordPress in education conferences cooked up by Pat Lockley, PressEd versions I’ve been a part of in 2018, in 2019, and in 2020. So when Pat messaged about looking […]
- Chopping the Spreadsheet Karate Chops I know nothing of karate beyond what I have seen in movies, but I would guess that one of the philosophies behind it is “simpler = better”. My karate non-knowledge did not stop me from using the metaphor in a post where I thought I was being clever to using some Google Spreadsheets to extract […]
- 2019
- Invest in Beer? You love beer? Not the factory produced swill that gets manufactured in mass quantities, but the small runs by craft breweries? I have an opportunity for you! I am offering for sale a 1.5% share of ownership of THAT Brewery located in Pine Arizona (and a second production facility in Cottonwood, Arizona. Check them out […]
- No “New Post” For You! (if you are a SPLOT) It might seem counter intuitive to remove from the WordPress dashboard the menu items that allow a user to create posts. Or crazy. But follow my weaving here. This all started when Dave Cormier picked up my call to try a SPLOT. Well, I actually whinged Dave wasted little time! But in no time quick […]
- 2018
- Big Picture WordPress Theme Goes to Unexpected Places Speaking of HTML5 Up Themes I’ve folded into WordPress ones, I have to say my favorite might be WP Big Picture. Check out the demo site. It has the lush design of the original HTML5up theme, but what you get in the WordPress version is adding new sections merely by creating new posts, easily changing […]
- Instead of Nothingness, Every New Open Tab Becomes a Public Domain Image Doorway of Curiosity It won’t put much of a dent in the problematic aspects of the internet, but at least a reminder that it can still be that Wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosities. Often without much thinking, in our web doings, we click the + button or more likely, command-T to open a new tab to do something. […]
- 2017
- Network Amplifying / Blog Signal I long dreamed of playing guitar through a stack of Marshall amps. The problem for anyone in range would be my horrible musical signal going in. But that’s not the topic of this post. If I have learned anything in my unplanned career in online stuff it’s the value of putting ideas, questions out there, […]
- 2014
- Looking Through My Own Time Tunnel This is not just a presentation prop for my presentation nostalgia trips to the past, pleasantly seated at my hosts breakfast table in Auckland, I am drinking coffee in your future. I tracked on the flight over not just the crossing over the International Date Line, but the way it jags, we actually went over, […]
- 2013
- PhotoBlitz The Home Version I’ve done the ds106 photoblitz for the visual storytelling week a few times– originally this was a shorter in class exercise Jim and did in Spring 2012 where we used DuPont Hall on campus at UMW. IN the Fall of 2012 I did mine With Giulia Forsythe on the Brock University campus, and did it […]
- 2012
- The Power of Doing What You Think You Cannot Do I’ve written or tweeted or just mumbled in my sleep incoherently before about the power of ds106 in challenging our students, of making some things hard to do, or not so cookie cutter 1-2-3 recipe step. This came to my clearly from our 4th week unit on Introduction to Audio. Part of this was introducing […]
- 20 Minute Photo Challenge: ds106 Photoblitz cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by blentley When I taught ds106 last Spring at University of Mary Washington, one of the effective in class activities Jim Groom and I came up with was giving the students what we called “rapid design challenges” – just quick activities that pressured them to create […]
- 2011
- Bad Guys Troll Quotes More playing with ds106 assignments, here the Visual Assignment for Triple Troll Attach: The assignment is to take a photo, a quote from a different character than the one in the picture, and a name from a third character different from the other two, place the quote in the picture, and “sign” it with the […]
- I Coulda Been a Contenda I’m keeping up with Scottlo’s Productivity ds106 radio segments, where he plays music for 25 minutes and we try to get a task done. Here I am taking on the assignment bank from ds106. What is there to say about Pick A Bad Photo, Apply A Vintage Effect And Write Something In Helvetica — pretty […]
- Sometimes You Blog Like An ______ cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Alex E. Proimos For some reason this image came up (among a whole raft of ones I would never use) in a flickr search for “ass” (surprise, eh?). All day I have been feeling my own pangs of regret over the shot from the hip downward […]
- Talk to Me I’m going to out some colleagues on the defensive here, but c’mom, if you are going to use video for online course materials, for our sanities sake, DO NOT SIT THERE AND READ TO ME. Talk to me. Show your passion, your interest, your humanity. Don’t point us to video of a head talking into […]
- Corporatize Your Friends Here’s a half-baked ds106 Design Assignment, feeding off of the MacGuffin-ing, but one to spiff up your blend and magic brush skills in Photoshop. Find a billboard or ad that features a friends or colleagues name, and modify it to personalize the ad. I got inspired while in thr DC Metro seeing billboard after billboard […]
- 2008
- How We Find New Technology Shopping for Horizon Project Items by cogdogblog posted 25 Sep ’08, 7.52pm MDT PST on flickr This is where we get stuff for horizon.nmc.org/ So what do you want this year? Cloud Computing? PLE? Mobile virtual worlds? Share this barking on social media
- 2007
- One Nice Feature Among Many in WP 2.3… I’ve barely had time to breathe much less update all of my WordPress powered sites, but noticed today one small feature I’ve been waiting for… I was actually, for no logical reason, setting up one more new WP powered web site for NMC, not quite ready for prime time. But what is cool is the […]
- 2006
- A Blog That Runs Despite my best intentions, I am now in a state of blogging to about 4 or 5 sites, all my own doing. So why not do some internal promoting? On the personal side, is I Hate Running, a WordPress I put together last year when I completed my first ever half marathon. I ran a […]
- Another 2.0 Someday… Feed2JS I struggle to find the solid chunks of time to take care of some pending updates to Feed to JavaScript (Feed2JS). I am about half way through setting up a code site on eduforge, and need to create a web front end. This will be the primary source for the current code release (at least […]
- Is Email Bloggable? Let’s say someone sends you some info related to a project, maybe some links, etc… is it bloggable? One could say, if it is on the web, discoverable, Gooogle-able, then it is open to be blogged about? I faced this recently with something I sent out that some info linked to a project site that […]
- Software Features By Surprise This is a miniscule point, but the things I like about the features rolled out by sites like Google, flickr, etc, is that sometimes they just slip something in like a surprise… the biddy post I made about the Google Home page adding tabbed navigation caught my eye, only because I whizzed by the page […]
- 2005
- New Blog Disclaimer flickr foto You Have Been Warned!available on my flickr I was too scard to take a photo of this fearsome fish. This hand made sign from a local aquarium (Acuario Cet-Mar) in Puerta Peñasco, Mexico, might be part of a new WordPress theme that may be applied here 😉 My friends told me stories of […]
- 2004
- Even South American Volcanos Have Wireless Wireless technology spreads far and wide. A recent EurekAlert came my way (somewhere in the techie/gadget RSS feeds in my reader) that describes the use of wireless sensors to monitor the activity on Tungarahua in Ecuador (this one is for you, Michelle ;-): A rumbling South American volcano has gone wireless: Computer scientists at Harvard […]
- If You Build It (and email it), They Still Will Not Come If I knew better, I would take last week’s Ocotillo Virtual Kickoff as a resounding failure. We had set up a series of 1-4 minute streaming video welcomes from not only our top executive levels, but more important;y, the faculty co-chairs leading our new initiatives on learning objects, eportfolios, hybrid courses, and emerging technologies. We […]
- At Least Someone is Using the Wikis (bad news, they are spammers) We’ve got some regular visitors to some of our Ocotillo wikis, too bad they are not contributing to our collaborative space, unless you think that inserting about 150 URLs for Asian web sites has something to do with Learning Objects. They hit the same pages, and in fact are wiki URLs mentioned here, so I […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 26 posts previously published on September 26th
- 2020
- Presenting at Hey Pressto! while I was doing something else… Psss, there are ways to do online conferences that do not require The Zoom. It sounds unlikely, but I have been part of two Twitter based WordPress in education conferences cooked up by Pat Lockley, PressEd versions I’ve been a part of in 2018, in 2019, and in 2020. So when Pat messaged about looking […] ➡
- Chopping the Spreadsheet Karate Chops I know nothing of karate beyond what I have seen in movies, but I would guess that one of the philosophies behind it is “simpler = better”. My karate non-knowledge did not stop me from using the metaphor in a post where I thought I was being clever to using some Google Spreadsheets to extract […] ➡
- 2019
- Invest in Beer? You love beer? Not the factory produced swill that gets manufactured in mass quantities, but the small runs by craft breweries? I have an opportunity for you! I am offering for sale a 1.5% share of ownership of THAT Brewery located in Pine Arizona (and a second production facility in Cottonwood, Arizona. Check them out […] ➡
- No “New Post” For You! (if you are a SPLOT) It might seem counter intuitive to remove from the WordPress dashboard the menu items that allow a user to create posts. Or crazy. But follow my weaving here. This all started when Dave Cormier picked up my call to try a SPLOT. Well, I actually whinged Dave wasted little time! But in no time quick […] ➡
- 2018
- 2017
- Network Amplifying / Blog Signal I long dreamed of playing guitar through a stack of Marshall amps. The problem for anyone in range would be my horrible musical signal going in. But that’s not the topic of this post. If I have learned anything in my unplanned career in online stuff it’s the value of putting ideas, questions out there, […] ➡
- 2014
- Looking Through My Own Time Tunnel This is not just a presentation prop for my presentation nostalgia trips to the past, pleasantly seated at my hosts breakfast table in Auckland, I am drinking coffee in your future. I tracked on the flight over not just the crossing over the International Date Line, but the way it jags, we actually went over, […] ➡
- 2013
- PhotoBlitz The Home Version I’ve done the ds106 photoblitz for the visual storytelling week a few times– originally this was a shorter in class exercise Jim and did in Spring 2012 where we used DuPont Hall on campus at UMW. IN the Fall of 2012 I did mine With Giulia Forsythe on the Brock University campus, and did it […] ➡
- 2012
- The Power of Doing What You Think You Cannot Do I’ve written or tweeted or just mumbled in my sleep incoherently before about the power of ds106 in challenging our students, of making some things hard to do, or not so cookie cutter 1-2-3 recipe step. This came to my clearly from our 4th week unit on Introduction to Audio. Part of this was introducing […] ➡
- 20 Minute Photo Challenge: ds106 Photoblitz cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by blentley When I taught ds106 last Spring at University of Mary Washington, one of the effective in class activities Jim Groom and I came up with was giving the students what we called “rapid design challenges” – just quick activities that pressured them to create […] ➡
- 2011
- Bad Guys Troll Quotes More playing with ds106 assignments, here the Visual Assignment for Triple Troll Attach: The assignment is to take a photo, a quote from a different character than the one in the picture, and a name from a third character different from the other two, place the quote in the picture, and “sign” it with the […] ➡
- I Coulda Been a Contenda I’m keeping up with Scottlo’s Productivity ds106 radio segments, where he plays music for 25 minutes and we try to get a task done. Here I am taking on the assignment bank from ds106. What is there to say about Pick A Bad Photo, Apply A Vintage Effect And Write Something In Helvetica — pretty […] ➡
- Sometimes You Blog Like An ______ cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Alex E. Proimos For some reason this image came up (among a whole raft of ones I would never use) in a flickr search for “ass” (surprise, eh?). All day I have been feeling my own pangs of regret over the shot from the hip downward […] ➡
- Talk to Me I’m going to out some colleagues on the defensive here, but c’mom, if you are going to use video for online course materials, for our sanities sake, DO NOT SIT THERE AND READ TO ME. Talk to me. Show your passion, your interest, your humanity. Don’t point us to video of a head talking into […] ➡
- Corporatize Your Friends Here’s a half-baked ds106 Design Assignment, feeding off of the MacGuffin-ing, but one to spiff up your blend and magic brush skills in Photoshop. Find a billboard or ad that features a friends or colleagues name, and modify it to personalize the ad. I got inspired while in thr DC Metro seeing billboard after billboard […] ➡
- 2008
- How We Find New Technology Shopping for Horizon Project Items by cogdogblog posted 25 Sep ’08, 7.52pm MDT PST on flickr This is where we get stuff for horizon.nmc.org/ So what do you want this year? Cloud Computing? PLE? Mobile virtual worlds? Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2007
- One Nice Feature Among Many in WP 2.3… I’ve barely had time to breathe much less update all of my WordPress powered sites, but noticed today one small feature I’ve been waiting for… I was actually, for no logical reason, setting up one more new WP powered web site for NMC, not quite ready for prime time. But what is cool is the […] ➡
- 2006
- A Blog That Runs Despite my best intentions, I am now in a state of blogging to about 4 or 5 sites, all my own doing. So why not do some internal promoting? On the personal side, is I Hate Running, a WordPress I put together last year when I completed my first ever half marathon. I ran a […] ➡
- Another 2.0 Someday… Feed2JS I struggle to find the solid chunks of time to take care of some pending updates to Feed to JavaScript (Feed2JS). I am about half way through setting up a code site on eduforge, and need to create a web front end. This will be the primary source for the current code release (at least […] ➡
- Is Email Bloggable? Let’s say someone sends you some info related to a project, maybe some links, etc… is it bloggable? One could say, if it is on the web, discoverable, Gooogle-able, then it is open to be blogged about? I faced this recently with something I sent out that some info linked to a project site that […] ➡
- Software Features By Surprise This is a miniscule point, but the things I like about the features rolled out by sites like Google, flickr, etc, is that sometimes they just slip something in like a surprise… the biddy post I made about the Google Home page adding tabbed navigation caught my eye, only because I whizzed by the page […] ➡
- 2005
- New Blog Disclaimer flickr foto You Have Been Warned!available on my flickr I was too scard to take a photo of this fearsome fish. This hand made sign from a local aquarium (Acuario Cet-Mar) in Puerta Peñasco, Mexico, might be part of a new WordPress theme that may be applied here 😉 My friends told me stories of […] ➡
- 2004
- Even South American Volcanos Have Wireless Wireless technology spreads far and wide. A recent EurekAlert came my way (somewhere in the techie/gadget RSS feeds in my reader) that describes the use of wireless sensors to monitor the activity on Tungarahua in Ecuador (this one is for you, Michelle ;-): A rumbling South American volcano has gone wireless: Computer scientists at Harvard […] ➡
- If You Build It (and email it), They Still Will Not Come If I knew better, I would take last week’s Ocotillo Virtual Kickoff as a resounding failure. We had set up a series of 1-4 minute streaming video welcomes from not only our top executive levels, but more important;y, the faculty co-chairs leading our new initiatives on learning objects, eportfolios, hybrid courses, and emerging technologies. We […] ➡
- At Least Someone is Using the Wikis (bad news, they are spammers) We’ve got some regular visitors to some of our Ocotillo wikis, too bad they are not contributing to our collaborative space, unless you think that inserting about 150 URLs for Asian web sites has something to do with Learning Objects. They hit the same pages, and in fact are wiki URLs mentioned here, so I […] ➡
// output post and link
$output .= '
' . get_the_title() . '';
// display excerpt if we want it
if ( $excerpt ) $output .= ' ' . get_the_excerpt();
// for microblog output where there might not be titles so add a link at end
// h/t https://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2020/01/02/rss-feed-weirdness-and-php-debugging/
$output .= ' ' . $more . '';
So how is that for the odds of streams crossing on the same obscure bit of code? That’s the old fashioned kind of net serendipity that still happens.
Thanks Michael! Check out his 20 year old blog, he’s an “Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk” quite the tag line.
Featured Image: Edit of the Ghostbusters Cross Streams scene found in the Ghostbusters Fandom Wiki site which states “Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.” I replaced part of the background with a screenshot of the WP Posted Today PHP code.
Share this barking on social media
