“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 18 posts previously published on March 22nd
- 2025
- Back from 2025 with Terry Anderson’s Amazing Story Over at my OEGlobal perch I just scheduled a new recording session for the OE Global Voices podcast, this by request from the folks at Athabasca University that publish the open access journal, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRODDL) as it is their 25th anniversary. And it was exciting to […]
- #ErasedAmerica (Explored!) Just like almost everyone with a soul, a partial mind, and a heart, I am aghast at the crumbling into a fascist pile of the country I was born in… and semi-paralyzed on the “what to do”. As mostly, a release is creating something, a visual statement, expression brimming with angry sarcasm. How literally organizations […]
- 2018
- Second Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth At some point as a kid expressing to my Mom some concern about not fitting in at school, she offered often repeated Mom wisdom. “You don’t need to be popular or have a long list of friends… what you need is just one good one who you can count on.” I’m fortunate Mom, as I […]
- 2016
- Having a Stake (or a lobster) in Endorsements This is one of those ideas that came to me as I was watering my garden. Endorsements are a possible positive feature of a credential/badge- it makes sense to add some validity to such a thing if a credible, trusted entity gives your microskill a thumbs up. There is an Endorsement Working group in the […]
- 2012
- We, Our Digital Selves, and Us I was asked a few weeks ago by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis to create a keynote video for their current round of Flat Classroom projects. While I’ve done plenty the last few years on storytelling, I was interested I trying something new. Being immersed on ds106 and the starting point of having our students […]
- 2011
- A Dirty Cop Cleans Himself Up- Soiled Harry This turned out to be a love/hate/love assignment for ds106- Telling Stories in/on the web. It was a brilliant, creative, and challenging assignment cooked up by Martha. The task is to re-write a public web page to have it tell a new story, using only code (especially the Firebug plugin for Firefox). I’ll b&m about […]
- 2010
- Comic Adventures of Bavaman and Norman! So you can’t get enough twitter action of the smackdowns of Reverend Jim “Bavaman” and his sidekicked D’Arcy Bike Wonder Norman? The Cabed Blogsader abhors anyone who dares to change out their blog theme, especially Norman! Stay tuned as the story unfolds! Make your own addition to this talke at http://www.batmancomic.info/ Share this barking on […]
- Mind Flips cc licensed flickr photo shared by Zach Dischner Did you ever have one of those experiences where you were struggling with a problem, and somehow your mind completely flipped it around to a solution you could never see on the first side? It’s more than a light bulb going off, it’s like turning your brain […]
- Memory Mapping Stephen Downes highlighted today one of those wonderful simple ideas that can go (and has gone) a long way. In An Idea That Keeps Growing Doug Peterson shows how his simple idea took off– to use online maps to create a walking tour of the place he grew up. As Stephen suggested where he plotted […]
- 2009
- follow follow follow cc licensed flickr photo by gary foulger. In high school I joined the group of kids who did not want to join groups. Maybe I’ve not changed much since then. But I try a lot of web services, especially as I see others in my network mentioning them. Tonight is WeFollow.com billed as a “user […]
- 2008
- Hello Askimet, Goodbye SK2! Thanks for all the Fish I’ve just swapped the spam “defense” here from SpamKarma2 to Askimet. The word is that Dr Dave is going to top updating it. Sk2 has sure needed regular attention lately, a lot of moderation, and then I found out that friends of mine were being tossed its captcha, and I hate bad captchas. Bad news. […]
- Oak Reuse Caveat Emptor– this blog post has nothing to do with technology, learning, spam, WordPress, twitter, or the other junk that makes up the focus here. Its just about what I did with a tree. I could make a stretch and leap to something about learning objects, re-usable content… but that can be an exercise left […]
- 2007
- Where the Twitters Are Okay, so you are either hepped on twitter or think it is the dumbest thing since the Clapper. I’d use it more if it wasn’t so popular and bogged down lately. But twittervision makes for an interesting way to “watch” the tweets world wide. rather than seeing the flow of your local circle, you are […]
- Jolly Well! Britain Gets in On Email Bank Spam Scam Heck the Nigerians cannot hog the “I need your help transferring $25 million” email spams. Now the Brits are in it, and stomping in on Peanuts named characters: I am Mr. Charles Brown, A Canadian Attorney based in Manchester, United Kingdom and the personal attorney to Late Mr. Mark Michelle a citizen of France. Late […]
- I’d Like to Buy a “U” (charging for free software) Just for the one letter mistake of typing a URL, access to free software can land you on a site that charges for access to the same. I want to give a big thanks to Carolyn who emailed me this morning, about a bad link I had on a site more than a year old. […]
- 2006
- Cruel Medicine On a very off topic note, for well over a year, I have been dealing with an annoying, dry hacking cough. I’ve seen my general practitioner, and went through ineffective treatment for mild allergies and asthma. For the last 5 months, I have been to a pulmonary specialist and we have tried ruling out an […]
- 2005
- Spurl Bookmarklet Tool Added to the Mix Yes, another nifty social bookmark service– Spurl was brought to our attention by Jamie. So it is now part of the others at the Site Submission MultiTool where it is possible to create one browser tool that does the work of 11 others called: FurlDeliciousFrassleConnoteaBagCiteULikeSimpyLinkrollBlogmarksopenBMSpurl Bookmarklet Tool Spurl looks pretty good at a quick glance– […]
- 2004
- Web Server Takes A Hoilday This blog, as well as our RSS2JS service and our eportfolio server all took an unintended four day holiday. Last week was Spring break for our system, and our admin offices close on Thursday and Friday of that week. Our building had a planned electrical outage planned for Thursday AM to test a new back […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 18 posts previously published on March 22nd
- 2025
- Back from 2025 with Terry Anderson’s Amazing Story Over at my OEGlobal perch I just scheduled a new recording session for the OE Global Voices podcast, this by request from the folks at Athabasca University that publish the open access journal, The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRODDL) as it is their 25th anniversary. And it was exciting to […] ➡
- #ErasedAmerica (Explored!) Just like almost everyone with a soul, a partial mind, and a heart, I am aghast at the crumbling into a fascist pile of the country I was born in… and semi-paralyzed on the “what to do”. As mostly, a release is creating something, a visual statement, expression brimming with angry sarcasm. How literally organizations […] ➡
- 2018
- Second Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth At some point as a kid expressing to my Mom some concern about not fitting in at school, she offered often repeated Mom wisdom. “You don’t need to be popular or have a long list of friends… what you need is just one good one who you can count on.” I’m fortunate Mom, as I […] ➡
- 2016
- Having a Stake (or a lobster) in Endorsements This is one of those ideas that came to me as I was watering my garden. Endorsements are a possible positive feature of a credential/badge- it makes sense to add some validity to such a thing if a credible, trusted entity gives your microskill a thumbs up. There is an Endorsement Working group in the […] ➡
- 2012
- We, Our Digital Selves, and Us I was asked a few weeks ago by Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis to create a keynote video for their current round of Flat Classroom projects. While I’ve done plenty the last few years on storytelling, I was interested I trying something new. Being immersed on ds106 and the starting point of having our students […] ➡
- 2011
- A Dirty Cop Cleans Himself Up- Soiled Harry This turned out to be a love/hate/love assignment for ds106- Telling Stories in/on the web. It was a brilliant, creative, and challenging assignment cooked up by Martha. The task is to re-write a public web page to have it tell a new story, using only code (especially the Firebug plugin for Firefox). I’ll b&m about […] ➡
- 2010
- Comic Adventures of Bavaman and Norman! So you can’t get enough twitter action of the smackdowns of Reverend Jim “Bavaman” and his sidekicked D’Arcy Bike Wonder Norman? The Cabed Blogsader abhors anyone who dares to change out their blog theme, especially Norman! Stay tuned as the story unfolds! Make your own addition to this talke at http://www.batmancomic.info/ Share this barking on […] ➡
- Mind Flips cc licensed flickr photo shared by Zach Dischner Did you ever have one of those experiences where you were struggling with a problem, and somehow your mind completely flipped it around to a solution you could never see on the first side? It’s more than a light bulb going off, it’s like turning your brain […] ➡
- Memory Mapping Stephen Downes highlighted today one of those wonderful simple ideas that can go (and has gone) a long way. In An Idea That Keeps Growing Doug Peterson shows how his simple idea took off– to use online maps to create a walking tour of the place he grew up. As Stephen suggested where he plotted […] ➡
- 2009
- follow follow follow cc licensed flickr photo by gary foulger. In high school I joined the group of kids who did not want to join groups. Maybe I’ve not changed much since then. But I try a lot of web services, especially as I see others in my network mentioning them. Tonight is WeFollow.com billed as a “user […] ➡
- 2008
- Hello Askimet, Goodbye SK2! Thanks for all the Fish I’ve just swapped the spam “defense” here from SpamKarma2 to Askimet. The word is that Dr Dave is going to top updating it. Sk2 has sure needed regular attention lately, a lot of moderation, and then I found out that friends of mine were being tossed its captcha, and I hate bad captchas. Bad news. […] ➡
- Oak Reuse Caveat Emptor– this blog post has nothing to do with technology, learning, spam, WordPress, twitter, or the other junk that makes up the focus here. Its just about what I did with a tree. I could make a stretch and leap to something about learning objects, re-usable content… but that can be an exercise left […] ➡
- 2007
- Where the Twitters Are Okay, so you are either hepped on twitter or think it is the dumbest thing since the Clapper. I’d use it more if it wasn’t so popular and bogged down lately. But twittervision makes for an interesting way to “watch” the tweets world wide. rather than seeing the flow of your local circle, you are […] ➡
- Jolly Well! Britain Gets in On Email Bank Spam Scam Heck the Nigerians cannot hog the “I need your help transferring $25 million” email spams. Now the Brits are in it, and stomping in on Peanuts named characters: I am Mr. Charles Brown, A Canadian Attorney based in Manchester, United Kingdom and the personal attorney to Late Mr. Mark Michelle a citizen of France. Late […] ➡
- I’d Like to Buy a “U” (charging for free software) Just for the one letter mistake of typing a URL, access to free software can land you on a site that charges for access to the same. I want to give a big thanks to Carolyn who emailed me this morning, about a bad link I had on a site more than a year old. […] ➡
- 2006
- Cruel Medicine On a very off topic note, for well over a year, I have been dealing with an annoying, dry hacking cough. I’ve seen my general practitioner, and went through ineffective treatment for mild allergies and asthma. For the last 5 months, I have been to a pulmonary specialist and we have tried ruling out an […] ➡
- 2005
- Spurl Bookmarklet Tool Added to the Mix Yes, another nifty social bookmark service– Spurl was brought to our attention by Jamie. So it is now part of the others at the Site Submission MultiTool where it is possible to create one browser tool that does the work of 11 others called: FurlDeliciousFrassleConnoteaBagCiteULikeSimpyLinkrollBlogmarksopenBMSpurl Bookmarklet Tool Spurl looks pretty good at a quick glance– […] ➡
- 2004
- Web Server Takes A Hoilday This blog, as well as our RSS2JS service and our eportfolio server all took an unintended four day holiday. Last week was Spring break for our system, and our admin offices close on Thursday and Friday of that week. Our building had a planned electrical outage planned for Thursday AM to test a new back […] ➡
// 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.
