“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 July 23rd
- 2025
- Glitching Up the Sadly Robotic Metaphors I can’t explain the why I did this much less why I am blogging about it, but I aim to skip some of the blather, and let you, humble visitor, just take a click at what I hatched yesterday (warning note, there are images that shake and flash a bit). So yeah, I have this […]
- 2024
- The State of Finding Image Attribution It’s more than tattered and a while since I blabbed about the spurious nature of online practices of attribution. I was somewhat inspired here by interesting analysis of Why I Attribute made by Stephen Downes (who’s busy biking somewhere, why do I need to write this?) based on a simple series of online posts/shares that […]
- 2015
- The Steaming Pile of Dog Poop Called Facebook I stand guilty of going back on my exit from Facebook. For an upcoming project, I must have an account to provide student feedback. I was impressed that upon re-creaitng account, my entire previous presence was gone (at least what they showed me). My current presence has a name, a photo a location. Nothing more. […]
- 2014
- Behind the Scenes of The ds106 Daily Create Gearing up for a wave of new challenges starting in October, I am prepping to dial back my focus on ds106 and the web site. I am not disappearing, but it’s time to spread some energy elsewhere. Jim is teaching a new flavor of ds106 in the Fall and will be likely taking over the […]
- 2013
- ds106 Daily Create Challenge (23); All Those Trains cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Brendan Wilkinson In today’s ds106 Daily Create Challenge, we take up the writing pen and the memory box. Describe a recurring dream you had as a kid. Give an update as if the dream comes back. My mind leaped back to one… about trains. […]
- Dominoe’s Parting, 20 Years Ago My calendar reminders are in cue, reminding me that today, in 1993, I made the gut/heart/soul tearing decision to put my dog down. If you’ve been around here at all, or have looked at 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story, you know the Dominoe story. By orders of magnitude, this is my most […]
- ds106 Daily Create Challenge (22): DON’T TREAD ON ME Today’s ds106 Daily Create Challenge was a photographic one, a low perspective one: Take a photograph from the perspective of an earthworm. I found the worm in a pretty special place. cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine My friend Jonah and I were pretty excited. The worm thought he […]
- 2010
- A Non Crappy WordPress Audio Player There are tons of plugins available to embed audio/video in your blog. The things I don’t like with many of them are (a) they usually use “short codes”- things you hand write in brackets to indicate the location and source for the media (plus some options. Writing these means have to remember the structure, but […]
- Roundup WordPress 3.0 Custom Content Type cc licensed flickr photo shared by Duncan Kinney Oh what a tangled blog I weave mangle. I thought it would take a few posts and days to document the work I started in April to use the then beta features of WordPress 3 to develop the NMC’s MIDEA web site. And just trying to write […]
- 2009
- WordPress Dissected: The Blogless Blog It’s been a while but it is time to add to my collection of WordPress Dissected where I break down web sites I have been building using WordPress but with some moderate to severe template wrangling. Today I present an NMC project set that is sort of a Zen Riddle. If a blog has no […]
- ooVoo = Hello Australia With our growing number of NMC organizations in Australia I’ve been exploring/wondering of ways to better connect and grow this community down under. I’ve been doubtful of the connectivity possibility (mainly the audio) of our Adobe Connect room we use for our monthly seminars. The built in tool that provides data on a user’s local […]
- 2008
- Pfffffft on You Steve Jobs, AT&T, and the 3G iPhone You Rode in On Stand back, set the blog phasers on snark! Before the rant starts (and if you cannot tell from the graphic above it might be juicy) for those that miss my not so subtle reference, do you remember all those times on Star Trek when they said, “Set your phasers on stun”? Did you ever notice, […]
- Cheese Ennui photo credit: acme Cheese, or more properly, cheese food product, is a wonderful thing. My head is not really exploding from web overdose, but for a break in the action, lacking anything really useful to contribute to the blog-o-sphere, I sometimes resort to the silly. So a few days ago, I decided to spread some […]
- 2007
- 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story I am sidestepping some of my own blog advice by blogging something that’s not fully ready for prime time. Among my frantic evening time prep work for my October Australia tour, I am starting to weave together workshop / presentation materials I’ll likely leak here first to get some feedback. What seemed like an off […]
- If You Are Going to Spam Me By Email, At Least Make Me Laugh I smiled as I sent this to the spam folder: Hello my friend! I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://____________.cn) are bad. Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong.. My dog and I are still alive 🙂 Wow, I was really worried about that […]
- I Am, Like So Insignificant I Am, Like So Insignificant posted 23 Jul ’07, 8.52pm MDT PST on flickr I do not register on Google Trends: www.google.com/trends?q=cogdogblog Sigh. Poking around the Google Labs, I played a bit the other night with the search trend analysis tools they have there-might come in handy in some future presentation. With Google Trends, you […]
- Giddyup! Ride the Ole Information Superhighway Our local paper carries a Monday morning local column on computers, most of the time covering those critical questions on spyware and video drivers for Vista. But the writer sometimes looks at the Internet (with a Capital I), and today I was curious to read the take on social networks. You had my riding down […]
- 2004
- Mmmmmmm Mighty Mud Mania Thanks to our 4 day summer work week, I had today free to volunteer for Scottsdale’s Mighty Mud Mania, a 21-year old event that draws more than 10,000 kids to romp through obstacle courses full of gooey mud. It began in the 1970s as some promotion for a cleaning product, but has grown to be […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 18 posts previously published on July 23rd
- 2025
- Glitching Up the Sadly Robotic Metaphors I can’t explain the why I did this much less why I am blogging about it, but I aim to skip some of the blather, and let you, humble visitor, just take a click at what I hatched yesterday (warning note, there are images that shake and flash a bit). So yeah, I have this […] ➡
- 2024
- The State of Finding Image Attribution It’s more than tattered and a while since I blabbed about the spurious nature of online practices of attribution. I was somewhat inspired here by interesting analysis of Why I Attribute made by Stephen Downes (who’s busy biking somewhere, why do I need to write this?) based on a simple series of online posts/shares that […] ➡
- 2015
- The Steaming Pile of Dog Poop Called Facebook I stand guilty of going back on my exit from Facebook. For an upcoming project, I must have an account to provide student feedback. I was impressed that upon re-creaitng account, my entire previous presence was gone (at least what they showed me). My current presence has a name, a photo a location. Nothing more. […] ➡
- 2014
- Behind the Scenes of The ds106 Daily Create Gearing up for a wave of new challenges starting in October, I am prepping to dial back my focus on ds106 and the web site. I am not disappearing, but it’s time to spread some energy elsewhere. Jim is teaching a new flavor of ds106 in the Fall and will be likely taking over the […] ➡
- 2013
- ds106 Daily Create Challenge (23); All Those Trains cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Brendan Wilkinson In today’s ds106 Daily Create Challenge, we take up the writing pen and the memory box. Describe a recurring dream you had as a kid. Give an update as if the dream comes back. My mind leaped back to one… about trains. […] ➡
- Dominoe’s Parting, 20 Years Ago My calendar reminders are in cue, reminding me that today, in 1993, I made the gut/heart/soul tearing decision to put my dog down. If you’ve been around here at all, or have looked at 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story, you know the Dominoe story. By orders of magnitude, this is my most […] ➡
- ds106 Daily Create Challenge (22): DON’T TREAD ON ME Today’s ds106 Daily Create Challenge was a photographic one, a low perspective one: Take a photograph from the perspective of an earthworm. I found the worm in a pretty special place. cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by Alan Levine My friend Jonah and I were pretty excited. The worm thought he […] ➡
- 2010
- A Non Crappy WordPress Audio Player There are tons of plugins available to embed audio/video in your blog. The things I don’t like with many of them are (a) they usually use “short codes”- things you hand write in brackets to indicate the location and source for the media (plus some options. Writing these means have to remember the structure, but […] ➡
- Roundup WordPress 3.0 Custom Content Type cc licensed flickr photo shared by Duncan Kinney Oh what a tangled blog I weave mangle. I thought it would take a few posts and days to document the work I started in April to use the then beta features of WordPress 3 to develop the NMC’s MIDEA web site. And just trying to write […] ➡
- 2009
- WordPress Dissected: The Blogless Blog It’s been a while but it is time to add to my collection of WordPress Dissected where I break down web sites I have been building using WordPress but with some moderate to severe template wrangling. Today I present an NMC project set that is sort of a Zen Riddle. If a blog has no […] ➡
- ooVoo = Hello Australia With our growing number of NMC organizations in Australia I’ve been exploring/wondering of ways to better connect and grow this community down under. I’ve been doubtful of the connectivity possibility (mainly the audio) of our Adobe Connect room we use for our monthly seminars. The built in tool that provides data on a user’s local […] ➡
- 2008
- Pfffffft on You Steve Jobs, AT&T, and the 3G iPhone You Rode in On Stand back, set the blog phasers on snark! Before the rant starts (and if you cannot tell from the graphic above it might be juicy) for those that miss my not so subtle reference, do you remember all those times on Star Trek when they said, “Set your phasers on stun”? Did you ever notice, […] ➡
- Cheese Ennui photo credit: acme Cheese, or more properly, cheese food product, is a wonderful thing. My head is not really exploding from web overdose, but for a break in the action, lacking anything really useful to contribute to the blog-o-sphere, I sometimes resort to the silly. So a few days ago, I decided to spread some […] ➡
- 2007
- 50 Web 2.0 Ways To Tell a Story I am sidestepping some of my own blog advice by blogging something that’s not fully ready for prime time. Among my frantic evening time prep work for my October Australia tour, I am starting to weave together workshop / presentation materials I’ll likely leak here first to get some feedback. What seemed like an off […] ➡
- If You Are Going to Spam Me By Email, At Least Make Me Laugh I smiled as I sent this to the spam folder: Hello my friend! I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here (http://____________.cn) are bad. Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong.. My dog and I are still alive 🙂 Wow, I was really worried about that […] ➡
- I Am, Like So Insignificant I Am, Like So Insignificant posted 23 Jul ’07, 8.52pm MDT PST on flickr I do not register on Google Trends: www.google.com/trends?q=cogdogblog Sigh. Poking around the Google Labs, I played a bit the other night with the search trend analysis tools they have there-might come in handy in some future presentation. With Google Trends, you […] ➡
- Giddyup! Ride the Ole Information Superhighway Our local paper carries a Monday morning local column on computers, most of the time covering those critical questions on spyware and video drivers for Vista. But the writer sometimes looks at the Internet (with a Capital I), and today I was curious to read the take on social networks. You had my riding down […] ➡
- 2004
- Mmmmmmm Mighty Mud Mania Thanks to our 4 day summer work week, I had today free to volunteer for Scottsdale’s Mighty Mud Mania, a 21-year old event that draws more than 10,000 kids to romp through obstacle courses full of gooey mud. It began in the 1970s as some promotion for a cleaning product, but has grown to be […] ➡
// 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.
