“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 14 posts previously published on December 19th
- 2022
- First Twittering Day Since I know not which will be last, I am doing my own archival work here. This was my first day twittering on January 31, 2007: This first day’s glorious messaging says so little about the future. Here is that fateful day, with tweets in chronological order: Looking at a long list of Cole’s twitterstwittering […]
- 2019
- Browser Inspector as the New Goggles I’ve collected more than enough examples of Web Tools Biting the Dust but it stings more when the dust biting is by organization that believes that the internet “is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible to all.” Now in the queue for the next iteration of this video is Mozilla Goggles. […]
- 2017
- Swapping Out Sputtering SPLOT Plugins I have grand SPLOT plans for the holidays. Huh? I hope to spend some time cleaning up a number of relatively minor issues with existing SPLOTs, maybe add a new one or two (I did say grand), update the Instant SPLOT recipes (and test them out more to troubleshoot some reported issues). It’s not too […]
- 2016
- When You Stay in Neutral You Never Go Anywhere You get inside your car, turn the ignition switch, hopefully put on the safety belt, maybe turn on the radio or some kind of music player. The engine warms up. When you want to do, which gear to you put it in? A tad obvious, right? Within a few pages of Chapter 3 (“Ideas”) We […]
- 2014
- Poetic Genius on The Other Path Some of most jaw-dropping breath-stealing moments are when I see/hear how someone has used a tool, medium I have had in my hands many times, and completely does something I never even imagined possible. Creating within constraints is some of the best stuff you can try. The other day, Bryan Alexander tweeted a link to […]
- 2012
- Don’t Let a Scientist Talk You Into a Nuclear Powered Shaver The ds196 GIFfest is going wild! And a bunch are taking on the Muppets challange including @noispreofessor @timmmmyboy and Michael Branson Smith who launched this one. I like the Rodney Dangerfield Muppets, the ones who get no respect, and who gets less respect than Beaker? Bring on the GIFness! Share this barking on social media
- ds106 GIFfest It was two years ago when ds106 was born– and one of the most magical parts was the spontaneous combustion/eruption of people experimenting with new forms of animated gifs. With my semester of teaching ds106 ending and most others going more into goofy relax mode, I wondered about launching some sort of “event” just for […]
- 2007
- Pulling AdSense from a Plain Domain This falls into the category of “curiosities raised from idle web wandering”. I just noticed after not looking at it for a while at how much stuff (or crud or crap) I have running down the sidebar of this blog. Its stuff I pretty much ignore, as likely do others. I do get some self […]
- Pack the Moose! Moose Mugshot posted 30 May ’07, 4.18pm MDT PST on flickr We just spent a week camping up at Algonquin. It was wonderful, such a gorgeous wilderness and what wildlife! Woo hoo! I’m already planning to attend Northern Voice 2008 but now I am packing the good moose duds since my session on “50 Web […]
- 2006
- Adios coComment I was a fence sitter on the value of coComment, which in theory allows you to track the comments you make on other web sites, blogs together. Interesting concept, yet often marginal execution, and today, frustration, as the browser wheel spun and spun and spun waiting for coComment to do whatever it does behind the […]
- Free and Free and CC Many times I have said, er boasted, that pretty much form the time I started this ed tech computer work, I’ve made it a habit to give away, for free, just about anything I’ve made. I do believe it comes back to you. And it has, in the forms of invitations to visit some wonderful […]
- 2005
- Blink Goes The Server Over the weekend our server light went dark. For most of the weekend, our whole Maricopa network was offline. There was no information actually communicated by our IT department, even after the fact. I only knew since our email server was not reachable, not our primary web server. Even after that, it took longer for […]
- 2004
- Yawncasting I feel pretty much late to the dance with podcasting. It is a technology phenomnma that seems like it happened more or less while I was out of the country 3 weeks in November. My colleagues D’Arcy and Brian are all over it, and I have give high credence to things my trusted colleagues get […]
- It’s Brown But Looks Awfully Familiar Imitation and flattery aside, just curious if anyone thinks RSS-to-Javascript bears any resemblance at all to our Feed2JS? I do not really care all that much since Feed2JS code is open source but some credit would be nice, egos can always use some stroking now and then… Ours was pretty much inspired by David Carter-Tod’s […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 14 posts previously published on December 19th
- 2022
- First Twittering Day Since I know not which will be last, I am doing my own archival work here. This was my first day twittering on January 31, 2007: This first day’s glorious messaging says so little about the future. Here is that fateful day, with tweets in chronological order: Looking at a long list of Cole’s twitterstwittering […] ➡
- 2019
- Browser Inspector as the New Goggles I’ve collected more than enough examples of Web Tools Biting the Dust but it stings more when the dust biting is by organization that believes that the internet “is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible to all.” Now in the queue for the next iteration of this video is Mozilla Goggles. […] ➡
- 2017
- Swapping Out Sputtering SPLOT Plugins I have grand SPLOT plans for the holidays. Huh? I hope to spend some time cleaning up a number of relatively minor issues with existing SPLOTs, maybe add a new one or two (I did say grand), update the Instant SPLOT recipes (and test them out more to troubleshoot some reported issues). It’s not too […] ➡
- 2016
- When You Stay in Neutral You Never Go Anywhere You get inside your car, turn the ignition switch, hopefully put on the safety belt, maybe turn on the radio or some kind of music player. The engine warms up. When you want to do, which gear to you put it in? A tad obvious, right? Within a few pages of Chapter 3 (“Ideas”) We […] ➡
- 2014
- Poetic Genius on The Other Path Some of most jaw-dropping breath-stealing moments are when I see/hear how someone has used a tool, medium I have had in my hands many times, and completely does something I never even imagined possible. Creating within constraints is some of the best stuff you can try. The other day, Bryan Alexander tweeted a link to […] ➡
- 2012
- Don’t Let a Scientist Talk You Into a Nuclear Powered Shaver The ds196 GIFfest is going wild! And a bunch are taking on the Muppets challange including @noispreofessor @timmmmyboy and Michael Branson Smith who launched this one. I like the Rodney Dangerfield Muppets, the ones who get no respect, and who gets less respect than Beaker? Bring on the GIFness! Share this barking on social media ➡
- ds106 GIFfest It was two years ago when ds106 was born– and one of the most magical parts was the spontaneous combustion/eruption of people experimenting with new forms of animated gifs. With my semester of teaching ds106 ending and most others going more into goofy relax mode, I wondered about launching some sort of “event” just for […] ➡
- 2007
- Pulling AdSense from a Plain Domain This falls into the category of “curiosities raised from idle web wandering”. I just noticed after not looking at it for a while at how much stuff (or crud or crap) I have running down the sidebar of this blog. Its stuff I pretty much ignore, as likely do others. I do get some self […] ➡
- Pack the Moose! Moose Mugshot posted 30 May ’07, 4.18pm MDT PST on flickr We just spent a week camping up at Algonquin. It was wonderful, such a gorgeous wilderness and what wildlife! Woo hoo! I’m already planning to attend Northern Voice 2008 but now I am packing the good moose duds since my session on “50 Web […] ➡
- 2006
- Adios coComment I was a fence sitter on the value of coComment, which in theory allows you to track the comments you make on other web sites, blogs together. Interesting concept, yet often marginal execution, and today, frustration, as the browser wheel spun and spun and spun waiting for coComment to do whatever it does behind the […] ➡
- Free and Free and CC Many times I have said, er boasted, that pretty much form the time I started this ed tech computer work, I’ve made it a habit to give away, for free, just about anything I’ve made. I do believe it comes back to you. And it has, in the forms of invitations to visit some wonderful […] ➡
- 2005
- Blink Goes The Server Over the weekend our server light went dark. For most of the weekend, our whole Maricopa network was offline. There was no information actually communicated by our IT department, even after the fact. I only knew since our email server was not reachable, not our primary web server. Even after that, it took longer for […] ➡
- 2004
- Yawncasting I feel pretty much late to the dance with podcasting. It is a technology phenomnma that seems like it happened more or less while I was out of the country 3 weeks in November. My colleagues D’Arcy and Brian are all over it, and I have give high credence to things my trusted colleagues get […] ➡
- It’s Brown But Looks Awfully Familiar Imitation and flattery aside, just curious if anyone thinks RSS-to-Javascript bears any resemblance at all to our Feed2JS? I do not really care all that much since Feed2JS code is open source but some credit would be nice, egos can always use some stroking now and then… Ours was pretty much inspired by David Carter-Tod’s […] ➡
// 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.
