“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 15 posts previously published on October 24th
- 2025
- Ask TomGPT For Getting Featured Images into Syndicated Posts Against my better judgement (oh it was against the judgment of the web site owner) I am setting up the old school FeedWordPress syndication bus for the crew painting the Confabulating/Combobulating site for the upcoming Reclaim Open conference. I have discovered finally a Chat AI thing I can live with and love, TomGPT which yes, […]
- 2019
- Feedback, Please? Maybe the guitar (aka blog post) was not close enough to an amplifier (it fell with a silent thud). I broke some new ground in web making (for me) using a REST API to make a lightweight, customizable HTML site “navigator” for a full WordPress site. Despite a maybe not so clever visual metaphor, perhaps […]
- 2016
- Opening Up Attribution with Mediachain Attribution is a FBW (Frequently Blogged Word) around here. I’ve had some back if the brain pondering about how to extend my Flickr CC Attribution Helper to work with images from other CC licensed image collections that have a JavaScript API available (I am thinking of Pixabay, DeviantArt, and MediaWiki Commons as a start). I […]
- 2013
- The New Kings (& Queens, Princesses, Dolls) of #ds106radio Our Four teams of #headless #ds106 participants have really earned their crowns, as we saw heard Tuesday night when we premiered live on ds106 radio the productions of The Merry Hacksters, The 3Ts, the JunioRS, and the Dusky Path of a Dream Team. You can catch another premiere, the UK version hosted by John Johnston […]
- 2012
- Take Me Down Go ahead, take me down! Our professional team of qualified experts know how to get your stolen content taken down fast. No matter what country the thieving website is hosted in. On average we will have your stolen or copyrighted material take down within a few hours. Them’s strong words. But again, since I am […]
- When Six Degrees Are Not Enough cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by cjdaniel_ Sure, the grand we are connected world is fine for connecting actors but for my experiment to get a camera that was found on a train in Toronto back to its owners (a family in Germany)? Fail. I have since archived and removed […]
- 2009
- The Web is Almost Big Enough to Find the Snark I Would Create My daily routine is regularly interrupted by half baked ideas for sarcasm I think might be funny, knowing full well the standard deviation for who else might think it is funny is about 0.5 people. Oh well. I had a moment today where I might have ended up creating the laugh roaring graphics from scratch, […]
- 2008
- Something Smells Like Dirty Old Socks… Oh, It is Plaxo’s Comment Strategy! I keep active accounts at various sites that pull in my online activity, e.g. Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, but don’t spend a lot of time in there. But Plaxo is now under my fur and a good scratch is not getting rid of this blogging itch. Plaxo let me add appropriate links for it to syndicate […]
- iRecord iPhone iHappy More iPhone love. If you cannot stand it, go read a blog post about Android. I just gave Recorder for iPhone a quick test and it so rocks! For 99 cents, the price of a sappy Abba song in iTunes (or a Led Zeppelin anthem, just to be fair), I have an audio recorder on […]
- 2006
- A Book About Wikis Published As A Wiki It was pretty much another curious link click of serendipity last May that led me to Stewart Mader’s Wiki/Blog Using Wiki in Education. I gotta like a domain he chose that is “wiki” spelled backwards http://www.ikiw.org/. Today Stewart is unveiling his new book/web site project Using Wiki in Education, headlined there as “A Wiki-Based Book”. […]
- flickr (ego) Scout The extent of flickr-ness keeps receding like the edge of the universe. Today, I stumbled upon flickr Scout which allows you to find which of your photos have made it to the spotlight of the flickr Explore! page— on a daily basis, flickr pops here the 500 photos uploaded in one day with the highest […]
- 2005
- Gada Search Cannot…. form… sentences… You gotta check out gada.be. Cool URl. Cooler ides. Create a multiple prong web search be foisting words into a URL. Aimed to mobile users for quick results. Wow. Huh? Try http://rip-mix-learn.gada.be/ Or, http://rss.gada.be/ Hey, http://wilma.gada.be/ What? Is there a http://dead-cat.gada.be/? Mergermania! http://blackboard-webct.gada.be/ (Nahhhh, that one is empty. What a surprise!) But […]
- Dog Tagged flickr foto impulsive optimistavailable on my flickr One of the images tagged in flickr as physicalmetadata. Wow, much better than cryptic “labels on soup cans”! With this metadata, we know this is a good dog, an optimist! I think (rather I Google) this is connected to the Flickr Peep Show exhibit. Wow, to be in […]
- 2003
- Pheed.com: RSS Phor Photos Here is an interesting use of RSS– Pheed.com or Syndicated Photography Feeds aims to promote the use of RSS to describe collections of photos. Pheed.com is a database of information about photographs available on the web. We present the work of photographers who have made information about their images available as an RSS feed. RSS […]
- Legacy of Old Code: Software Old Enough to Get a Drivers License Following up on my nostalgia for ten years on the web, I also reflected on what was likely the first educational software I ever created, back in 1987. As a Geology grad student at Arizona State University with a few programming courses as an undergrad, I was handed the opportunity to run a computer lab […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 15 posts previously published on October 24th
- 2025
- Ask TomGPT For Getting Featured Images into Syndicated Posts Against my better judgement (oh it was against the judgment of the web site owner) I am setting up the old school FeedWordPress syndication bus for the crew painting the Confabulating/Combobulating site for the upcoming Reclaim Open conference. I have discovered finally a Chat AI thing I can live with and love, TomGPT which yes, […] ➡
- 2019
- Feedback, Please? Maybe the guitar (aka blog post) was not close enough to an amplifier (it fell with a silent thud). I broke some new ground in web making (for me) using a REST API to make a lightweight, customizable HTML site “navigator” for a full WordPress site. Despite a maybe not so clever visual metaphor, perhaps […] ➡
- 2016
- Opening Up Attribution with Mediachain Attribution is a FBW (Frequently Blogged Word) around here. I’ve had some back if the brain pondering about how to extend my Flickr CC Attribution Helper to work with images from other CC licensed image collections that have a JavaScript API available (I am thinking of Pixabay, DeviantArt, and MediaWiki Commons as a start). I […] ➡
- 2013
- The New Kings (& Queens, Princesses, Dolls) of #ds106radio Our Four teams of #headless #ds106 participants have really earned their crowns, as we saw heard Tuesday night when we premiered live on ds106 radio the productions of The Merry Hacksters, The 3Ts, the JunioRS, and the Dusky Path of a Dream Team. You can catch another premiere, the UK version hosted by John Johnston […] ➡
- 2012
- Take Me Down Go ahead, take me down! Our professional team of qualified experts know how to get your stolen content taken down fast. No matter what country the thieving website is hosted in. On average we will have your stolen or copyrighted material take down within a few hours. Them’s strong words. But again, since I am […] ➡
- When Six Degrees Are Not Enough cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by cjdaniel_ Sure, the grand we are connected world is fine for connecting actors but for my experiment to get a camera that was found on a train in Toronto back to its owners (a family in Germany)? Fail. I have since archived and removed […] ➡
- 2009
- The Web is Almost Big Enough to Find the Snark I Would Create My daily routine is regularly interrupted by half baked ideas for sarcasm I think might be funny, knowing full well the standard deviation for who else might think it is funny is about 0.5 people. Oh well. I had a moment today where I might have ended up creating the laugh roaring graphics from scratch, […] ➡
- 2008
- Something Smells Like Dirty Old Socks… Oh, It is Plaxo’s Comment Strategy! I keep active accounts at various sites that pull in my online activity, e.g. Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, but don’t spend a lot of time in there. But Plaxo is now under my fur and a good scratch is not getting rid of this blogging itch. Plaxo let me add appropriate links for it to syndicate […] ➡
- iRecord iPhone iHappy More iPhone love. If you cannot stand it, go read a blog post about Android. I just gave Recorder for iPhone a quick test and it so rocks! For 99 cents, the price of a sappy Abba song in iTunes (or a Led Zeppelin anthem, just to be fair), I have an audio recorder on […] ➡
- 2006
- A Book About Wikis Published As A Wiki It was pretty much another curious link click of serendipity last May that led me to Stewart Mader’s Wiki/Blog Using Wiki in Education. I gotta like a domain he chose that is “wiki” spelled backwards http://www.ikiw.org/. Today Stewart is unveiling his new book/web site project Using Wiki in Education, headlined there as “A Wiki-Based Book”. […] ➡
- flickr (ego) Scout The extent of flickr-ness keeps receding like the edge of the universe. Today, I stumbled upon flickr Scout which allows you to find which of your photos have made it to the spotlight of the flickr Explore! page— on a daily basis, flickr pops here the 500 photos uploaded in one day with the highest […] ➡
- 2005
- Gada Search Cannot…. form… sentences… You gotta check out gada.be. Cool URl. Cooler ides. Create a multiple prong web search be foisting words into a URL. Aimed to mobile users for quick results. Wow. Huh? Try http://rip-mix-learn.gada.be/ Or, http://rss.gada.be/ Hey, http://wilma.gada.be/ What? Is there a http://dead-cat.gada.be/? Mergermania! http://blackboard-webct.gada.be/ (Nahhhh, that one is empty. What a surprise!) But […] ➡
- Dog Tagged flickr foto impulsive optimistavailable on my flickr One of the images tagged in flickr as physicalmetadata. Wow, much better than cryptic “labels on soup cans”! With this metadata, we know this is a good dog, an optimist! I think (rather I Google) this is connected to the Flickr Peep Show exhibit. Wow, to be in […] ➡
- 2003
- Pheed.com: RSS Phor Photos Here is an interesting use of RSS– Pheed.com or Syndicated Photography Feeds aims to promote the use of RSS to describe collections of photos. Pheed.com is a database of information about photographs available on the web. We present the work of photographers who have made information about their images available as an RSS feed. RSS […] ➡
- Legacy of Old Code: Software Old Enough to Get a Drivers License Following up on my nostalgia for ten years on the web, I also reflected on what was likely the first educational software I ever created, back in 1987. As a Geology grad student at Arizona State University with a few programming courses as an undergrad, I was handed the opportunity to run a computer lab […] ➡
// 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.
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