“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 16 posts previously published on March 26th
- 2025
- Just Click the Buttons They Give You? Or Make Gizmos like a Mastodon Archiver Likely a mis-applied generalization, but in a few different education spheres I am sensing that both the overload of new tech and the adoption of pre-built systems are contributing to a decline in the will/awareness to look being what an interface presents us. Thus the shiny front allure of GenAI to vibe the work for […]
- 2024
- Scraping all Bird Droppings from Pechaflickr Not that it means a hill of garbanzo beans to anyone, but I’ve pretty much stuck a fork in Twitter, the platform I will only call Twitter. I’m not deleting, I just logged out. Still, I have a number of projects, web sites, of trace importance to most but me, that are still encrusted with […]
- 2023
- 2020
- Presented for #PressEdConf20: Tweet into the SPLOT Request Line In this unprecedented overuse of the phrase “unprecedented times” what is more appropriate, and a flavor change of all day Zoom sessions, than a conference run completely over Twitter? It sounds unlikely possible, but here again for it’s 3rd year (aka No Need to Pivot Online), I continue to be impressed/amazed/relieved at the 2020 PressEDConference. […]
- 2019
- It’s One Thing to Talk About Accepting the FAIL… The whole notion of learning from failure is a motivational speaker industry. And it’s been part of my messaging, just recently for a talk to education students at the University of Regina. I often start technology talks with a promise that the technology will likely fail: If it does fail, then I met my expectations. […]
- 2018
- Dropped in a Bucket Talking about a bucket list feels a bit cliché to me. But I do keep something like that floating in my subconscious, as happened back in 2006 when I made a secret vow to run a half marathon. I did cross another “to do” from my list about two weeks ago. It involves the story […]
- 2014
- A New Web House for the Randall House Just to show that not every one of my recent web design projects relied on the Treble template, here is another site I made recently for my friend’s restaurant in Pine Arizona, The Randall House The owner had been left in a bind by the last person who promised a site; for maybe a year […]
- New Flickr Trashes Creative Commons Attribution Helper Since 2009 I have maintained what was once just a greasemonkey script, but later a chrome extension that was designed primarily to help me blog with flickr creative commons attribution photos (it provided a string of text with proper attribution, license, and the img tag to embed the image). As of yesterday, when apparently yahoo […]
- 2013
- Make Two GIFs and Blog Me in the Morning Something to unclog the CogDogBlog Blog Clog… both of these were made on the long trip back from Hong Kong. I wish I had talked more to the guy who makes the naan at United World College East Campus in Singapore, or at least, gotten his name. Every day, blissfully, he whipped together these luscious […]
- 2012
- Skamper Gone a Decade Curse you Google calendar with your accurate reminders. Curse you for being so prim about it. Especially when I really need to just get a night of sleep longer than 5 hours. Curse you.. Well, I cannot really go down that route. But I just got a little pop up message and it says it […]
- Week 10: The Video Juggernaut Continues The video assignments are a ton of work, we know it. The pace continues this week (and we have some room to relax the deadlines, so stop fretting). While the assignments are intensive, do not forget to do a detailed write up in your blog post with your assignment work: Include the name of the […]
- 2011
- CogDogLogPens This is the final chapter to the story I wrote earlier this month of how a photo of some potential firewood I posted on flickr led me to mailing a log to Canada… and now Di has worked her magic wood turning and returned to me two lovely pens made from my wood! cc licensed […]
- 2010
- It’s Easy to Throw Real Stones at Virtual Glass Houses My, how virtual worlds have tarnished. From all the high expectations of 2006, people calling for the coming of the “3D web”, and its been a year since the crows on the wire started sqwaking the “Second Life is Dead” as the big corporations who responded to the flash of light packed up their virtual […]
- 2008
- Fishing / Fish Nuggets A majority of my blog posts are spontaneous spurts, yet sometimes, an idea takes root somewhere in the gray matter, and just sits there quietly demanding to be let out. This one has been rattling around, and tonight demands to see that publish button clicked. So there is a strand here, some storytelling, and a […]
- 2007
- DFW Dash Ponderings likely not worth reading… What is traveling without inane stories of airport mishaps? What is an appropriate way to answer the question when someone invariably asks, “how was your flight?” — do you want a flight to be anything but uneventful? It was not until I was on the plane leaving a gorgeous sunny […]
- 2004
- A Bit Overly Excitable Over Learning Object Tool? Dogs get rather excited easily. Just jangle your car keys and they are all over you for a ride. Reach down for your shoes, and they are halfway out the door, leash in mouth. I have seen the same in the blog community over the announcement of the US Labor Department’s offer of a free […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 16 posts previously published on March 26th
- 2025
- 2024
- Scraping all Bird Droppings from Pechaflickr Not that it means a hill of garbanzo beans to anyone, but I’ve pretty much stuck a fork in Twitter, the platform I will only call Twitter. I’m not deleting, I just logged out. Still, I have a number of projects, web sites, of trace importance to most but me, that are still encrusted with […] ➡
- 2023
- 2020
- Presented for #PressEdConf20: Tweet into the SPLOT Request Line In this unprecedented overuse of the phrase “unprecedented times” what is more appropriate, and a flavor change of all day Zoom sessions, than a conference run completely over Twitter? It sounds unlikely possible, but here again for it’s 3rd year (aka No Need to Pivot Online), I continue to be impressed/amazed/relieved at the 2020 PressEDConference. […] ➡
- 2019
- It’s One Thing to Talk About Accepting the FAIL… The whole notion of learning from failure is a motivational speaker industry. And it’s been part of my messaging, just recently for a talk to education students at the University of Regina. I often start technology talks with a promise that the technology will likely fail: If it does fail, then I met my expectations. […] ➡
- 2018
- Dropped in a Bucket Talking about a bucket list feels a bit cliché to me. But I do keep something like that floating in my subconscious, as happened back in 2006 when I made a secret vow to run a half marathon. I did cross another “to do” from my list about two weeks ago. It involves the story […] ➡
- 2014
- A New Web House for the Randall House Just to show that not every one of my recent web design projects relied on the Treble template, here is another site I made recently for my friend’s restaurant in Pine Arizona, The Randall House The owner had been left in a bind by the last person who promised a site; for maybe a year […] ➡
- New Flickr Trashes Creative Commons Attribution Helper Since 2009 I have maintained what was once just a greasemonkey script, but later a chrome extension that was designed primarily to help me blog with flickr creative commons attribution photos (it provided a string of text with proper attribution, license, and the img tag to embed the image). As of yesterday, when apparently yahoo […] ➡
- 2013
- Make Two GIFs and Blog Me in the Morning Something to unclog the CogDogBlog Blog Clog… both of these were made on the long trip back from Hong Kong. I wish I had talked more to the guy who makes the naan at United World College East Campus in Singapore, or at least, gotten his name. Every day, blissfully, he whipped together these luscious […] ➡
- 2012
- Skamper Gone a Decade Curse you Google calendar with your accurate reminders. Curse you for being so prim about it. Especially when I really need to just get a night of sleep longer than 5 hours. Curse you.. Well, I cannot really go down that route. But I just got a little pop up message and it says it […] ➡
- Week 10: The Video Juggernaut Continues The video assignments are a ton of work, we know it. The pace continues this week (and we have some room to relax the deadlines, so stop fretting). While the assignments are intensive, do not forget to do a detailed write up in your blog post with your assignment work: Include the name of the […] ➡
- 2011
- CogDogLogPens This is the final chapter to the story I wrote earlier this month of how a photo of some potential firewood I posted on flickr led me to mailing a log to Canada… and now Di has worked her magic wood turning and returned to me two lovely pens made from my wood! cc licensed […] ➡
- 2010
- It’s Easy to Throw Real Stones at Virtual Glass Houses My, how virtual worlds have tarnished. From all the high expectations of 2006, people calling for the coming of the “3D web”, and its been a year since the crows on the wire started sqwaking the “Second Life is Dead” as the big corporations who responded to the flash of light packed up their virtual […] ➡
- 2008
- Fishing / Fish Nuggets A majority of my blog posts are spontaneous spurts, yet sometimes, an idea takes root somewhere in the gray matter, and just sits there quietly demanding to be let out. This one has been rattling around, and tonight demands to see that publish button clicked. So there is a strand here, some storytelling, and a […] ➡
- 2007
- DFW Dash Ponderings likely not worth reading… What is traveling without inane stories of airport mishaps? What is an appropriate way to answer the question when someone invariably asks, “how was your flight?” — do you want a flight to be anything but uneventful? It was not until I was on the plane leaving a gorgeous sunny […] ➡
- 2004
- A Bit Overly Excitable Over Learning Object Tool? Dogs get rather excited easily. Just jangle your car keys and they are all over you for a ride. Reach down for your shoes, and they are halfway out the door, leash in mouth. I have seen the same in the blog community over the announcement of the US Labor Department’s offer of a free […] ➡
// 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.
