“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 13 posts previously published on April 8th
- 2016
- Four Darn you Daily Create sending me down a creative rabbits hole. Thanks. And I’m responsible for today’s challenge #ds106 #dailycreate #tdc1552 It’s 4/8/16 Make Art to Celebrate the Power of the Number 4 https://t.co/hMegpYbuET pic.twitter.com/SW4CiurJfC— ds106 Daily Create (@ds106dc) April 8, 2016 I look for patterns in numbers, and while loading future Daily Creates I […]
- WordPress Recycling of Daily Creates (not quite forking) It’s been too long since I blogged some WordPress code. That sounds like some sort of confessional. “Forgive my Ma.tt, for I have sinned, it’s been 34 days since my last WordPress post…” And this is something I did maybe back in January, something Mariana Funes has asked for a while for her to use […]
- 2013
- Git Feed2js cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by rmelgares The next phase of closing down the Feed2JS service is done (the lights go out on the server by June 2, 2013). In a sort of reclaim effort, I moved the home of the code from Google Code to github. I am extremely […]
- 2012
- Truth. Cats. Dogs. The internet giveth and provideth the truth. Need I say more? Via the stream of creative flow of b3ta which came my way via a message from @dkernohan who I only got to know via the network of ds106 which has so many via’s into I better stop. Share this barking on social media
- 2011
- Rigging Up Chrome Search Shortcuts cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Pink Sherbet Photography Summoning a deep toned Don Fontaine voice In a world of 140 characters… every keystroke, every picosecond saved counts. There is one who can get to their search results the quickest… There are times when it benefits you to be the quickest search […]
- 2007
- That 70s Media It’s our last night of a weekend in Strawberry, and we’ve already burned through our rented DVDs. Reaching into the archives here, we’re watching All The Presidents Men on VHS. Beyond the fluffy 1970s hairstyles, I was struck by some comparisons waiting for the tape to get to the movie, especially as our viewing of […]
- One Click Install Wag I’ve heard raves and howls about Dreamhost for web hosting, but my experience so far as been stellar. I really like the one-click install / updates for WordPress; previously, the announcement of a new 0.01 update I might delay a few days, weeks to get around to backing up the database, de-activating plugins, backing up […]
- Frappr: Web Guest Book / Map Mashup on Steroids I’ve made us here (and there and there) of Clustrmaps, the free web tool that can pin your web site visitors to a map by reverse geolocation mapping of their IP address. It’s very cool, and has the great attribute of what I am attracted to in Web 2.0 land- it’s free, easy to set […]
- 2005
- Captcha Spammers! Fugggedaboddit It’s a new spam free day for CogDogBlog and our other affiliated MovableType 2.661 blogs here. I’ve successfully integrated James Seng’s captcha plugin, so that all comment posts require a human to type in a randomly generated security code that appears on screen as a graphic image or ‘captcha’. Spambots cannot automatically read these, so […]
- SpamNymphomania My (non-)friends in the Texas Hold ’em camp are knocking about again. Shoot, maybe one of these days I may get around to learning this game of poker, though it surely will never be via one of their #$*@-ing web sites. These spammers are nymphomaniacs in the sense they just cannot seem to stop shoving […]
- Swirling Around with Flickr Tag Browser The Flickr Related Tag Browser is a cool way to surf and cross surf related tags within the vast flickr photo-empire. Flickr Related Tag Browser lets you surf Flickr’s ‘tag space’. Flickr tags are keywords used to classify images. Each tag has a list of ‘related’ tags, based on clustered usage analysis. Thanks to the […]
- I Like (Stealing? Borrowing?) Your Colors Do you like someone else’s web design color scheme? Curious as to what color codes are used? Try Red Alt – I Like Your Colors. Just enter a URl, and it fetches the colors used as defined in HTML or CSS (some sites seem not to give them up as easily, perhaps with the @import […]
- 2004
- Copyright Lesson Activity Last week, we gave our online students an activity on Copyright and Fair Use: Do the Right Thing, which I have also recently posted in the Maricopa Learning eXchange: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=1264 The subject merits almost an entire course in itself, but we boiled it down to sending them to to excellent web tutorials: (1) Intellectual Property […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 13 posts previously published on April 8th
- 2016
- Four Darn you Daily Create sending me down a creative rabbits hole. Thanks. And I’m responsible for today’s challenge #ds106 #dailycreate #tdc1552 It’s 4/8/16 Make Art to Celebrate the Power of the Number 4 https://t.co/hMegpYbuET pic.twitter.com/SW4CiurJfC — ds106 Daily Create (@ds106dc) April 8, 2016 I look for patterns in numbers, and while loading future Daily Creates […] ➡
- WordPress Recycling of Daily Creates (not quite forking) It’s been too long since I blogged some WordPress code. That sounds like some sort of confessional. “Forgive my Ma.tt, for I have sinned, it’s been 34 days since my last WordPress post…” And this is something I did maybe back in January, something Mariana Funes has asked for a while for her to use […] ➡
- 2013
- Git Feed2js cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by rmelgares The next phase of closing down the Feed2JS service is done (the lights go out on the server by June 2, 2013). In a sort of reclaim effort, I moved the home of the code from Google Code to github. I am extremely […] ➡
- 2012
- Truth. Cats. Dogs. The internet giveth and provideth the truth. Need I say more? Via the stream of creative flow of b3ta which came my way via a message from @dkernohan who I only got to know via the network of ds106 which has so many via’s into I better stop. Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2011
- Rigging Up Chrome Search Shortcuts cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by Pink Sherbet Photography Summoning a deep toned Don Fontaine voice In a world of 140 characters… every keystroke, every picosecond saved counts. There is one who can get to their search results the quickest… There are times when it benefits you to be the quickest search […] ➡
- 2007
- That 70s Media It’s our last night of a weekend in Strawberry, and we’ve already burned through our rented DVDs. Reaching into the archives here, we’re watching All The Presidents Men on VHS. Beyond the fluffy 1970s hairstyles, I was struck by some comparisons waiting for the tape to get to the movie, especially as our viewing of […] ➡
- One Click Install Wag I’ve heard raves and howls about Dreamhost for web hosting, but my experience so far as been stellar. I really like the one-click install / updates for WordPress; previously, the announcement of a new 0.01 update I might delay a few days, weeks to get around to backing up the database, de-activating plugins, backing up […] ➡
- Frappr: Web Guest Book / Map Mashup on Steroids I’ve made us here (and there and there) of Clustrmaps, the free web tool that can pin your web site visitors to a map by reverse geolocation mapping of their IP address. It’s very cool, and has the great attribute of what I am attracted to in Web 2.0 land- it’s free, easy to set […] ➡
- 2005
- Captcha Spammers! Fugggedaboddit It’s a new spam free day for CogDogBlog and our other affiliated MovableType 2.661 blogs here. I’ve successfully integrated James Seng’s captcha plugin, so that all comment posts require a human to type in a randomly generated security code that appears on screen as a graphic image or ‘captcha’. Spambots cannot automatically read these, so […] ➡
- SpamNymphomania My (non-)friends in the Texas Hold ’em camp are knocking about again. Shoot, maybe one of these days I may get around to learning this game of poker, though it surely will never be via one of their #$*@-ing web sites. These spammers are nymphomaniacs in the sense they just cannot seem to stop shoving […] ➡
- Swirling Around with Flickr Tag Browser The Flickr Related Tag Browser is a cool way to surf and cross surf related tags within the vast flickr photo-empire. Flickr Related Tag Browser lets you surf Flickr’s ‘tag space’. Flickr tags are keywords used to classify images. Each tag has a list of ‘related’ tags, based on clustered usage analysis. Thanks to the […] ➡
- I Like (Stealing? Borrowing?) Your Colors Do you like someone else’s web design color scheme? Curious as to what color codes are used? Try Red Alt – I Like Your Colors. Just enter a URl, and it fetches the colors used as defined in HTML or CSS (some sites seem not to give them up as easily, perhaps with the @import […] ➡
- 2004
- Copyright Lesson Activity Last week, we gave our online students an activity on Copyright and Fair Use: Do the Right Thing, which I have also recently posted in the Maricopa Learning eXchange: http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?item=1264 The subject merits almost an entire course in itself, but we boiled it down to sending them to to excellent web tutorials: (1) Intellectual Property […] ➡
// 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.
