“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 October 7th
- 2020
- Humble For Three There was doubt. Fatigue. Second guessing. But having set out this daily photo posted daily plus a wee blog post. the bar was set on “get one posted before Wednesday.” Ooops, at 12:20am I am in Wednesday posting my Tuesday photos. Anyhow, today’s was just a small bit of nature, some deep powerful red color […]
- 2019
- Down the Magic Road with Flickr’s Bad Panda It had been a while since I saw the flickr error screen that meant “oops” something went wrong, the “Bad Bad Panda” message. And its intent worked; while frustrating, the image made me smile. I remember when it looked like Yahoo had shelved the panda. I was pretty sure that it had been part of […]
- 2014
- Transmutation As Cogdogblog awoke one morning from uneasy dreams it found itself transformed in its posts to something else. Not at all an insect. But absolutely changed. If only he could remember how to blog. Surely it was not difficult. Surely there was a Manual. Surely there was a Professional Development Seminar by a World Known […]
- 2012
- Challenge by the Less Familiar cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m in deep infatuated camera love with my nifty fifty f1/4 50mm lens- its what I use on my camera 90% of the time. Why? Why not- I get my sharpest photos and it lets me do amazing things in low light. It just works. […]
- Green Eggs and GIMP I like how my students are learning how to create their ds106 design graphics in GIMP by no means the easist software to use. Sometimes they get frustrated and revert to ones they know or just drawing things on paper and taking a photo. The point of this class is for students to become creators, […]
- Randomly Randomly to Name That Single What do you do when not sure which ds106 Design Assignment to do? Spin the random chooser. Seems like a good thing to do, hence this little bit of design work. The assignment this is for is Name That Single: Create a design for a favorite song by using just simple designs and NO WORDS…Basically […]
- 2011
- Dog Down Under cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog That photo was from my 2007 trip around Australia; I always thought that pattern in the desert looked like the shape of a dog. LUcky for me I made the effort a few days ago yo visit Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, as this was a first time […]
- 2009
- Supermarket Style Headlines I love the Chronicle of Higher Education. Whenever I am low on ideas, they generate “stories” that are just begging for parody. I bet Tom feels the same way, there is never a shortage of Chronically Bad Articles to Lampoon. This blog owes its seedy root to Cole’s post questioning the notion of “Google Wave […]
- CoolIris Embedded I’m testing a new embed feature thingie. I hope they don’t get made I am doing this on my blog. They did not say “shush”…. and I did ask. Maybe this feature is already out. It’s doing a CoolIris embed from my flickr tag “dog” (what else?) Cool. Iris. Here is another one, this time […]
- 2008
- Barfing Panda Secrets I did not discover the barfing flickr panda just followe dlinks in my gReader from sites like Mashable. The panda provides a different way to Explore flickr, the 500 most “interesting” photos as identified by the magical algorithm. The Panda just seems to be a new way to vew them; just sit and watch as […]
- I Know That Photo! Familar Photo in Flickr Search Results by cogdogblog posted 7 Oct ’08, 4.39pm MDT PST on flickr How weird it is to be in search of a flickr image for a post, and seeing your own photo show up? I have been using compfight for my cc image search, and a recent search on "microphone" […]
- 2006
- Cleaning Gigs I was doing some very short video editing last week using iMovie, and could not figure out why I only had 4 Gb of space to import from my DV camera (which shrank to 1.5 after grabbing 10 minutes of content)– until I looked at the info on my MacBookPro– and saw that my 80 […]
- 2005
- Audiosequentialdisruptus If you lived through an era of music on LPs to CDs to now MP3s, you may be experiencing a syndrome I have felt myself… you’re listening nicely to a song on your digital music player, and your past patterns of listening to the order of songs on a fixed medium cause you to expect […]
- What a Whack! Who wudda thunk an audience would fill a theater for a one-man play about using Google? My wife called yesterday and said through her work we could have front row seats for the opening of Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure. I’m sworn to secrecy about not giving away the plot, but I laughed so hard my […]
- 2004
- A Message From a Wiki Spammer Sigh. It is no wonder no work is going on this morning. Our Asian wikis spammers returned, this time not only spamming our pages, but creating their own… and this time leaving a veiled threat of a message: Please do not delete. I send this message only one time, in order to introduce some China […]
- Another in A series of Lows for Spammers: PhotoBlogSpam Everywhere you look on the internet the spammers are crapping and leaving their fetid roach turds. Last Spring, I did a presentation at the online TCC04 Conference on PhotoBlogging “Publish and Build Communities Around Digital Images”. In that session I described how one can post photos to such sites, and created a special and open […]
- 2003
- Somebody’s There at Nobodyhere.com It is likely impossible to describe in text NobodyHere… It is a site to explore messages, relationships of words, metaphors, and variety of interesting gadgets. “How does this work?” Just click. All pages are connected. “Why?” Because I like to express myself using animation, text and programming. The site has been on-line since 1998 and […]
- “Not Just an Education… A Career!” Ouch, I just hurt mysefl laughing… The folks at J-Walk blog have done it again. Find out all about Spam University, ” the world’s top-rated educational institution for the growing spam industry.” Under Admissions: Spam University receives thousands of applications every month. Regretfully, we can’t accept everyone who applies. Consequently, we have stringent requirements for […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 18 posts previously published on October 7th
- 2020
- Humble For Three There was doubt. Fatigue. Second guessing. But having set out this daily photo posted daily plus a wee blog post. the bar was set on “get one posted before Wednesday.” Ooops, at 12:20am I am in Wednesday posting my Tuesday photos. Anyhow, today’s was just a small bit of nature, some deep powerful red color […] ➡
- 2019
- Down the Magic Road with Flickr’s Bad Panda It had been a while since I saw the flickr error screen that meant “oops” something went wrong, the “Bad Bad Panda” message. And its intent worked; while frustrating, the image made me smile. I remember when it looked like Yahoo had shelved the panda. I was pretty sure that it had been part of […] ➡
- 2014
- Transmutation As Cogdogblog awoke one morning from uneasy dreams it found itself transformed in its posts to something else. Not at all an insect. But absolutely changed. If only he could remember how to blog. Surely it was not difficult. Surely there was a Manual. Surely there was a Professional Development Seminar by a World Known […] ➡
- 2012
- Challenge by the Less Familiar cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m in deep infatuated camera love with my nifty fifty f1/4 50mm lens- its what I use on my camera 90% of the time. Why? Why not- I get my sharpest photos and it lets me do amazing things in low light. It just works. […] ➡
- Green Eggs and GIMP I like how my students are learning how to create their ds106 design graphics in GIMP by no means the easist software to use. Sometimes they get frustrated and revert to ones they know or just drawing things on paper and taking a photo. The point of this class is for students to become creators, […] ➡
- Randomly Randomly to Name That Single What do you do when not sure which ds106 Design Assignment to do? Spin the random chooser. Seems like a good thing to do, hence this little bit of design work. The assignment this is for is Name That Single: Create a design for a favorite song by using just simple designs and NO WORDS…Basically […] ➡
- 2011
- Dog Down Under cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog That photo was from my 2007 trip around Australia; I always thought that pattern in the desert looked like the shape of a dog. LUcky for me I made the effort a few days ago yo visit Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, as this was a first time […] ➡
- 2009
- Supermarket Style Headlines I love the Chronicle of Higher Education. Whenever I am low on ideas, they generate “stories” that are just begging for parody. I bet Tom feels the same way, there is never a shortage of Chronically Bad Articles to Lampoon. This blog owes its seedy root to Cole’s post questioning the notion of “Google Wave […] ➡
- CoolIris Embedded I’m testing a new embed feature thingie. I hope they don’t get made I am doing this on my blog. They did not say “shush”…. and I did ask. Maybe this feature is already out. It’s doing a CoolIris embed from my flickr tag “dog” (what else?) Cool. Iris. Here is another one, this time […] ➡
- 2008
- Barfing Panda Secrets I did not discover the barfing flickr panda just followe dlinks in my gReader from sites like Mashable. The panda provides a different way to Explore flickr, the 500 most “interesting” photos as identified by the magical algorithm. The Panda just seems to be a new way to vew them; just sit and watch as […] ➡
- I Know That Photo! Familar Photo in Flickr Search Results by cogdogblog posted 7 Oct ’08, 4.39pm MDT PST on flickr How weird it is to be in search of a flickr image for a post, and seeing your own photo show up? I have been using compfight for my cc image search, and a recent search on "microphone" […] ➡
- 2006
- Cleaning Gigs I was doing some very short video editing last week using iMovie, and could not figure out why I only had 4 Gb of space to import from my DV camera (which shrank to 1.5 after grabbing 10 minutes of content)– until I looked at the info on my MacBookPro– and saw that my 80 […] ➡
- 2005
- Audiosequentialdisruptus If you lived through an era of music on LPs to CDs to now MP3s, you may be experiencing a syndrome I have felt myself… you’re listening nicely to a song on your digital music player, and your past patterns of listening to the order of songs on a fixed medium cause you to expect […] ➡
- What a Whack! Who wudda thunk an audience would fill a theater for a one-man play about using Google? My wife called yesterday and said through her work we could have front row seats for the opening of Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure. I’m sworn to secrecy about not giving away the plot, but I laughed so hard my […] ➡
- 2004
- A Message From a Wiki Spammer Sigh. It is no wonder no work is going on this morning. Our Asian wikis spammers returned, this time not only spamming our pages, but creating their own… and this time leaving a veiled threat of a message: Please do not delete. I send this message only one time, in order to introduce some China […] ➡
- Another in A series of Lows for Spammers: PhotoBlogSpam Everywhere you look on the internet the spammers are crapping and leaving their fetid roach turds. Last Spring, I did a presentation at the online TCC04 Conference on PhotoBlogging “Publish and Build Communities Around Digital Images”. In that session I described how one can post photos to such sites, and created a special and open […] ➡
- 2003
- Somebody’s There at Nobodyhere.com It is likely impossible to describe in text NobodyHere… It is a site to explore messages, relationships of words, metaphors, and variety of interesting gadgets. “How does this work?” Just click. All pages are connected. “Why?” Because I like to express myself using animation, text and programming. The site has been on-line since 1998 and […] ➡
- “Not Just an Education… A Career!” Ouch, I just hurt mysefl laughing… The folks at J-Walk blog have done it again. Find out all about Spam University, ” the world’s top-rated educational institution for the growing spam industry.” Under Admissions: Spam University receives thousands of applications every month. Regretfully, we can’t accept everyone who applies. Consequently, we have stringent requirements for […] ➡
// 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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