“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 12 posts previously published on June 17th
- 2024
- The Dad Smile I’m feeling that reach of my Dad’s smile, from across time. One of the best photos I spotted while visiting my sister in April was this gem of Dad holding his first son, my brother David. Could there be a more apt Dad smile? This is all more meaningful to note that my brother was […]
- Sharing Openly About ShareOpenly I can’t use my favorite words “share” and “open” too much, though these days… well, I will skip the droll comments. There, its twice in the title. This post started and is mostly (at least when I start writing, I tend to wander) about sharing [openly] a very nifty service / feature / tool for […]
- 2021
- A Place for Messy Professional Development Has everyone had a sufficient amount of time over the last year gazing into the grids of Zoom et al live sessions? Can we do anything differently? I’ve been pushing this with an experiment in my community engagement work for Open Education Global, trying all my tricks and methods to get activity going in our […]
- 2014
- My Salad Day[s] of Multimedia CD-ROM Development: LEE Yes, kids, there was educational technology before the web. And it was shiny. I was reminded of this particular disc and rummaged for it (a thought vector-ish associative trail) from a post by Mike Caulfield mentioning a paleotechnic system called TICCIT. This was before my time, but when I started as a green horn educational […]
- 2010
- Getting Back to the Name cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Man, how delinquent have I been at cogdogblog.com — I don’t ride my bike, I still dont have a dog, and all I got is a blog. Oh well Har. Some Cog-Dog-Blog. I had my bike out maybe 4 times last year. And I’ve not had a dog […]
- Hanging Out With Carl cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m just back from a vintage road trip that included a stop in Flagstaff, the I-40 trans desert drive to Anaheim, a week in Disneyland for the 2010 NMC Summer Conference, a return loop through Las Vegas– with the next highlight specifically a trip to St George Utah […]
- 2009
- Learning Rewind cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I did this previously (see www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/831736263/ and www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/831736873/in/photostream/) by setting up my little Canon IXY and this new Canon EOS T1i face to face and in timer shutter mode. Cameras at 10 micropaces! So if you feel like you know something pretty well, what is there in restarting? […]
- 2008
- July 19 Meetup Under the Bridge The Bridge by cogdogblog posted 28 Oct ’07, 8.29pm MDT PST on flickr Sydney If you are in Sydney July 19, how about meeting up with myself and NMC colleagues Larry Johnson and Rachel Smith? We are traveling down under July 5-20 as we launch a new Horizon.au project with a meeting in Melbourne (a […]
- 2005
- Horizon Report in Practice (NMC Conference The NMC ““ NLII Horizon Report in Practice: Five Snapshots from the Future All The Horizon Project Virtual Community of Practice takes emerging technologies and identifies “” and experiments with “” symbiotic educational practices. How do these new tools and techniques fit into educational institutions? Can they make a difference in student learning? What is […]
- Five Minutes of Fame (NMC Conference) The morning session for Friday at the 2005 NMC Summer Conference was a combination of the Center for Excellence awards and the NMC special Five Minutes of Fame session. The Center for Excellence are awarded to three institutions as a recognition for their efforts (we were fortunate to get on one 2003)- this year recognizing […]
- Maximizing Campus Impact (NMC Conference) Friday session at NMC Summer Conference: How can you have an impact on your campus? How do you know if you are succeeding? What strategies are other NMCs using to make an impact? At the 2005 NMC Directors’ Meeting in February, these questions were raised in a stimulating conversation about maximizing campus impact. This session […]
- 2003
- RSS: Another Killer App Contender? “I could have had class. I could have been a contender. Instead of what I am, a bum” In the July/August 2003 Technology Source, Mary Harrsch makes a claim (#623?) for RSS – The Next Killer App For Education. As blogged by David and George, the slapping of “kller app” may be over the top, […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 12 posts previously published on June 17th
- 2024
- The Dad Smile I’m feeling that reach of my Dad’s smile, from across time. One of the best photos I spotted while visiting my sister in April was this gem of Dad holding his first son, my brother David. Could there be a more apt Dad smile? This is all more meaningful to note that my brother was […] ➡
- Sharing Openly About ShareOpenly I can’t use my favorite words “share” and “open” too much, though these days… well, I will skip the droll comments. There, its twice in the title. This post started and is mostly (at least when I start writing, I tend to wander) about sharing [openly] a very nifty service / feature / tool for […] ➡
- 2021
- A Place for Messy Professional Development Has everyone had a sufficient amount of time over the last year gazing into the grids of Zoom et al live sessions? Can we do anything differently? I’ve been pushing this with an experiment in my community engagement work for Open Education Global, trying all my tricks and methods to get activity going in our […] ➡
- 2014
- My Salad Day[s] of Multimedia CD-ROM Development: LEE Yes, kids, there was educational technology before the web. And it was shiny. I was reminded of this particular disc and rummaged for it (a thought vector-ish associative trail) from a post by Mike Caulfield mentioning a paleotechnic system called TICCIT. This was before my time, but when I started as a green horn educational […] ➡
- 2010
- Getting Back to the Name cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Man, how delinquent have I been at cogdogblog.com — I don’t ride my bike, I still dont have a dog, and all I got is a blog. Oh well Har. Some Cog-Dog-Blog. I had my bike out maybe 4 times last year. And I’ve not had a dog […] ➡
- Hanging Out With Carl cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m just back from a vintage road trip that included a stop in Flagstaff, the I-40 trans desert drive to Anaheim, a week in Disneyland for the 2010 NMC Summer Conference, a return loop through Las Vegas– with the next highlight specifically a trip to St George Utah […] ➡
- 2009
- Learning Rewind cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I did this previously (see www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/831736263/ and www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/831736873/in/photostream/) by setting up my little Canon IXY and this new Canon EOS T1i face to face and in timer shutter mode. Cameras at 10 micropaces! So if you feel like you know something pretty well, what is there in restarting? […] ➡
- 2008
- July 19 Meetup Under the Bridge The Bridge by cogdogblog posted 28 Oct ’07, 8.29pm MDT PST on flickr Sydney If you are in Sydney July 19, how about meeting up with myself and NMC colleagues Larry Johnson and Rachel Smith? We are traveling down under July 5-20 as we launch a new Horizon.au project with a meeting in Melbourne (a […] ➡
- 2005
- Horizon Report in Practice (NMC Conference The NMC ““ NLII Horizon Report in Practice: Five Snapshots from the Future All The Horizon Project Virtual Community of Practice takes emerging technologies and identifies “” and experiments with “” symbiotic educational practices. How do these new tools and techniques fit into educational institutions? Can they make a difference in student learning? What is […] ➡
- Five Minutes of Fame (NMC Conference) The morning session for Friday at the 2005 NMC Summer Conference was a combination of the Center for Excellence awards and the NMC special Five Minutes of Fame session. The Center for Excellence are awarded to three institutions as a recognition for their efforts (we were fortunate to get on one 2003)- this year recognizing […] ➡
- Maximizing Campus Impact (NMC Conference) Friday session at NMC Summer Conference: How can you have an impact on your campus? How do you know if you are succeeding? What strategies are other NMCs using to make an impact? At the 2005 NMC Directors’ Meeting in February, these questions were raised in a stimulating conversation about maximizing campus impact. This session […] ➡
- 2003
- RSS: Another Killer App Contender? “I could have had class. I could have been a contender. Instead of what I am, a bum” In the July/August 2003 Technology Source, Mary Harrsch makes a claim (#623?) for RSS – The Next Killer App For Education. As blogged by David and George, the slapping of “kller app” may be over the top, […] ➡
// 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.
