“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 20 posts previously published on September 21st
- 2019
- Episode 10: Low Frequency https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep010.mp3 It’s been 148 days since our last episode; does the low frequency of publication mean we are no longer...
- Maybe the WordPress Dashboard is Not Always the Best First View? I’m staring at it right now. No big deal. I log in to my blog, and boom! Black menu bar left, lots of links. Menu top, more links. Boxes of information. It’s all familiar. If you’ve been there before. The WordPress Dashboard. But what happens for the very very very first time you log into […]
- The Map is Not the Territory nor exactly the Metaphor It’s time I back blog on a project I have been dabbling on since April. There is a WordPress site to be shared soon, but this is part of a new series of posts about the development (because I did not do it as I worked, I fell off of the narrate your work train). […]
- 2017
- Hi, I am your disembodied teacher Well, maybe not literally. Although I did once launch a headless ds106 that spawned a (Photohopped) decapitation theme. This semester I am teaching, from my home in Arizona, a seminar for five Writing Studies students at Kean University doing their MA Thesis. They’ve already experienced this mode, as it was how I co-taught the Networked […]
- 2014
- Grasping for the Holy Comment Grail creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by RobotSkirts Blog comments. Once the only social network, the way we conversed among blogs, wikis in the pre-twitter, pre-facebook era. It was, really, where the interaction happened. Now, thanks to Google providing the link bait incentive, blog comments are the honey pots for bot gibberish; […]
- This is How My Health Insurance “Works” Unlike many tea partiers I’ve been pleased with my experience getting ACA Healthcare (get the name right, willya, labeling it ObamaCare gives your bias away). I found the signup smooth, and have had above par service when I have called them with questions. As a self-employed Type 1 Diabetic, without it, I’d likely be (a) […]
- 2013
- Geeking The Keynote Tweet App (again) (updated instructions) Tweet while you keynote… note: if you have updated to the Mavericks version of OSX the app will not work. Thank Apple for restricting the amount of Apple Script capability… see Chris Long’s efforts. Our best recommendation is use Keynote ’09 if you want to auto tweet If you create presentations in Apple’s Keynote, here […]
- 2012
- ds106: Not Fractal nor MOOC, Just ds106 It must be bluntly obvious that I am infected with ds106 (for readers lacking exposure to the virus or the ability to reach for The Google, ds106 is the open Digital Storytelling course now in its second year of evolution, spreading out of the University of Mary Washington. With MOOC Hysteria continuing an epic rage […]
- ds106 Radio Bumper 4 pack For the second audio assignment this week for our UMW students in ds106, they are asked to get their toes wet in some audio editing by the assignment for creating a bumper for ds106 radio. Just in case you do not know, ds106 is the only online course, massive or not, that has its own […]
- Who Left The Door Open? (sound effect story) cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by caterpiya In the spirit of Doing the Work We Assign Our ds106 Students, I just made my own Sound Effect Story– the assignment as stated: Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at […]
- 2011
- George Brett, Old and New Internet, on ds106radio cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I landed today in Falls Church, VA, at the invite of George Brett, a long time internet colleague who I finally met for the first time in February at the EDUCAUSE ELI conference. He urged me to visit him, so I did– I am. He […]
- Where I Lost Dominoe: 25 years later cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog You can go back to a place, but you can’t go back. Nor should you want to. But maybe you want to. On my trip around the East Coast, I have visited bits of my past, e.g where I did my undergrad years (or where […]
- 2009
- Got Satisfaction (and learned new Aperture trick) One of my chief enjoyable moments is when I accidentally learn something. Here’s another one for the pile. On a trip earlier this month to San Francisco for a meeting, I was in a rather nice hotel, which meant that, according to Alexander’s Law, the internet would be sucky (Bryan Alexander has collected data to […]
- 2007
- Tagging Your World to Wikipedia – Semapedia I’m still scratching my head to find out exactly why I think this is interesting… I just have that tingly feeling. But as we see ever increasing of interest in virtual worlds, continued explosion of web things, mashups, and mobile technologies, its the connections of them that seem to intrigue me the most. Although I […]
- 2005
- Who Thinks of Time in “Business Days?” I think someone slipped a red pill in my cheerios… I don’t know about you, but the unit of time “business days” has as much meaning as if you said to me, “I will have that ready for you in about 67hdHysuR%dsa87s*jkL days. I took my dead iBook to the Apple Store for repair on […]
- 82 Bloggers Nearby? FeedMap I read a feed, clicked a link, clicked another, and another, and lost my path, but here I am at FeedMap: FeedMap = Blogs + Maps Using FeedMap you can geo-code your blog, browse already geo-coded blogs and search for blogs. Once geo-coded, you can get your own BlogMap location using a simple url that […]
- 2004
- Stupid Ice Breaker Tricks If I ever came across this in a workshop or presentation, I’d be headed for the door or flipping the laptop open while praying for wireless. In the September 2004 Training & Development Magazine, under a department of fundamentals is “A Trick For Your Trade” Are you looking for a lively demonstration of a learning […]
- Doh! Simpsons Writer Coming To Speak on Pop Culture Wednesday night, the Simpsons are coming to Maricopa! Writer Mike Reiss is coming to give a lecture on “Simpsons Mania: Behind the Scenes with America’s Favorite Family”: Culled from more than two decades of creating the funniest and most outrageous shows on television, Reiss’ presentation is a unique glimpse inside the cutting edge of entertainment, […]
- Join In Our Ocotillo Kickoff (blogs, wikis, discussion boards are standing by) Some readers may have followed our mention new efforts this year with our ‘Ocotillo’ faculty-driven technology initiatives, now in its 18th year of existence. This year, we ripped the page right out of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined concept and built a system to support our four action groups that will lead activities and projects […]
- Grand Canyon (barely) Survivor Not to clog this blog with too much non educational technology stories (but I am my own editor and publisher…), I am just back to work today after what was supposed to be a tranquil backpack into the Grand Canyon with my stepson that turned out to be a near death experience. I kid you […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 20 posts previously published on September 21st
- 2019
- Episode 10: Low Frequency https://prconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/ep010.mp3 It’s been 148 days since our last episode; does the low frequency of publication mean we are no longer... ➡
- Maybe the WordPress Dashboard is Not Always the Best First View? I’m staring at it right now. No big deal. I log in to my blog, and boom! Black menu bar left, lots of links. Menu top, more links. Boxes of information. It’s all familiar. If you’ve been there before. The WordPress Dashboard. But what happens for the very very very first time you log into […] ➡
- The Map is Not the Territory nor exactly the Metaphor It’s time I back blog on a project I have been dabbling on since April. There is a WordPress site to be shared soon, but this is part of a new series of posts about the development (because I did not do it as I worked, I fell off of the narrate your work train). […] ➡
- 2017
- Hi, I am your disembodied teacher Well, maybe not literally. Although I did once launch a headless ds106 that spawned a (Photohopped) decapitation theme. This semester I am teaching, from my home in Arizona, a seminar for five Writing Studies students at Kean University doing their MA Thesis. They’ve already experienced this mode, as it was how I co-taught the Networked […] ➡
- 2014
- Grasping for the Holy Comment Grail creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by RobotSkirts Blog comments. Once the only social network, the way we conversed among blogs, wikis in the pre-twitter, pre-facebook era. It was, really, where the interaction happened. Now, thanks to Google providing the link bait incentive, blog comments are the honey pots for bot gibberish; […] ➡
- This is How My Health Insurance “Works” Unlike many tea partiers I’ve been pleased with my experience getting ACA Healthcare (get the name right, willya, labeling it ObamaCare gives your bias away). I found the signup smooth, and have had above par service when I have called them with questions. As a self-employed Type 1 Diabetic, without it, I’d likely be (a) […] ➡
- 2013
- Geeking The Keynote Tweet App (again) (updated instructions) Tweet while you keynote… note: if you have updated to the Mavericks version of OSX the app will not work. Thank Apple for restricting the amount of Apple Script capability… see Chris Long’s efforts. Our best recommendation is use Keynote ’09 if you want to auto tweet If you create presentations in Apple’s Keynote, here […] ➡
- 2012
- ds106: Not Fractal nor MOOC, Just ds106 It must be bluntly obvious that I am infected with ds106 (for readers lacking exposure to the virus or the ability to reach for The Google, ds106 is the open Digital Storytelling course now in its second year of evolution, spreading out of the University of Mary Washington. With MOOC Hysteria continuing an epic rage […] ➡
- ds106 Radio Bumper 4 pack For the second audio assignment this week for our UMW students in ds106, they are asked to get their toes wet in some audio editing by the assignment for creating a bumper for ds106 radio. Just in case you do not know, ds106 is the only online course, massive or not, that has its own […] ➡
- Who Left The Door Open? (sound effect story) cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by caterpiya In the spirit of Doing the Work We Assign Our ds106 Students, I just made my own Sound Effect Story– the assignment as stated: Tell a story using nothing but sound effects. There can be no verbal communication, only sound effects. Use at […] ➡
- 2011
- George Brett, Old and New Internet, on ds106radio cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I landed today in Falls Church, VA, at the invite of George Brett, a long time internet colleague who I finally met for the first time in February at the EDUCAUSE ELI conference. He urged me to visit him, so I did– I am. He […] ➡
- Where I Lost Dominoe: 25 years later cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog You can go back to a place, but you can’t go back. Nor should you want to. But maybe you want to. On my trip around the East Coast, I have visited bits of my past, e.g where I did my undergrad years (or where […] ➡
- 2009
- Got Satisfaction (and learned new Aperture trick) One of my chief enjoyable moments is when I accidentally learn something. Here’s another one for the pile. On a trip earlier this month to San Francisco for a meeting, I was in a rather nice hotel, which meant that, according to Alexander’s Law, the internet would be sucky (Bryan Alexander has collected data to […] ➡
- 2007
- Tagging Your World to Wikipedia – Semapedia I’m still scratching my head to find out exactly why I think this is interesting… I just have that tingly feeling. But as we see ever increasing of interest in virtual worlds, continued explosion of web things, mashups, and mobile technologies, its the connections of them that seem to intrigue me the most. Although I […] ➡
- 2005
- Who Thinks of Time in “Business Days?” I think someone slipped a red pill in my cheerios… I don’t know about you, but the unit of time “business days” has as much meaning as if you said to me, “I will have that ready for you in about 67hdHysuR%dsa87s*jkL days. I took my dead iBook to the Apple Store for repair on […] ➡
- 82 Bloggers Nearby? FeedMap I read a feed, clicked a link, clicked another, and another, and lost my path, but here I am at FeedMap: FeedMap = Blogs + Maps Using FeedMap you can geo-code your blog, browse already geo-coded blogs and search for blogs. Once geo-coded, you can get your own BlogMap location using a simple url that […] ➡
- 2004
- Stupid Ice Breaker Tricks If I ever came across this in a workshop or presentation, I’d be headed for the door or flipping the laptop open while praying for wireless. In the September 2004 Training & Development Magazine, under a department of fundamentals is “A Trick For Your Trade” Are you looking for a lively demonstration of a learning […] ➡
- Doh! Simpsons Writer Coming To Speak on Pop Culture Wednesday night, the Simpsons are coming to Maricopa! Writer Mike Reiss is coming to give a lecture on “Simpsons Mania: Behind the Scenes with America’s Favorite Family”: Culled from more than two decades of creating the funniest and most outrageous shows on television, Reiss’ presentation is a unique glimpse inside the cutting edge of entertainment, […] ➡
- Join In Our Ocotillo Kickoff (blogs, wikis, discussion boards are standing by) Some readers may have followed our mention new efforts this year with our ‘Ocotillo’ faculty-driven technology initiatives, now in its 18th year of existence. This year, we ripped the page right out of the Small Pieces Loosely Joined concept and built a system to support our four action groups that will lead activities and projects […] ➡
- Grand Canyon (barely) Survivor Not to clog this blog with too much non educational technology stories (but I am my own editor and publisher…), I am just back to work today after what was supposed to be a tranquil backpack into the Grand Canyon with my stepson that turned out to be a near death experience. I kid you […] ➡
// 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.
Share this barking on social media
