“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 17 posts previously published on February 22nd
- 2023
- Small Screen Theory File this in the gut conjecture category, not grounded in anything beyond my failable non artificial questionable intelligence in my own grey matter (King, 1978). Plus, I am sure it is better crafted elsewhere. It’s no secret that my own practices and beliefs remain around this value of outloud outboard brain (tell-tale that this precious […]
- 2016
- Meet Halle Gottfried… Meet Halle Gottried (pronounced MA-lee GAHT-fryd) on Facebook Fakebook WTFbook. Chief Engineer on an MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) container ship, he studied Engineering Science and Mechanics at Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences. When not on the high seas, he lives in New York City. According to someone he communicates with– I will call […]
- The Catfish I Remember My fury over Facebook Catfishing was still simmering in the morning (I am far from done). And then, by some kind of weird sort of cosmic serendipity, the song I heard playing on my iPod (one of 4000+ songs randomly shuffled) was the sign Catfish by Bob Dylan. How is this even possible? I heard […]
- 2015
- A Note on Locating Giphy Images From URLs In the process of making my last post I was compelled for reasons not work explaining to generate an animated GIF using as an overlay, the numbers display like in the movie The Matrix. I really do not need to link or embed that, do I? I did find what I was looking for searching […]
- I Am Just a Number (740343) in the Twitter Matrix. Hello. I almost missed this tweet. User 740343 | @cogdog | Created Wed Jan 31 21:24:02 2007 — Every User (@Every_User_) February 22, 2015 With apologies to John Entwistle My name is 740343, And I’ve just become alive I’m the newest populator Of the planet we call Twitter Following the curiosity link for @Every_user I find […]
- In 1983 AT&T Foresaw The MOOCtronic Blame Mike… https://twitter.com/holden/status/568875343165071360 How can I avoid such a calling? AT&T’s 1983 rollout of the Viewtron System and Sceptre Videotex Terminal hits it all- information overload, online shopping, banking, and school, all with majorly poofy hair, and maybe some of the best eyebrow raises in corporate video history and some background upbeat midi music that […]
- 2012
- “In a World”… Do The Voice Long live Don LaFontaine… whose voice appeared in some 5000 movie trailers and 350,000 (? really?) commercials. You know him as soon as you hear him. Well, here is a new ds106 audio assignment for you, Use the Voice, bring The Voice to something around you: Don LaFontaine was legendary for hos deep voiceover intros […]
- 2010
- Three D’s cc licensed flickr photo shared by Johnny Grim My noble plans to spend a week not blogging here and commenting on other blogs sounded pretty noble, but in execution? In a word, “meh”. I certainly succeeded on the first part, but managed at best, a few comments a day during a week of travel, overload, […]
- 2009
- LiveScribed Northern Voice Presentation Nancy LiveScribed Me! by cogdogblog posted 22 Feb ’09, 11.25am MST PST on flickr Mucho gracias to Nancy White for using my new LiveScribe pen to record audio and graphic notes of my Say/Blog It With Pictures session at Northern Voice. The pen records the audio: cogdogblog.com/wp-content/audio/nv09.mp3 and in the micro-dot notebook synchronizes each pen […]
- 2008
- Trackback Love At the Northern Voice Tiki party, Scott Leslie wowed us (well I was wowed) with his rendition of a poem only geeks could grok, called “Trackback Love”. I grabbed some video with my little Canon Powershot- the lighting is awful but the audio is not bad. Trackback Love (3.4 Mb Quicktime 1:42) Share this barking […]
- Twitter Works! Twitter Works! by cogdogblog posted 22 Feb ’08, 3.38pm MST PST on flickr Bill Fitzgerald exclaimed this after asking attendees at nrothern voice who had aspirin and Chris Lott tweete back, "me" People keep asking for how to use flickr or what its practical applications are. Bill Fitzgerald can now vouch that he was able […]
- VoiceThreading Northern Voice How does one blog a blogging conference? However you feel like doing it! It’s Friday, time for Moose Camp at Northern Voice 2008 and I am convinced every conference should launch with a tiki bar party. So the Waldorf Hotel was packed with bloggers of all varieties. Got to hang out with Jim Groom, Chris […]
- 2006
- Odeo, Duh I am quickly working up ideas for my Monday demo session on the “p-casting” word. Thinking about some of Cole’s comments desiring simplicity, I slapped my head in shock as I realize that Odea was a tool site I had known about, bookmarked, but had not really explored. Someone else can better summarize what it […]
- Hey “No Cat”- Just What is Conversation? The notion of “distributed conversations” in blog space seems to rear its head on some cycle. It always seems to boil down to a polarization of those who find some level of comfort in the chaotic widely distributed notion and those that seem to covet the notion that it needs to be nicely organized in […]
- Co-Co-Co-Co-Commenting I’ve been trying to use coComment, the tool that allows you to keep a record of your “distributed” blog conversations– by activating a bookmark when commenting elsewhere, coComment stores it on their site,a dn then submits it normally to the blog you are jabbering about. This way you can track conversations by visiting your coComment […]
- 2005
- If All The Learning Objects Are Web Pages Who Needs a Repository? I’ve done a number of workshops demo-ing how to search various learning object “repositories” and invariably deal with the question, “Why don’t we just do a Google search?”. Strangely, having built one sort of similar system myself, I am asking the same question. Stephen Downes today shared the announcement of the Commonwealth of Learning’s Learning […]
- Thinking Sideways About Web / Video conferencing Despite our best intentions, the cart named technology seems to often get ahead of the horse. In a recent meeting, one of our groups looking at new technologies made the usual strong case for looking at video conference technologies- better use of time, people not having enough time to come to development events, people not […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 17 posts previously published on February 22nd
- 2023
- Small Screen Theory File this in the gut conjecture category, not grounded in anything beyond my failable non artificial questionable intelligence in my own grey matter (King, 1978). Plus, I am sure it is better crafted elsewhere. It’s no secret that my own practices and beliefs remain around this value of outloud outboard brain (tell-tale that this precious […] ➡
- 2016
- Meet Halle Gottfried… Meet Halle Gottried (pronounced MA-lee GAHT-fryd) on Facebook Fakebook WTFbook. Chief Engineer on an MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) container ship, he studied Engineering Science and Mechanics at Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences. When not on the high seas, he lives in New York City. According to someone he communicates with– I will call […] ➡
- The Catfish I Remember My fury over Facebook Catfishing was still simmering in the morning (I am far from done). And then, by some kind of weird sort of cosmic serendipity, the song I heard playing on my iPod (one of 4000+ songs randomly shuffled) was the sign Catfish by Bob Dylan. How is this even possible? I heard […] ➡
- 2015
- A Note on Locating Giphy Images From URLs In the process of making my last post I was compelled for reasons not work explaining to generate an animated GIF using as an overlay, the numbers display like in the movie The Matrix. I really do not need to link or embed that, do I? I did find what I was looking for searching […] ➡
- I Am Just a Number (740343) in the Twitter Matrix. Hello. I almost missed this tweet. User 740343 | @cogdog | Created Wed Jan 31 21:24:02 2007 — Every User (@Every_User_) February 22, 2015 With apologies to John Entwistle My name is 740343, And I’ve just become alive I’m the newest populator Of the planet we call Twitter Following the curiosity link for @Every_user I find […] ➡
- In 1983 AT&T Foresaw The MOOCtronic Blame Mike… https://twitter.com/holden/status/568875343165071360 How can I avoid such a calling? AT&T’s 1983 rollout of the Viewtron System and Sceptre Videotex Terminal hits it all- information overload, online shopping, banking, and school, all with majorly poofy hair, and maybe some of the best eyebrow raises in corporate video history and some background upbeat midi music that […] ➡
- 2012
- “In a World”… Do The Voice Long live Don LaFontaine… whose voice appeared in some 5000 movie trailers and 350,000 (? really?) commercials. You know him as soon as you hear him. Well, here is a new ds106 audio assignment for you, Use the Voice, bring The Voice to something around you: Don LaFontaine was legendary for hos deep voiceover intros […] ➡
- 2010
- Three D’s cc licensed flickr photo shared by Johnny Grim My noble plans to spend a week not blogging here and commenting on other blogs sounded pretty noble, but in execution? In a word, “meh”. I certainly succeeded on the first part, but managed at best, a few comments a day during a week of travel, overload, […] ➡
- 2009
- LiveScribed Northern Voice Presentation Nancy LiveScribed Me! by cogdogblog posted 22 Feb ’09, 11.25am MST PST on flickr Mucho gracias to Nancy White for using my new LiveScribe pen to record audio and graphic notes of my Say/Blog It With Pictures session at Northern Voice. The pen records the audio: cogdogblog.com/wp-content/audio/nv09.mp3 and in the micro-dot notebook synchronizes each pen […] ➡
- 2008
- Trackback Love At the Northern Voice Tiki party, Scott Leslie wowed us (well I was wowed) with his rendition of a poem only geeks could grok, called “Trackback Love”. I grabbed some video with my little Canon Powershot- the lighting is awful but the audio is not bad. Trackback Love (3.4 Mb Quicktime 1:42) Share this barking […] ➡
- Twitter Works! Twitter Works! by cogdogblog posted 22 Feb ’08, 3.38pm MST PST on flickr Bill Fitzgerald exclaimed this after asking attendees at nrothern voice who had aspirin and Chris Lott tweete back, "me" People keep asking for how to use flickr or what its practical applications are. Bill Fitzgerald can now vouch that he was able […] ➡
- VoiceThreading Northern Voice How does one blog a blogging conference? However you feel like doing it! It’s Friday, time for Moose Camp at Northern Voice 2008 and I am convinced every conference should launch with a tiki bar party. So the Waldorf Hotel was packed with bloggers of all varieties. Got to hang out with Jim Groom, Chris […] ➡
- 2006
- Odeo, Duh I am quickly working up ideas for my Monday demo session on the “p-casting” word. Thinking about some of Cole’s comments desiring simplicity, I slapped my head in shock as I realize that Odea was a tool site I had known about, bookmarked, but had not really explored. Someone else can better summarize what it […] ➡
- Hey “No Cat”- Just What is Conversation? The notion of “distributed conversations” in blog space seems to rear its head on some cycle. It always seems to boil down to a polarization of those who find some level of comfort in the chaotic widely distributed notion and those that seem to covet the notion that it needs to be nicely organized in […] ➡
- Co-Co-Co-Co-Commenting I’ve been trying to use coComment, the tool that allows you to keep a record of your “distributed” blog conversations– by activating a bookmark when commenting elsewhere, coComment stores it on their site,a dn then submits it normally to the blog you are jabbering about. This way you can track conversations by visiting your coComment […] ➡
- 2005
- If All The Learning Objects Are Web Pages Who Needs a Repository? I’ve done a number of workshops demo-ing how to search various learning object “repositories” and invariably deal with the question, “Why don’t we just do a Google search?”. Strangely, having built one sort of similar system myself, I am asking the same question. Stephen Downes today shared the announcement of the Commonwealth of Learning’s Learning […] ➡
- Thinking Sideways About Web / Video conferencing Despite our best intentions, the cart named technology seems to often get ahead of the horse. In a recent meeting, one of our groups looking at new technologies made the usual strong case for looking at video conference technologies- better use of time, people not having enough time to come to development events, people not […] ➡
// 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.
