“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 14 posts previously published on May 9th
- 2016
- Some Cool Tech For #INF115 It took some alarm clock action, but was worth it to get up early for a Skype call with Antonio Vantaggiato and his INF115 students at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. It seems like a while ago, but only a few weeks since I left Puerto Rico, having spent a month at the University and helping […]
- 2015
- I Click, She Paints My sister Harriet is rather talented. Not only did she pick out the paint colors and materials for last year’s kitchen makeover , she’s good with the artistic kinds of painting too. Growing up, I remember her doing oil painting (one of her tall ships sits in my living room), but now retired in Florida, […]
- A Personal Toolkit for Information This concept could be big. Huge. Whilst looking for something else this morning, I opened a sealed box. Besides finding my Masters thesis and a box of old black and white print photos, I found this box of HyperCard diskettes, still sealed inside their protective plastic holder. The box is dated 1987, and the paper […]
- 2014
- Maricopa OER Practitioners: Sian Proctor As part of my fellowship for the OER Research Hub at the Open University I am sharing these excerpts from conversations about OER use/creation recorded in April 2014 with faculty at the Maricopa Community Colleges. creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Sian Proctor teaches Geology at South Mountain Community College, […]
- 2013
- Google Personality Disorder I might be the last one left still using Google Reader. Why not? Although banished from the menus, it will work through July, 2013. I’m in no hurry to join the Mad Rush To Find The Perfect Reader Replacement That Does Not Exist. But I was surprised when tonight reader announced that a newer version […]
- 2011
- Story a Day May #9: Talking Terry The Bum Marlon Brando could have only achieved his heightened performance in On the Waterfront with the help of his film coaches, such as Talking Terry, shown in this historic footage. (this is the Talking Larry iPhone app, a fun little diversion of mimicry; and it can record performances as video, even upload to YouTube). If you […]
- Bryan Alexander’s Amazing Story of Openness In preparation for a presentation I will do June 2 for the ETUG meeting in Nelson BC, I have been collecting a new series of "Amazing Stories". On my recent trip to the east coast, I snagged a series of new ones from friends and colleagues I visited. And this will be a dress rehearsal […]
- 2007
- User Generated Video Subititles… in Different Languages! Check out dotSUB “Any film in any language”. Now I am inferring the site from a short visit, and there is no “about” page; even the “help” page yields only: We’re Working on Help In the meantime, please send us an email at help@dostub.com. But hey, it’s all good, it’s all beta. What I could […]
- Follow the Bouncing Link Attribution It’s good to see a bit more of attribution by linking, or coined here as “Linktribution” in blog posts. Yet, I find it somewhat funny, and a bit disconcerting, that people are so rapid blogging that they are just attributing it back to some other blog post that is referring to another blog post … […]
- Cracked and Flimsy Slate I can count on one paw the number of articles I’ve read on Slate. I am definitely thinking this rag is worth it best virtual fish wrapping, and mostly is a waste of web code and server electricity. They are not alone, but lobbing the criticisms at Twitter like in What Are You Doing? The […]
- 2005
- In Print/Web: “Internet Audio: Can You Hear/Talk to Me Now? Good.” Our Spring 2005 issue of the mcli Forum is printed on its way to all faculty and staff at Maricopa. We always put on the fast burn to create the web version in time to be announced before the paper hits the mailboxes. It’s a tedious formatting chore, but it is actually one of my […]
- Not Yet Riding the Tiger I am not one to stand in line or rush out to get the first version of a new operating system, so I am going to let the nice other eager souls take the first cuts on OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Over the years, I have found it more prudent to wait for the X.X.1 […]
- 2004
- Spam Roach Spray I told you I was serious. Steps have been taken to turn the tide on comment spam roaches. The MT-Blacklist can only go so far (and activity logs show it does squeeze out the regular v*agra repeat crowd). Image courtesy of the Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots . Next in the arsenal are steps 1 and […]
- Now The Dog is Getting Pissed at Spammers Grrrrrrr, you’d think perhaps on freakin’ mother’s day, the spam roaches might be doing something, but they obviously have no birth mothers, hatched in the sewers form when they came. 6 blog spams related to a topic I will not even defile this dog house with, all sent to a single post in span of […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 14 posts previously published on May 9th
- 2016
- Some Cool Tech For #INF115 It took some alarm clock action, but was worth it to get up early for a Skype call with Antonio Vantaggiato and his INF115 students at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. It seems like a while ago, but only a few weeks since I left Puerto Rico, having spent a month at the University and helping […] ➡
- 2015
- I Click, She Paints My sister Harriet is rather talented. Not only did she pick out the paint colors and materials for last year’s kitchen makeover , she’s good with the artistic kinds of painting too. Growing up, I remember her doing oil painting (one of her tall ships sits in my living room), but now retired in Florida, […] ➡
- A Personal Toolkit for Information This concept could be big. Huge. Whilst looking for something else this morning, I opened a sealed box. Besides finding my Masters thesis and a box of old black and white print photos, I found this box of HyperCard diskettes, still sealed inside their protective plastic holder. The box is dated 1987, and the paper […] ➡
- 2014
- Maricopa OER Practitioners: Sian Proctor As part of my fellowship for the OER Research Hub at the Open University I am sharing these excerpts from conversations about OER use/creation recorded in April 2014 with faculty at the Maricopa Community Colleges. creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Sian Proctor teaches Geology at South Mountain Community College, […] ➡
- 2013
- Google Personality Disorder I might be the last one left still using Google Reader. Why not? Although banished from the menus, it will work through July, 2013. I’m in no hurry to join the Mad Rush To Find The Perfect Reader Replacement That Does Not Exist. But I was surprised when tonight reader announced that a newer version […] ➡
- 2011
- Story a Day May #9: Talking Terry The Bum Marlon Brando could have only achieved his heightened performance in On the Waterfront with the help of his film coaches, such as Talking Terry, shown in this historic footage. (this is the Talking Larry iPhone app, a fun little diversion of mimicry; and it can record performances as video, even upload to YouTube). If you […] ➡
- Bryan Alexander’s Amazing Story of Openness In preparation for a presentation I will do June 2 for the ETUG meeting in Nelson BC, I have been collecting a new series of "Amazing Stories". On my recent trip to the east coast, I snagged a series of new ones from friends and colleagues I visited. And this will be a dress rehearsal […] ➡
- 2007
- User Generated Video Subititles… in Different Languages! Check out dotSUB “Any film in any language”. Now I am inferring the site from a short visit, and there is no “about” page; even the “help” page yields only: We’re Working on Help In the meantime, please send us an email at help@dostub.com. But hey, it’s all good, it’s all beta. What I could […] ➡
- Follow the Bouncing Link Attribution It’s good to see a bit more of attribution by linking, or coined here as “Linktribution” in blog posts. Yet, I find it somewhat funny, and a bit disconcerting, that people are so rapid blogging that they are just attributing it back to some other blog post that is referring to another blog post … […] ➡
- Cracked and Flimsy Slate I can count on one paw the number of articles I’ve read on Slate. I am definitely thinking this rag is worth it best virtual fish wrapping, and mostly is a waste of web code and server electricity. They are not alone, but lobbing the criticisms at Twitter like in What Are You Doing? The […] ➡
- 2005
- In Print/Web: “Internet Audio: Can You Hear/Talk to Me Now? Good.” Our Spring 2005 issue of the mcli Forum is printed on its way to all faculty and staff at Maricopa. We always put on the fast burn to create the web version in time to be announced before the paper hits the mailboxes. It’s a tedious formatting chore, but it is actually one of my […] ➡
- Not Yet Riding the Tiger I am not one to stand in line or rush out to get the first version of a new operating system, so I am going to let the nice other eager souls take the first cuts on OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Over the years, I have found it more prudent to wait for the X.X.1 […] ➡
- 2004
- Spam Roach Spray I told you I was serious. Steps have been taken to turn the tide on comment spam roaches. The MT-Blacklist can only go so far (and activity logs show it does squeeze out the regular v*agra repeat crowd). Image courtesy of the Orphanage of Cast-Off Mascots . Next in the arsenal are steps 1 and […] ➡
- Now The Dog is Getting Pissed at Spammers Grrrrrrr, you’d think perhaps on freakin’ mother’s day, the spam roaches might be doing something, but they obviously have no birth mothers, hatched in the sewers form when they came. 6 blog spams related to a topic I will not even defile this dog house with, all sent to a single post in span of […] ➡
// 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.
