“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 21 posts previously published on August 7th
- 2022
- On Reshaping: Tooling WordPress with nothing other than it’s URLs This is the words written as my brow is furrowing. This birdspace thread I was tagged into started with a question from Robin Derosa If my recent blabbed post cast some shade on “promptism” does this draw me into a spiral down on what appears to me like educators focused on platformism? There is nothing […]
- 2020
- The Weird Toy Space of Scavenged Public Domain Images (A Bit Slimy, Too) In every project, playful remix, and blog post I do I am on the prowl for open licensed images. There’s an ever increasing number of sites where you find these. They are far from equivalent. There is some kind of profit game out there, byt would guess it’s ad-driven. Thus, Google’s allure is the tail […]
- 2017
- Time For A New Coat of Theme Paint Around this Dog House I was not going to do this until a little later, but in one of those late night self conversations of “I wonder if I can do this quickly” I’ve dropped a new theme on this blog. This one is a free one in the WordPress bin, Cover which I first saw used by Clint […]
- 2016
- Granny’s Stories Episode 2: Meeting Abraham I spent maybe another hour last night adding a few more minutes of audio recorded with my grandmother in 1994 to TapeWrite. I added a bit of introduction to the recording. This follows my description of the series My Grandmother’s Stories, from Audio Tape to TapeWrite and Episode 1: Growing Up in Newark. In Episode […]
- 2013
- Muzzled Alas the rodent urchins of the web have been pummeling Hippie Hosting in a relentless DDOS attack, ending a long problem-less spree since Tim moved the server in the beginning of the year. It’s also taken down ds106. The hippies are slumbering cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by abby chicken […]
- 2012
- The Negropontes Must Be Crazy I could not resist this, even though I really should have spent the last hour doing something productive. But I read Mike Caulfield’s post on True of EdTech As Well, where he latches on to a criticism of the TED technocratic approach to world problems, and this quote from a quote just cried out to […]
- 2009
- Dogs on Blogs cc licensed flickr photo shared by K_iwi “I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant, tweeting.” (since I cannot use a copyrighted cartoon!) Share this barking on social media
- Twitter is for Old People cc licensed flickr photo shared by Melissa Maples Probably sending messages to @Geritol or @Depends… maybe arranging a bingo meetup… “@Methuselah I’m spending my grandkids inheritance on iTunes movies. Know where I can score some good v?” Yeah, that’s you and me and everyone else on twitter. See also how old people use Facebook. Now […]
- 2007
- Ate Things Thanks, Intellagirl, thanks… I’ve been tagged for an “8 Random Things About Me” meme.The rules are: 1) Post these rules before you give your facts 2) List 8 random facts about yourself 3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them 4) Leave a comment on […]
- World Speed Record for Customer Support As much as I complain about getting shafted by lousy customers service and shlocky telephone answer trees, it is well worth my time to flip a positive nod to an amazing level of response. How… um refreshing! Okay, so I was chipping away tonight at a few more examples notched off for the 50 Web […]
- 2006
- Tech Code ID# 10T So the sun is shining a bit brighter on my technical woes. Last weekend, my satellite internet connection at my cabin was back where it should be (800-1000 kbs download and 150-200 kbs upload), not exactly the DSL speed at home, but that’s as good as Hughes gets. However, that’s not to say their support […]
- 2005
- Conference Bagged flickr foto Another Conference Bagavailable on my flickr Another satchel bites the dust For me, the worst part about registering at a conference is when they hand you over the conference bag. Yechhhh. The only comfort is that 300, 1000, 6000 other participants are stuck with the same appendege. Out of 12 years in this […]
- Fleeting Human Preferences On the first leg of my flight from Phoenix to Aspen, I’ve listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s ITConversations podcast on Human Nature. Author of the popular Blink and Tipping Point books, Malcolm Gladwell seems in voice to to find a great way to bring about data, research, and human nature to an interesting place. In this […]
- Freudian Ring Tones I’ve got time on my hands in the Phoenix Airport. My short flight in the small commuter jet to Aspen is delayed because… ahem.. one of the crew has now shown up yet. Yikes. Beyond munching on over priced food that one does not really need, and not wanting to read your magazine not wanting […]
- Do Blink? BlinkList Added to Bookmarklet Tools Just found Yet Another Social Bookmark Tool- BlinkList offers site marking and tagging: BlinkList is a tool that allows you to create a mental map of the internet of sites that are important to you. It’s a bookmarking manager designed to work in the same way your brain stores data and thinks about things. When […]
- 2003
- MERLOT: EduBloggers Plus Beer There was a significant drop in weblogging activity this evening, starving Stephen’s MERLOT conference feed, as D’Arcy, Scott, Brian, Greg, Stephen, Bruce, Alan (plus Michelle but she may not want her blog linked… but we know where it is 😉 downed some ales and swapped stories over at… um… what was the name of that […]
- MERLOT: RSS SPOTTED (film at 11) Well, no fanfare, no big announcement, just an utterance at an earlier web services presentation, but here in its full glory, a true blue MERLOT RSS feed for… the ten newest items in physica. No secret that David Carter-Tod had an early clue- they are using his RSS News Center tool, another RSS to Javascript […]
- MERLOT: Federated Searches “MERLOT Focus on: Federated Search Technologies” Martin Konig Bastiaan Waiting for the overview, background slides about federated searches. In a nutshell, use web services to spread search and retrieval across multiple sources. But the three dollar (Canadian) question- will they put a URL on the screen of a MERLOT RSS feed? Share this barking on […]
- MERLOT: CATS and WebQuests “Herding CATS: A Model for Professional Development for Academic Technology” Abbe Altman, CSU Sonoma CATS= Community of Academic Technology Staff (CATS) also part of MERLOT, see MERLOT repository of CATS materials (Comment- the dogs here are riled at the feline metaphors 😉 Share this barking on social media
- MERLOT: ECollaborative Online (Aussie View) Getting ready to start the Thursday 8:00am general session, another presenation by Garry Putland from EdNA (Education Network Australia). There will be other bloggers in the room madly typing the notes, so I plan to lean back and observe… Too bad the room is looking pretty sparse- Garry is brilliant and EdNA Online is worth […]
- We Would Clone MLX If…. We are flattered. David is aiming for a clone of our Maricopa Learning eXchange, and is added to the list of people requesting a copy of it. We are not being stingy and would love to put the code out there. For the 10 years I have been web publishing, our MCLI site has and […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 21 posts previously published on August 7th
- 2022
- On Reshaping: Tooling WordPress with nothing other than it’s URLs This is the words written as my brow is furrowing. This birdspace thread I was tagged into started with a question from Robin Derosa If my recent blabbed post cast some shade on “promptism” does this draw me into a spiral down on what appears to me like educators focused on platformism? There is nothing […] ➡
- 2020
- 2017
- 2016
- Granny’s Stories Episode 2: Meeting Abraham I spent maybe another hour last night adding a few more minutes of audio recorded with my grandmother in 1994 to TapeWrite. I added a bit of introduction to the recording. This follows my description of the series My Grandmother’s Stories, from Audio Tape to TapeWrite and Episode 1: Growing Up in Newark. In Episode […] ➡
- 2013
- Muzzled Alas the rodent urchins of the web have been pummeling Hippie Hosting in a relentless DDOS attack, ending a long problem-less spree since Tim moved the server in the beginning of the year. It’s also taken down ds106. The hippies are slumbering cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by abby chicken […] ➡
- 2012
- The Negropontes Must Be Crazy I could not resist this, even though I really should have spent the last hour doing something productive. But I read Mike Caulfield’s post on True of EdTech As Well, where he latches on to a criticism of the TED technocratic approach to world problems, and this quote from a quote just cried out to […] ➡
- 2009
- Dogs on Blogs cc licensed flickr photo shared by K_iwi “I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant, tweeting.” (since I cannot use a copyrighted cartoon!) Share this barking on social media ➡
- Twitter is for Old People cc licensed flickr photo shared by Melissa Maples Probably sending messages to @Geritol or @Depends… maybe arranging a bingo meetup… “@Methuselah I’m spending my grandkids inheritance on iTunes movies. Know where I can score some good v?” Yeah, that’s you and me and everyone else on twitter. See also how old people use Facebook. Now […] ➡
- 2007
- Ate Things Thanks, Intellagirl, thanks… I’ve been tagged for an “8 Random Things About Me” meme.The rules are: 1) Post these rules before you give your facts 2) List 8 random facts about yourself 3) At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them 4) Leave a comment on […] ➡
- World Speed Record for Customer Support As much as I complain about getting shafted by lousy customers service and shlocky telephone answer trees, it is well worth my time to flip a positive nod to an amazing level of response. How… um refreshing! Okay, so I was chipping away tonight at a few more examples notched off for the 50 Web […] ➡
- 2006
- Tech Code ID# 10T So the sun is shining a bit brighter on my technical woes. Last weekend, my satellite internet connection at my cabin was back where it should be (800-1000 kbs download and 150-200 kbs upload), not exactly the DSL speed at home, but that’s as good as Hughes gets. However, that’s not to say their support […] ➡
- 2005
- Conference Bagged flickr foto Another Conference Bagavailable on my flickr Another satchel bites the dust For me, the worst part about registering at a conference is when they hand you over the conference bag. Yechhhh. The only comfort is that 300, 1000, 6000 other participants are stuck with the same appendege. Out of 12 years in this […] ➡
- Fleeting Human Preferences On the first leg of my flight from Phoenix to Aspen, I’ve listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s ITConversations podcast on Human Nature. Author of the popular Blink and Tipping Point books, Malcolm Gladwell seems in voice to to find a great way to bring about data, research, and human nature to an interesting place. In this […] ➡
- Freudian Ring Tones I’ve got time on my hands in the Phoenix Airport. My short flight in the small commuter jet to Aspen is delayed because… ahem.. one of the crew has now shown up yet. Yikes. Beyond munching on over priced food that one does not really need, and not wanting to read your magazine not wanting […] ➡
- Do Blink? BlinkList Added to Bookmarklet Tools Just found Yet Another Social Bookmark Tool- BlinkList offers site marking and tagging: BlinkList is a tool that allows you to create a mental map of the internet of sites that are important to you. It’s a bookmarking manager designed to work in the same way your brain stores data and thinks about things. When […] ➡
- 2003
- MERLOT: EduBloggers Plus Beer There was a significant drop in weblogging activity this evening, starving Stephen’s MERLOT conference feed, as D’Arcy, Scott, Brian, Greg, Stephen, Bruce, Alan (plus Michelle but she may not want her blog linked… but we know where it is 😉 downed some ales and swapped stories over at… um… what was the name of that […] ➡
- MERLOT: RSS SPOTTED (film at 11) Well, no fanfare, no big announcement, just an utterance at an earlier web services presentation, but here in its full glory, a true blue MERLOT RSS feed for… the ten newest items in physica. No secret that David Carter-Tod had an early clue- they are using his RSS News Center tool, another RSS to Javascript […] ➡
- MERLOT: Federated Searches “MERLOT Focus on: Federated Search Technologies” Martin Konig Bastiaan Waiting for the overview, background slides about federated searches. In a nutshell, use web services to spread search and retrieval across multiple sources. But the three dollar (Canadian) question- will they put a URL on the screen of a MERLOT RSS feed? Share this barking on […] ➡
- MERLOT: CATS and WebQuests “Herding CATS: A Model for Professional Development for Academic Technology” Abbe Altman, CSU Sonoma CATS= Community of Academic Technology Staff (CATS) also part of MERLOT, see MERLOT repository of CATS materials (Comment- the dogs here are riled at the feline metaphors 😉 Share this barking on social media ➡
- MERLOT: ECollaborative Online (Aussie View) Getting ready to start the Thursday 8:00am general session, another presenation by Garry Putland from EdNA (Education Network Australia). There will be other bloggers in the room madly typing the notes, so I plan to lean back and observe… Too bad the room is looking pretty sparse- Garry is brilliant and EdNA Online is worth […] ➡
- We Would Clone MLX If…. We are flattered. David is aiming for a clone of our Maricopa Learning eXchange, and is added to the list of people requesting a copy of it. We are not being stingy and would love to put the code out there. For the 10 years I have been web publishing, our MCLI site has and […] ➡
// 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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