“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 15 posts previously published on June 4th
- 2025
- Gimme Five! (months of Daily Photos) Now I am way head of last year, when my Daily Photo Habit disappeared in late April. I have gotten through the fifth month, getting to dangerously boisterous yelling of FIVE MONTHS IN, I CAN DO ANYTHING. Well I can be three days late in blogging it. Is anyone counting? The numbers are there in […]
- 2013
- Forget Glass, Get Ass Jeez, anyone can wear their google glasses in the shower. The next horizon is below the hips. Get Google Ass. How it Feels What it Does How to Get One Share this barking on social media
- 2011
- Scott 4 Life Scott Leslie was feeling his ds106 radio love at the ETUG meeting… I’m thinking of trying some more multiple camera shots to animGIF-ize. We all had quite a bit of fun with http://bigassmessage.com… for example, Try this one on. Share this barking on social media
- 2010
- Road Dog cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Getting some of the essentials ready for my upcoming road trip. If it’s June, it must mean I am not home. In fact, I am supposed to be in my car in a few minutes. This next leg is a car expedition, which at first sounded like a […]
- 2008
- When You Run Across Your High School Buddy on OLDaily In the midst of my regular daily mix of seeing what new things come into my antennae, I am reading the email update of Stephen’s OLDaily and stop my scan/scrolling– there it is, a familiar name: How Identity and Access Management Can Help Your Institution Touch Its Toes Kevin Morooney, EDUCAUSE Connect This presentation was […]
- EDURUSH Andy Rush, I feel your pain! You anguish (not really) Seriously! Stop taking Edupunk so seriously and it sounds like you are feeling meme-deprived: Do you know what Jim posted about right before his seminal Edupunk meme (Jim says it’s not a meme, by the way) was born. He blogged about ME. What about me? […]
- 2007
- Vonnegut, Blogging, Doing Courtesy of an airline magazine, on the way to Indianapolis, I found some gem quality quotes from a last interview with Kurt Vonnegut. Among the quotables was one that really spoke to me, especially in response to Martha’s thoughtful post on why blog: I speak with real painters and real artists from time to time […]
- Quote of the Day As we exited from a fabulous seafood dinner at the Oceanaire in downtown Indianapolis, our tourist eyes were caught by the flashing light animation up the street- looked like a electronic dancer, an avatar maybe. When we asked the valet what that was, he quickly explained it: Waste of Taxpayers Money Gotta like the honesty […]
- 2006
- Arcane, Overlooked Those two adjectives are about the last ones I would reach for to describe Stephen Downes. But how long and drawn out is the “long tail” may be relative. But these are the words of the June 5, 2006 Time Magazine article on the Long-Tail phenomena– see the very last paragraph in Long Tail’s Tribe: […]
- Grab Bag Travel Observations Today I am in transit to Cleveland for the 2006 NMC Conference. After being in the odd world of Second Life a bit more this week, it was surreal to watch the real avatars here on First Life. On the way….. * Cell Phone Bubble Violations Ahhh, the old days, when a telephone call was […]
- 2005
- Today’s Jots RTMark: Your Real Corporation Clearinghouse®TMark receives project ideas from internet users, then lists them (here). Each listed project has its own discussion list (linked from the project). When a project requires a bit of funding to be accomplished, sometimes investors will step up to the plate and offer their help. Even more often, people will […]
- 2004
- ObjectExegesisParanoia What is the obsession (paranoia) with trying to define (exegesis) learning objects (no definitions)? It is certainly useful to have understandable definitions for tightly constrained concepts like triskaidekaphobia, but when trying to introduce faculty new to the concept of learning objects, it seems almost unavoidable to stop them from wanting to labor over finding or […]
- Aggregators as Referrers? There are people, likely those trying to make a buck off of RSS, who would like to measure how much “hit” there is from information syndicated as RSS Feeds, consumed, and hopefully clicked at. Checking your web server log for access of the RSS URL do not mean much, as they are continually hit by […]
- Xplana.com: The Fetid Stink of Linrot Xplana.com is rotting in my aggregator- they used to have a series of education technology blog articles; I cannot say I was a frequent reader, but I monitored them on my regular rounds. But there is a foul, dead skunk smell coming from the aggregator coming from http://www.xplana.com/, and that is the odor of Linkrot, […]
- Diana Oblinger Ocotillo Presentation: Breezed Version Adds Punch, Value to PPT Philosophical question: If a presentation falls in the woods, and there is no one there, does it make a sound? Or for that matter, if you miss a conference presentation, does an abstract, a paper, or even the PowerPoint itself really provide information (worth the weight, er… wait, of the download?) Like Jay Cross’s recently […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 15 posts previously published on June 4th
- 2025
- Gimme Five! (months of Daily Photos) Now I am way head of last year, when my Daily Photo Habit disappeared in late April. I have gotten through the fifth month, getting to dangerously boisterous yelling of FIVE MONTHS IN, I CAN DO ANYTHING. Well I can be three days late in blogging it. Is anyone counting? The numbers are there in […] ➡
- 2013
- Forget Glass, Get Ass Jeez, anyone can wear their google glasses in the shower. The next horizon is below the hips. Get Google Ass. How it Feels What it Does How to Get One Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2011
- Scott 4 Life Scott Leslie was feeling his ds106 radio love at the ETUG meeting… I’m thinking of trying some more multiple camera shots to animGIF-ize. We all had quite a bit of fun with http://bigassmessage.com… for example, Try this one on. Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2010
- Road Dog cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Getting some of the essentials ready for my upcoming road trip. If it’s June, it must mean I am not home. In fact, I am supposed to be in my car in a few minutes. This next leg is a car expedition, which at first sounded like a […] ➡
- 2008
- When You Run Across Your High School Buddy on OLDaily In the midst of my regular daily mix of seeing what new things come into my antennae, I am reading the email update of Stephen’s OLDaily and stop my scan/scrolling– there it is, a familiar name: How Identity and Access Management Can Help Your Institution Touch Its Toes Kevin Morooney, EDUCAUSE Connect This presentation was […] ➡
- EDURUSH Andy Rush, I feel your pain! You anguish (not really) Seriously! Stop taking Edupunk so seriously and it sounds like you are feeling meme-deprived: Do you know what Jim posted about right before his seminal Edupunk meme (Jim says it’s not a meme, by the way) was born. He blogged about ME. What about me? […] ➡
- 2007
- Vonnegut, Blogging, Doing Courtesy of an airline magazine, on the way to Indianapolis, I found some gem quality quotes from a last interview with Kurt Vonnegut. Among the quotables was one that really spoke to me, especially in response to Martha’s thoughtful post on why blog: I speak with real painters and real artists from time to time […] ➡
- Quote of the Day As we exited from a fabulous seafood dinner at the Oceanaire in downtown Indianapolis, our tourist eyes were caught by the flashing light animation up the street- looked like a electronic dancer, an avatar maybe. When we asked the valet what that was, he quickly explained it: Waste of Taxpayers Money Gotta like the honesty […] ➡
- 2006
- Arcane, Overlooked Those two adjectives are about the last ones I would reach for to describe Stephen Downes. But how long and drawn out is the “long tail” may be relative. But these are the words of the June 5, 2006 Time Magazine article on the Long-Tail phenomena– see the very last paragraph in Long Tail’s Tribe: […] ➡
- Grab Bag Travel Observations Today I am in transit to Cleveland for the 2006 NMC Conference. After being in the odd world of Second Life a bit more this week, it was surreal to watch the real avatars here on First Life. On the way….. * Cell Phone Bubble Violations Ahhh, the old days, when a telephone call was […] ➡
- 2005
- Today’s Jots RTMark: Your Real Corporation Clearinghouse®TMark receives project ideas from internet users, then lists them (here). Each listed project has its own discussion list (linked from the project). When a project requires a bit of funding to be accomplished, sometimes investors will step up to the plate and offer their help. Even more often, people will […] ➡
- 2004
- ObjectExegesisParanoia What is the obsession (paranoia) with trying to define (exegesis) learning objects (no definitions)? It is certainly useful to have understandable definitions for tightly constrained concepts like triskaidekaphobia, but when trying to introduce faculty new to the concept of learning objects, it seems almost unavoidable to stop them from wanting to labor over finding or […] ➡
- Aggregators as Referrers? There are people, likely those trying to make a buck off of RSS, who would like to measure how much “hit” there is from information syndicated as RSS Feeds, consumed, and hopefully clicked at. Checking your web server log for access of the RSS URL do not mean much, as they are continually hit by […] ➡
- Xplana.com: The Fetid Stink of Linrot Xplana.com is rotting in my aggregator- they used to have a series of education technology blog articles; I cannot say I was a frequent reader, but I monitored them on my regular rounds. But there is a foul, dead skunk smell coming from the aggregator coming from http://www.xplana.com/, and that is the odor of Linkrot, […] ➡
- Diana Oblinger Ocotillo Presentation: Breezed Version Adds Punch, Value to PPT Philosophical question: If a presentation falls in the woods, and there is no one there, does it make a sound? Or for that matter, if you miss a conference presentation, does an abstract, a paper, or even the PowerPoint itself really provide information (worth the weight, er… wait, of the download?) Like Jay Cross’s recently […] ➡
// 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.
