“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 18 posts previously published on June 21st
- 2023
- CC Licenses and Cacti: It Gets Interesting (or weird) up Close I love Creative Commons, ok? I’ve followed, used, the licenses since the start, I have the t-shirts. And like many, I can rattle of the stack of letters and explain them. But in my internet roaming, especially for my other strong interest, photography, I come across things in practice, well, that are much less cut […]
- 2021
- When You Find Even More of What You Crafted is a Remix What could be better news that Kirby Ferguson is launching a new wave of Everything is a Remix? Even if I do feel old seeing Tik Tok (I’m not there, but I get it) (that of course cannot be true) (except for being old). What happens when something you created long ago gets peeled back […]
- 2018
- New Daily ______ Theme Option to Add Hashtags In the minor fiddling with code that probably no one will notice department… I include the Daily Blank WordPress theme as a SPLOT since I worked on it early in the TRU fellowship where all the others were spawned. Yup, I blogged about it December 2, 2014. It was created to make a generic version […]
- All Toppings for @OntarioExtend Extended Lunch Today While nervously planning my first major event at the Maricopa Community Colleges as a young instructional technologist my stomach was a mess. My mentor, Vice Chancellor Alfredo de los Santos, assured me that all I needed to do was to get people in the room and something worthwhile to do. Like many of Alfredo’s sayings, […]
- I Code By a Little Help from My Strangers (there’s a quasi Beatles reference in that title) What would you do if my code spit an error? Would you stand up and tweet out to me? Send me an link and I’ll try to replicate I will try to fix it quickly. This is how stuff works. Someone I don’t know tweets about an […]
- 2017
- Open as in Not PDF I’m quickly drafting a unit for the Creative Commons Certification on “Legal vs Technical Openness”. This is to address the difference between something that is shared according to license language but is not quite re-usable because of the file formats things are shared under. e.g. proprietary software ones, ones that may not have a long […]
- 2016
- Imagine The Certification Exists… Tell Us What It Looks Like We are asking everyone (yes that includes you) to share ideas about what a Creative Commons Certification might mean to you, and also, what you would expect as a process to earn one. Here is how to tell us. This was an idea I floated in a post originally published on my blog, from which […]
- 2015
- Futzopublicus is my Dackolupatoni Just try to say that any number of times fast. I have coined what Jon Udell described as a single grain of sand on the internet beach. Yes, anyone can invent make up a word. But the idea (I think) Jon was trying to illustrate in that 2012 class visit to Virginia Tech, is the […]
- Seeing Fish Out of Water: Best Possible Outcome from Conference Talk I love this photo. I walked past it on the way to the final keynote of the CALI conference. I saw an interesting juxtaposition (one of the Big Secret storytelling techniques I spoke of in my own keynote) in the goldfish crackers on the sidewalk. My photo intuition said “take the photo”, but I made […]
- 2012
- Conferences, Sharks, Gems, Flow I’m one of the people frequently lamenting the stale, presenter-centric structure at atmosphere of most academic conferences – that said, it has been well over a year since I went to one of the bigger shindigs, maybe they have changed dramatically. And the THATCamps (which I have not seen but read about and know people […]
- 2009
- By Any Other Name It’s been 8 years since I have been able to say directly “Happy Father’s Day”, and 2001 was not the best one as Dad was in the middle of his 6 month bout with cancer. For a man who had some many names/nicknames– “Morris”, “Mike”, “Mickey”, “Blackie”– by any other name mattered not for the […]
- 2008
- Who Put Wikipedia and Photos on my Google Maps? While swapping google map locations with my new buddy Rowan, I notice a few new buttons on Google Maps- you can now see embedded links to WikiPedia articles about places and links to photos (enable under the More button), plus there is a direct link to view a map location in Google Earth. So being […]
- Cinderella Powerpoint Serendipty CDB readers know my affinity for stories of web serendipity; strange or wonderful connections made that otherwise would have not happened without this “internet” thing- here’s another gem. I’ve forgotten where I first stumbled across on slideshare Power Point 20th Anniversary Cinderella. In 19 slides of lengthly bullet points, inscrutable charts, and exposition, it tells […]
- 2005
- I Clicked. I Laughed. J-Walk Blog. I had first stumbled into the J-Walk Blog a while ago, and remember it as a place that is oozing with sarcasm, right there from the byline: Stuff That May or May Not Interest You Wow, a real mission statement! I had first done the J-Walk with the first of three wickedly funny fake sites […]
- ITConversations Docs As Wiki Poking around the site, I found what is more or less some evolving documentation of the ITConversation software and recording process (that would said as “pro SESS” by by northern neighbors 😉 as a wiki document- see IT Conversations Wiki for things like AudioProcessing, IT Conversations in Education, File Formats, Encoders, Bit Rates and More, […]
- Recently Passed Through My iPod Here is a quick summary of audio streams I have loaded/unloaded listened/skipped on my iPod. I hesitate to call them “podcasts” since I am manually downloading MP3 files and manually moving them on and off my Shuffle. All are found from ITConversations. For what its worth, I typically use the auto fill mode to populate […]
- Two More Feed2JS Mirrors Yesterday I added two new mirror sites for Feed2JS, bringing the full list of mirrors to seven. The two new kids on the block include: OpenGUI serving feeds from California Astra Systems serving feeds from somewhere in the U.K. All sites have been updated to the same functionality (latest update; al;l are listed as the […]
- Unusual Lunch Experience This has nothing to do with blogs, wikis, podcasts, learning objects, or anything technology related. Evidence to the contrary, much in life is not related to that stuff. Yesterday I took a colleague to one of my favorite out of the way lunch spots, hidden away in a local industrial park area. It is a […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 18 posts previously published on June 21st
- 2023
- CC Licenses and Cacti: It Gets Interesting (or weird) up Close I love Creative Commons, ok? I’ve followed, used, the licenses since the start, I have the t-shirts. And like many, I can rattle of the stack of letters and explain them. But in my internet roaming, especially for my other strong interest, photography, I come across things in practice, well, that are much less cut […] ➡
- 2021
- When You Find Even More of What You Crafted is a Remix What could be better news that Kirby Ferguson is launching a new wave of Everything is a Remix? Even if I do feel old seeing Tik Tok (I’m not there, but I get it) (that of course cannot be true) (except for being old). What happens when something you created long ago gets peeled back […] ➡
- 2018
- New Daily ______ Theme Option to Add Hashtags In the minor fiddling with code that probably no one will notice department… I include the Daily Blank WordPress theme as a SPLOT since I worked on it early in the TRU fellowship where all the others were spawned. Yup, I blogged about it December 2, 2014. It was created to make a generic version […] ➡
- All Toppings for @OntarioExtend Extended Lunch Today While nervously planning my first major event at the Maricopa Community Colleges as a young instructional technologist my stomach was a mess. My mentor, Vice Chancellor Alfredo de los Santos, assured me that all I needed to do was to get people in the room and something worthwhile to do. Like many of Alfredo’s sayings, […] ➡
- I Code By a Little Help from My Strangers (there’s a quasi Beatles reference in that title) What would you do if my code spit an error? Would you stand up and tweet out to me? Send me an link and I’ll try to replicate I will try to fix it quickly. This is how stuff works. Someone I don’t know tweets about an […] ➡
- 2017
- Open as in Not PDF I’m quickly drafting a unit for the Creative Commons Certification on “Legal vs Technical Openness”. This is to address the difference between something that is shared according to license language but is not quite re-usable because of the file formats things are shared under. e.g. proprietary software ones, ones that may not have a long […] ➡
- 2016
- Imagine The Certification Exists… Tell Us What It Looks Like We are asking everyone (yes that includes you) to share ideas about what a Creative Commons Certification might mean to you, and also, what you would expect as a process to earn one. Here is how to tell us. This was an idea I floated in a post originally published on my blog, from which […] ➡
- 2015
- Futzopublicus is my Dackolupatoni Just try to say that any number of times fast. I have coined what Jon Udell described as a single grain of sand on the internet beach. Yes, anyone can invent make up a word. But the idea (I think) Jon was trying to illustrate in that 2012 class visit to Virginia Tech, is the […] ➡
- Seeing Fish Out of Water: Best Possible Outcome from Conference Talk I love this photo. I walked past it on the way to the final keynote of the CALI conference. I saw an interesting juxtaposition (one of the Big Secret storytelling techniques I spoke of in my own keynote) in the goldfish crackers on the sidewalk. My photo intuition said “take the photo”, but I made […] ➡
- 2012
- Conferences, Sharks, Gems, Flow I’m one of the people frequently lamenting the stale, presenter-centric structure at atmosphere of most academic conferences – that said, it has been well over a year since I went to one of the bigger shindigs, maybe they have changed dramatically. And the THATCamps (which I have not seen but read about and know people […] ➡
- 2009
- By Any Other Name It’s been 8 years since I have been able to say directly “Happy Father’s Day”, and 2001 was not the best one as Dad was in the middle of his 6 month bout with cancer. For a man who had some many names/nicknames– “Morris”, “Mike”, “Mickey”, “Blackie”– by any other name mattered not for the […] ➡
- 2008
- Who Put Wikipedia and Photos on my Google Maps? While swapping google map locations with my new buddy Rowan, I notice a few new buttons on Google Maps- you can now see embedded links to WikiPedia articles about places and links to photos (enable under the More button), plus there is a direct link to view a map location in Google Earth. So being […] ➡
- Cinderella Powerpoint Serendipty CDB readers know my affinity for stories of web serendipity; strange or wonderful connections made that otherwise would have not happened without this “internet” thing- here’s another gem. I’ve forgotten where I first stumbled across on slideshare Power Point 20th Anniversary Cinderella. In 19 slides of lengthly bullet points, inscrutable charts, and exposition, it tells […] ➡
- 2005
- I Clicked. I Laughed. J-Walk Blog. I had first stumbled into the J-Walk Blog a while ago, and remember it as a place that is oozing with sarcasm, right there from the byline: Stuff That May or May Not Interest You Wow, a real mission statement! I had first done the J-Walk with the first of three wickedly funny fake sites […] ➡
- ITConversations Docs As Wiki Poking around the site, I found what is more or less some evolving documentation of the ITConversation software and recording process (that would said as “pro SESS” by by northern neighbors 😉 as a wiki document- see IT Conversations Wiki for things like AudioProcessing, IT Conversations in Education, File Formats, Encoders, Bit Rates and More, […] ➡
- Recently Passed Through My iPod Here is a quick summary of audio streams I have loaded/unloaded listened/skipped on my iPod. I hesitate to call them “podcasts” since I am manually downloading MP3 files and manually moving them on and off my Shuffle. All are found from ITConversations. For what its worth, I typically use the auto fill mode to populate […] ➡
- Two More Feed2JS Mirrors Yesterday I added two new mirror sites for Feed2JS, bringing the full list of mirrors to seven. The two new kids on the block include: OpenGUI serving feeds from California Astra Systems serving feeds from somewhere in the U.K. All sites have been updated to the same functionality (latest update; al;l are listed as the […] ➡
- Unusual Lunch Experience This has nothing to do with blogs, wikis, podcasts, learning objects, or anything technology related. Evidence to the contrary, much in life is not related to that stuff. Yesterday I took a colleague to one of my favorite out of the way lunch spots, hidden away in a local industrial park area. It is a […] ➡
// 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.
