“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 19 posts previously published on September 27th
- 2025
- The Far [AI nope] Side Uh oh. It happened again. Another slide down cogdog rabbit holes of associative trails that cannot be created by any statistical means. It started with a podcast I did not even listen to (until later), one that I saw Wes Fryer post in Mastodon. Wes may have hear his ma talk about The Far Side– […]
- 2024
- Open as in Monkeys Spinning Monkeys While I’ve hung up collecting Amazing Stories of Openness I never tire of coming across inspiring acts of it– as Nancy White had said in one of the first of these videos, “Openness is an attitude.” This week I participated in the online Open Texas 2024 conference. In a town hall session we were spun […]
- 2022
- 2019
- Sorting and Filtering With Isotope If you create content in any system, you likely have ways of organizing them into, say WordPress Categories. This is nothing new under the sun. But the typical organization is rather tree like, creating links to drill down, then out. There is an alternative interface, you have likely seen it. I’m not sure what the […]
- 2018
- The Interstellar Bounce of Flickr Explore Oh the mysteries of having a photo appearing in the flickr explore… The tell-tale sign is seeing a huge spike in the red dot notifications, but sometimes it’s a stream of a few folks who routinely like a bunch in a batch. But then one of them is a notice that a photo was added […]
- 2017
- Double Flickr Explored? Should Felix Be Impressed? I prefer not knowing exactly how flickr picks photos to be in it’s explore featured area. It just sort of happens. I know when either there is a weird spike in activity or you get the norice that your photo has been added to the In Explore group. I’ve had a few get in there, […]
- 2016
- Announcing #CCquest: Weekly CC Certification “Quests” This week we are launching a new effort to get the word out for and to draw in participation to the Creative Commons Certification project. As an idea that emerged from our recent team meeting and thinkathon, each week we will initiate an activity via twitter via the #CCquest hashtag. The plan is to issue […]
- 2014
- In Which I Chase Medium.com Up a Tree Cagey cat. Lazy cat, cannot even generate output to provide valid RSS feed. @medium your rss feeds are @ mess Technology like RSS dies not because of failure, but neglect. You get what you ignore. Share this barking on social media
- 2012
- Picasso’s Pup Plays with Yarn cc licensed (BY) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Today’s Daily Create is to draw an abstract image of an animal tdc.ds106.us/tdc263/ (most cool since it was submitted this week by one of my students). My idea was to see if I could draw a version of my friend’s Beagle,Annie, in a new style. The dog […]
- 2011
- Red Alert for Feed2JS It’s been running as a free web service for over eight years, from my little humble PHP script hacking in 2003. Feed2JS (http://feed2js.org/) provides a tool where anyone can enter a URL for an RSS feed, choose some options, and generate a bit of cut and paste JavaScript code they can use in their own […]
- You Can Go Home Again While resting at my sister’s home in Baltimore (recovering from the crud from the road), I’ve found some bits of media flotsam/jetsam from the last few weeks. The time here near the place I spent my first 18 years has brought up some nice and fuzzy memories. Three weeks ago, my sister and I took […]
- 2010
- WIld Woodpecker Ride cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m about six weeks into my round the world loop, been here in Brisbane, Australia since arriving Thursday. For the long trip and spots of free time, I practiced one of my favorite book selection techniques. I went to the Senior Center Thrift Store in Pine Arizona and […]
- 2009
- The Real Time Web Show at Tulane modified from cc licensed flickr image by mag3737 I was pleased to be invited to give a keynote on Friday at Tulane University’s Tech Day… they run a great free event open not only to the Tulane community but they offer it to other local institutions: Tech Day is an opportunity for the Tulane community […]
- No Place to Hide (especially if your head is in the sand) Earlier this month I had some fun satirizing Wired magazine for what I thought was a real non-story as a cover item (like they care what I think?). What I neglected to add later was as I read the issue, they had a real cover worthy story in Gone Forever: What Does It Take to […]
- 2008
- Go Deeper with GigaPan? My photographic and geek bents have been intrigued by learnig (and still learning) how to capture immersive high res GigaPan images, which is fun enough in its own right. This is a combination of a special camera control rig and software that takes a series of images with a standard compact digital camera that gives […]
- 2005
- Apple Is Really Twisting My Mellon, Man Waiting for the overdue return of my dead iBook and dealing with un-acceptable ways to get an update is truly testing my n ager management. It has been 18 days since it was left in their care, which is what 5-7 business days translates as. In summary of what AppleCare does not provide is: (1) […]
- RSS News Mashup- DailyRSS Sort of retro, getting back to RSS used for feeds of news, but a nice mix and re-play is being offered at DailyRSS which is serving up news feeds from multiple sources and in categories: In addition to just the news, there are weather images and feeds plus a photo news feed; it uses some […]
- Learning Spaces Redux Rising like a bullet up the record charts of Instructional Technology Issues this year is Learning Space Design, with a lot of good stuff coming out of the EDUCAUSE ELI initiative and the July/September 2005 issue of EDUCAUSE Review. It’s timely here at Maricopa, having last year passed a very large bond election for major […]
- 2004
- iPhoto to Flickr to MT (What a Cool Trip)! flickr foto P8181355.JPGavailable on my flickr Rest a Bit on the “Restbit Bench”, Santa Maria Springs, Hermit Trail, Grand Canyon I just posted this photo to my flickr account using a nifty plugin for iPhoto (found via Tim Lauer). Basically, one can select one or more photos from your collection, select Export, add captions and […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 19 posts previously published on September 27th
- 2025
- The Far [AI nope] Side Uh oh. It happened again. Another slide down cogdog rabbit holes of associative trails that cannot be created by any statistical means. It started with a podcast I did not even listen to (until later), one that I saw Wes Fryer post in Mastodon. Wes may have hear his ma talk about The Far Side– […] ➡
- 2024
- Open as in Monkeys Spinning Monkeys While I’ve hung up collecting Amazing Stories of Openness I never tire of coming across inspiring acts of it– as Nancy White had said in one of the first of these videos, “Openness is an attitude.” This week I participated in the online Open Texas 2024 conference. In a town hall session we were spun […] ➡
- 2022
- 2019
- Sorting and Filtering With Isotope If you create content in any system, you likely have ways of organizing them into, say WordPress Categories. This is nothing new under the sun. But the typical organization is rather tree like, creating links to drill down, then out. There is an alternative interface, you have likely seen it. I’m not sure what the […] ➡
- 2018
- The Interstellar Bounce of Flickr Explore Oh the mysteries of having a photo appearing in the flickr explore… The tell-tale sign is seeing a huge spike in the red dot notifications, but sometimes it’s a stream of a few folks who routinely like a bunch in a batch. But then one of them is a notice that a photo was added […] ➡
- 2017
- Double Flickr Explored? Should Felix Be Impressed? I prefer not knowing exactly how flickr picks photos to be in it’s explore featured area. It just sort of happens. I know when either there is a weird spike in activity or you get the norice that your photo has been added to the In Explore group. I’ve had a few get in there, […] ➡
- 2016
- Announcing #CCquest: Weekly CC Certification “Quests” This week we are launching a new effort to get the word out for and to draw in participation to the Creative Commons Certification project. As an idea that emerged from our recent team meeting and thinkathon, each week we will initiate an activity via twitter via the #CCquest hashtag. The plan is to issue […] ➡
- 2014
- In Which I Chase Medium.com Up a Tree Cagey cat. Lazy cat, cannot even generate output to provide valid RSS feed. @medium your rss feeds are @ mess Technology like RSS dies not because of failure, but neglect. You get what you ignore. Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2012
- Picasso’s Pup Plays with Yarn cc licensed (BY) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Today’s Daily Create is to draw an abstract image of an animal tdc.ds106.us/tdc263/ (most cool since it was submitted this week by one of my students). My idea was to see if I could draw a version of my friend’s Beagle,Annie, in a new style. The dog […] ➡
- 2011
- Red Alert for Feed2JS It’s been running as a free web service for over eight years, from my little humble PHP script hacking in 2003. Feed2JS (http://feed2js.org/) provides a tool where anyone can enter a URL for an RSS feed, choose some options, and generate a bit of cut and paste JavaScript code they can use in their own […] ➡
- You Can Go Home Again While resting at my sister’s home in Baltimore (recovering from the crud from the road), I’ve found some bits of media flotsam/jetsam from the last few weeks. The time here near the place I spent my first 18 years has brought up some nice and fuzzy memories. Three weeks ago, my sister and I took […] ➡
- 2010
- WIld Woodpecker Ride cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I’m about six weeks into my round the world loop, been here in Brisbane, Australia since arriving Thursday. For the long trip and spots of free time, I practiced one of my favorite book selection techniques. I went to the Senior Center Thrift Store in Pine Arizona and […] ➡
- 2009
- The Real Time Web Show at Tulane modified from cc licensed flickr image by mag3737 I was pleased to be invited to give a keynote on Friday at Tulane University’s Tech Day… they run a great free event open not only to the Tulane community but they offer it to other local institutions: Tech Day is an opportunity for the Tulane community […] ➡
- No Place to Hide (especially if your head is in the sand) Earlier this month I had some fun satirizing Wired magazine for what I thought was a real non-story as a cover item (like they care what I think?). What I neglected to add later was as I read the issue, they had a real cover worthy story in Gone Forever: What Does It Take to […] ➡
- 2008
- Go Deeper with GigaPan? My photographic and geek bents have been intrigued by learnig (and still learning) how to capture immersive high res GigaPan images, which is fun enough in its own right. This is a combination of a special camera control rig and software that takes a series of images with a standard compact digital camera that gives […] ➡
- 2005
- Apple Is Really Twisting My Mellon, Man Waiting for the overdue return of my dead iBook and dealing with un-acceptable ways to get an update is truly testing my n ager management. It has been 18 days since it was left in their care, which is what 5-7 business days translates as. In summary of what AppleCare does not provide is: (1) […] ➡
- RSS News Mashup- DailyRSS Sort of retro, getting back to RSS used for feeds of news, but a nice mix and re-play is being offered at DailyRSS which is serving up news feeds from multiple sources and in categories: In addition to just the news, there are weather images and feeds plus a photo news feed; it uses some […] ➡
- Learning Spaces Redux Rising like a bullet up the record charts of Instructional Technology Issues this year is Learning Space Design, with a lot of good stuff coming out of the EDUCAUSE ELI initiative and the July/September 2005 issue of EDUCAUSE Review. It’s timely here at Maricopa, having last year passed a very large bond election for major […] ➡
- 2004
- iPhoto to Flickr to MT (What a Cool Trip)! flickr foto P8181355.JPGavailable on my flickr Rest a Bit on the “Restbit Bench”, Santa Maria Springs, Hermit Trail, Grand Canyon I just posted this photo to my flickr account using a nifty plugin for iPhoto (found via Tim Lauer). Basically, one can select one or more photos from your collection, select Export, add captions 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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