“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 27 posts previously published on December 18th
- 2023
- You So Smart, Smartphone Calling a technomechanical object “smart” is a few notches below bestowing intelligence, but I am happily surprised when I discover (often accidentally) what that phone thing can do. I’ve known for more than a year that after taking photos of a plant or flower on the iThing yielded a small “i” icon in the bottom […]
- 2019
- Blog Address Know Thyself Get ready for some arcane bits about figuring out web addresses. It’s hardly commentary on anything pro quo, more just trying to explain my ways. This happened more than a few times with last times I taught a course where students set up those dandy free blogs on WordPress.com, Blogger, and even tumblr. And it’s […]
- 2018
- Another SPLOT Needs a Parental [Theme] Fix I thought myself rather clever to make a post about dealing with WordPress theme changes related to the parent theme that powers the TRU Writer SPLOT. But then it happened again. Yes, my work are dependent on someone else’s coding decisions here, but since Anders Norén has so many great themes I make use of, […]
- Is That My Photo? Best days are when the Internet is not full of poop but provides a funny little surprise. I live for them. I’ll drop the spoiler first. This happened. I’ve had several times of searching widely for open licensed photos and landing on one by my Aussie friend Michael Coghlan (scroll past the post about a spammer […]
- 2017
- That Time I Did an OER Non-Disposable / Renewable Assignment A true story. A NASA scientist who has a long career in using satellite imagery to study earth landforms is hired to teach a Structural Geology course at a university near where he works, Goddard Space Flight Center. He is currently participating in the authoring/editing of a new textbook on Geomorphology. He creates an assignment […]
- #ResNetSem Green Pill or Red Pill [Bitter Pill]? Actually those pills in the photo are jelly beans, so not really bitter. And I lacked a blue one. All in service of a metaphor, where, for a time, I had to question my beliefs / approaches to networked teaching. There is not really a “last” chance. After this, there is some turning back. You […]
- 2014
- Klowning Around to WordPress Woah, this ice is slippery! I don’t know how to skate! Can I use an exclamation mark in every sentence, even a question?! cc licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by cogdogblog: http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/8308186687 This, alas, is a second weakly veiled attempt to post to both my known site and maybe twitter too but specifically to the Dog Blog. Tim […]
- Not One of Those Emails I know that marketers et al do not really look at my web site when they email me offering all of the great information “my readers” would enjoy. I can practically see the variable names in the spam bot template where my web site name and URL get inserted. No I do not do guest […]
- A Visit to The “X” One of the first buildings I noticed upon arrival at Thompson Rivers University was seeing right across the street from where I am housed is the home of campus radio station CFBX (note the synchrnocity of their cable frequency). I spotted it even more when I got set up in my [barely used] office space […]
- Federated Wiki in Motion (like a bent fork) I’m super impressed with the methods and efforts Mike Caulfield is doing for the FedWikiHappening – a bunch of folks are trying to hang onto the flying lines of understanding of the Smallest Federated Wiki. What he is taking us through feels much more effective that all of his demos, blog posts, and workshops combined. […]
- 2013
- Headless ds106ers, Stand Proudly! Some Disjointed Thoughts and Puny Data cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Kim’n’Cris Knight The Headless ds106 Experiment is mostly over, in the never really over way of ds106. I had a great time, we saw a nice wave of new energetic folks come into the fold, and we ended with a big bang of a […]
- My Imaginary Conversation with a Blog Spammer extracted from an actual, individually composed comment on my blog… Me: Why hello, it is so nice that you stopped by my blog. cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by LEOL30 BlogSpammer: What you published made a lot of sense. Me: Sometimes I hit the mark. Rarely. BlogSpammer: However, what about […]
- Apparently reCAPTCHA has Digitized All the Books When I first came across the reCapctha project, then at Carnegie-Mellon, now a Google owned product, I thought the concept was one of the most clever things ever. Those two scrambled word things you have to type into a box on a web form were there to make it harder for bots to pretend to […]
- 2012
- Success ds106 Style: The Reddit Effect cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by habeebee The high water marks of success in ds106 are sometimes the ones that breaks the server. Last Spring, Jim write about what happened when a graphic by former ds106 student Andrew Allingham went big on reddit. The impact of this reddit effect is […]
- Dexter Jumps the Noiseprofessor: Riff a GIF! This is my own riff on the eminent Photoshop RiffMaster, the Noiseprofessor, himself riffing with his own photoshopping of Brian Lamb’s super dog Dexter. I upped the Fonzie with Zack’s face, and even twiddled his thumb a bit 😉 Can ds106 be any more fun when people just play like that, rapid fire? On the […]
- Sleep Peacefully, Creative Commons Licensed Images, Google Will Never Find You cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by desmorider For as vast and accurate as Google Searches can be, I cannot help but raise a curiosity flag when it fails elsewhere. It still frustrates me how many clicks deep you have to go to the advanced search settings to have google search for images […]
- 2011
- Sharing the Old Vinyl (or Shellac?) cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was a grey, rainy, snowy, wintery day up here in the Arizona mountains. In the afternoon I decided to pull out the little mini turntable and listen to for the first time, some of the old 78s I brought home from my Mom’s house. […]
- Last Call for StoryBox (and new preview javascript whacking) cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The StoryBox project will end its gathering of media at the end of 2011, so there is still time to share any media before the time capsule closes- see http://cogdogblog.com/storybox for ways you can drop media files. During my 15,000 mile, 5 month 2 country, […]
- TED, Shmed cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by eatmorechips Stephen Downes is not enamored by the TED machine: TED has certainly figured out how to monetize learning – and Alan Levine notwithstanding a big part of that, I would say, lies in offering opinions and talks that are safe for business people […]
- 2010
- Psychic 106 cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog You cannot escape the psychedelic aura of ds106. Photo challenge- find the aura of ds106 where you live. Share this barking on social media
- 2006
- Domain Shuffle Having successfully moved the entire CogDogBlog site— Lock Stock, And Kibble– to a new home at DreamHost, I started to look at my other online satellites. Since sometime back in say, 1997, I hoisted a personal domain I used for my now retired web consulting business, and also used for personal email and blogging. But […]
- A Leetle Pachyderm Since I mentioned in passing about Pachyderm, I recalled I have a small published example for those who have yet to see what it can do– this was for a panel session at the Pachyderm Users Conference, where I was asked to give some “expert” tips. I have “expert” in “quotes” since I know just […]
- Audacious Handout Arggh. This is the second time I am writing this post as I inadvertantly forgot to open a new tab for a Google search. Poof! went a complete draft! Thanks to Pat D for reminding me of an owed post about an Audacity workshop I did last week. This was a hands-on workshop for the […]
- My Wobbly Google Reader Screencast Well Scott, since you asked for it, a few weeks late, I did a hasty screencast this morning of poking through my Google Reader feeds, not as quickly as D’Arcy did with his use of Blogbridge. But I did pick up on Dr. Norman’s method, and got me a copy of iShowU which seems to […]
- C[r]apchtas Keep out the comment spam bots! On the receiving end of much internet spam roach droppings, I understand the use of captchas, those random letter combos generated as graphics, intended to keep out the automated spam bots on web submission forms. I have used them myself. So I like them when the work for me, […]
- 2004
- Almost Poetry: “The Network is the Blog” On this post, I have almost little to say as Jon Udell’s “The Network is the Blog” is so on spot and astute, and, well poetic. He hits some things which sound obvious in reading but easily to forget- the electricity of the blog-o-verse has everything to do with the human network it travels upon. […]
- 2003
- Governing Board Member Digs RSS (Film at 11) Now that the copies of our mcli Forum have gone out to our colleges, we are getting a lot of interest, questions, head scratching about RSS from the “Pssss… Have You Heard About RSS?” article. An email came today from one of our Governing Board members who found the article “interesting”– this is remarkable and […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 27 posts previously published on December 18th
- 2023
- You So Smart, Smartphone Calling a technomechanical object “smart” is a few notches below bestowing intelligence, but I am happily surprised when I discover (often accidentally) what that phone thing can do. I’ve known for more than a year that after taking photos of a plant or flower on the iThing yielded a small “i” icon in the bottom […] ➡
- 2019
- Blog Address Know Thyself Get ready for some arcane bits about figuring out web addresses. It’s hardly commentary on anything pro quo, more just trying to explain my ways. This happened more than a few times with last times I taught a course where students set up those dandy free blogs on WordPress.com, Blogger, and even tumblr. And it’s […] ➡
- 2018
- Another SPLOT Needs a Parental [Theme] Fix I thought myself rather clever to make a post about dealing with WordPress theme changes related to the parent theme that powers the TRU Writer SPLOT. But then it happened again. Yes, my work are dependent on someone else’s coding decisions here, but since Anders Norén has so many great themes I make use of, […] ➡
- Is That My Photo? Best days are when the Internet is not full of poop but provides a funny little surprise. I live for them. I’ll drop the spoiler first. This happened. I’ve had several times of searching widely for open licensed photos and landing on one by my Aussie friend Michael Coghlan (scroll past the post about a spammer […] ➡
- 2017
- That Time I Did an OER Non-Disposable / Renewable Assignment A true story. A NASA scientist who has a long career in using satellite imagery to study earth landforms is hired to teach a Structural Geology course at a university near where he works, Goddard Space Flight Center. He is currently participating in the authoring/editing of a new textbook on Geomorphology. He creates an assignment […] ➡
- #ResNetSem Green Pill or Red Pill [Bitter Pill]? Actually those pills in the photo are jelly beans, so not really bitter. And I lacked a blue one. All in service of a metaphor, where, for a time, I had to question my beliefs / approaches to networked teaching. There is not really a “last” chance. After this, there is some turning back. You […] ➡
- 2014
- Klowning Around to WordPress Woah, this ice is slippery! I don’t know how to skate! Can I use an exclamation mark in every sentence, even a question?! cc licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by cogdogblog: http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/8308186687 This, alas, is a second weakly veiled attempt to post to both my known site and maybe twitter too but specifically to the Dog Blog. Tim […] ➡
- Not One of Those Emails I know that marketers et al do not really look at my web site when they email me offering all of the great information “my readers” would enjoy. I can practically see the variable names in the spam bot template where my web site name and URL get inserted. No I do not do guest […] ➡
- A Visit to The “X” One of the first buildings I noticed upon arrival at Thompson Rivers University was seeing right across the street from where I am housed is the home of campus radio station CFBX (note the synchrnocity of their cable frequency). I spotted it even more when I got set up in my [barely used] office space […] ➡
- Federated Wiki in Motion (like a bent fork) I’m super impressed with the methods and efforts Mike Caulfield is doing for the FedWikiHappening – a bunch of folks are trying to hang onto the flying lines of understanding of the Smallest Federated Wiki. What he is taking us through feels much more effective that all of his demos, blog posts, and workshops combined. […] ➡
- 2013
- Headless ds106ers, Stand Proudly! Some Disjointed Thoughts and Puny Data cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by Kim’n’Cris Knight The Headless ds106 Experiment is mostly over, in the never really over way of ds106. I had a great time, we saw a nice wave of new energetic folks come into the fold, and we ended with a big bang of a […] ➡
- My Imaginary Conversation with a Blog Spammer extracted from an actual, individually composed comment on my blog… Me: Why hello, it is so nice that you stopped by my blog. cc licensed ( BY NC SA ) flickr photo shared by LEOL30 BlogSpammer: What you published made a lot of sense. Me: Sometimes I hit the mark. Rarely. BlogSpammer: However, what about […] ➡
- Apparently reCAPTCHA has Digitized All the Books When I first came across the reCapctha project, then at Carnegie-Mellon, now a Google owned product, I thought the concept was one of the most clever things ever. Those two scrambled word things you have to type into a box on a web form were there to make it harder for bots to pretend to […] ➡
- 2012
- Success ds106 Style: The Reddit Effect cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by habeebee The high water marks of success in ds106 are sometimes the ones that breaks the server. Last Spring, Jim write about what happened when a graphic by former ds106 student Andrew Allingham went big on reddit. The impact of this reddit effect is […] ➡
- Dexter Jumps the Noiseprofessor: Riff a GIF! This is my own riff on the eminent Photoshop RiffMaster, the Noiseprofessor, himself riffing with his own photoshopping of Brian Lamb’s super dog Dexter. I upped the Fonzie with Zack’s face, and even twiddled his thumb a bit 😉 Can ds106 be any more fun when people just play like that, rapid fire? On the […] ➡
- Sleep Peacefully, Creative Commons Licensed Images, Google Will Never Find You cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by desmorider For as vast and accurate as Google Searches can be, I cannot help but raise a curiosity flag when it fails elsewhere. It still frustrates me how many clicks deep you have to go to the advanced search settings to have google search for images […] ➡
- 2011
- Sharing the Old Vinyl (or Shellac?) cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was a grey, rainy, snowy, wintery day up here in the Arizona mountains. In the afternoon I decided to pull out the little mini turntable and listen to for the first time, some of the old 78s I brought home from my Mom’s house. […] ➡
- Last Call for StoryBox (and new preview javascript whacking) cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog The StoryBox project will end its gathering of media at the end of 2011, so there is still time to share any media before the time capsule closes- see http://cogdogblog.com/storybox for ways you can drop media files. During my 15,000 mile, 5 month 2 country, […] ➡
- TED, Shmed cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by eatmorechips Stephen Downes is not enamored by the TED machine: TED has certainly figured out how to monetize learning – and Alan Levine notwithstanding a big part of that, I would say, lies in offering opinions and talks that are safe for business people […] ➡
- 2010
- Psychic 106 cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog You cannot escape the psychedelic aura of ds106. Photo challenge- find the aura of ds106 where you live. Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2006
- Domain Shuffle Having successfully moved the entire CogDogBlog site— Lock Stock, And Kibble– to a new home at DreamHost, I started to look at my other online satellites. Since sometime back in say, 1997, I hoisted a personal domain I used for my now retired web consulting business, and also used for personal email and blogging. But […] ➡
- A Leetle Pachyderm Since I mentioned in passing about Pachyderm, I recalled I have a small published example for those who have yet to see what it can do– this was for a panel session at the Pachyderm Users Conference, where I was asked to give some “expert” tips. I have “expert” in “quotes” since I know just […] ➡
- Audacious Handout Arggh. This is the second time I am writing this post as I inadvertantly forgot to open a new tab for a Google search. Poof! went a complete draft! Thanks to Pat D for reminding me of an owed post about an Audacity workshop I did last week. This was a hands-on workshop for the […] ➡
- My Wobbly Google Reader Screencast Well Scott, since you asked for it, a few weeks late, I did a hasty screencast this morning of poking through my Google Reader feeds, not as quickly as D’Arcy did with his use of Blogbridge. But I did pick up on Dr. Norman’s method, and got me a copy of iShowU which seems to […] ➡
- C[r]apchtas Keep out the comment spam bots! On the receiving end of much internet spam roach droppings, I understand the use of captchas, those random letter combos generated as graphics, intended to keep out the automated spam bots on web submission forms. I have used them myself. So I like them when the work for me, […] ➡
- 2004
- Almost Poetry: “The Network is the Blog” On this post, I have almost little to say as Jon Udell’s “The Network is the Blog” is so on spot and astute, and, well poetic. He hits some things which sound obvious in reading but easily to forget- the electricity of the blog-o-verse has everything to do with the human network it travels upon. […] ➡
- 2003
- Governing Board Member Digs RSS (Film at 11) Now that the copies of our mcli Forum have gone out to our colleges, we are getting a lot of interest, questions, head scratching about RSS from the “Pssss… Have You Heard About RSS?” article. An email came today from one of our Governing Board members who found the article “interesting”– this is remarkable 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.
