“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 September 6th
- 2025
- Jump The Paywalls in One Click Like Archimedes never said, “Give me a Javascript Bookmarklet short enough and a browser bar on which to place it, and I shall jump over the web world’s paywalls.” I blabbed recently about the extraordinary story and service (archive.today) created by an elusive figure that lets you easily jump the paywall. It includes what i […]
- 2017
- Pickles and Shoe Tying Is there a possible connection? Only in my blog, my mind. In a series on blogging (what a whacky idea in 2017), Doug Belshaw outlined ideas on Deciding what to write about in your blog post. I left a 2-3 paragraph comment that seems to have fallen into the cracks. I think we agree that […]
- 2016
- Timber Framing & Interior Finish: Certification Building From GitHub to WordPress As a followup to a previously written post outlining the idea of having the source material for the Creative Commons Certifications residing in GitHub in Markdown, this post documents a bit more at a technical level my current efforts to show how the content can be ported easily to WordPress. If I might make a […]
- “Mrs. Levine, Alan’s Watching!” None of the homes had fences in the suburban Baltimore neighborhood where I grew up. The kids ran freely from yard to the next. The C’s were a family around the corner, 3 boys, the middle Adam was a year younger than me. I spent a lot of time at playing at their house. They […]
- 2012
- The Little Wiki Engine That Can cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by wsilver Last June, before the Northern Voice conference, I spent some extra time in Vancouver at UBC to get insight into their success with UBC Wiki as a community platform as well as a publishing engine (w.g. wiki content being pushed to WordPress). Part of it […]
- Things I’m not Doing * starting or finishing a PhD * running a marathon, half marathon, quarter marathon, one eleventh marathon * watching tv * reading newspapers * giving a crap about MOOCs LOOCs., POOCS, * Eating beets * drinking Bud, Bud Light, Coord, or Coors Lite * baking cakes * filling out those little subscription cards that come […]
- 2011
- What’s Wrong / What’s Right About Publishing Do you remember the Negropontism of bits vs atoms (from Being Digital) The best way to appreciate the merits and consequences of being digital is to reflect on the difference between bits and atoms. While we are undoubtedly in an information age, most information is delivered to us in the form of atoms: newspapers, magazines, […]
- Question Search In this case, Calvin is Google and I might be the target. Let’s say, if you own a Chevy or Ford truck (I am the latter), you may have your preference for Calvin Peeing Stickers. It long predates Mac vs PC, so don;t f**** with me by giving me Chevy when I seek Ford. Huh? […]
- Begging Support for Feed2JS cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Christian O. Harris I marvel that people still get regular use out of a small hack I started back in 2003, when I was first learning about RSS– Feed2JS keeps on humming. It ran a number of years on an Apple XServe in the […]
- 2009
- Dead Trees cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I wandered down today to the Pine (AZ) Labor Day Festival- one of my favorite things at these summer fairs are the library’s used book sale. I wandered all the tables, and hit the jackpot on the last table, with Neil Gaimian’s Neverwhere and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. […]
- 2008
- Contest Loser Rashmi’s Vote Did Not Help by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ’08, 10.58am MDT PST on flickr Sigh. I did not win the MacBook Air in the Slideshare Best Presentation Contest, and did not even get close with what only I thought was clever as The Last PowerPoint. And how sad for Guy Kawasaki, I don’t […]
- Bb Mug Custom Bb Mug by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ’08, 10.58am MDT PST on flickr Don’t settle for the swag they choose for you; make your own with the Mug Generator: www.metasolutions.us/mug/ More generator fun. Must stop. Someone pull my plug. Share this barking on social media
- Are You Talking To Me? Are You Talking To Me? by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ’08, 9.49am MDT PST on flickr Next time you need a good nom de plume, try the Mob Name Generator. Tell them Shakes Pretiili sent you. Yes, I am all over the Generator Blog a nearly infinite list of fun little things to do on […]
- No Excuse Not To Blog A classic! Holy Snapping Duck Do! I just noticed I have not updated this since the long board was invented… You would not believe how terribly tardy the Victorian internet can be. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!. I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with responding to fanmail, hoping […]
- 2003
- iSight – Great App, Great Packaging Still getting used to my new iSight, a nifty fireware camera for Apple OSX computers coupled with iChat AV allows beautifully clear, sharp, audio/video chat via broadband connections. Not only is it well-designed in typical Apple fashion (oops, there goes my bias), but what I also enjoyed was the cleverness of the package it came […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 15 posts previously published on September 6th
- 2025
- Jump The Paywalls in One Click Like Archimedes never said, “Give me a Javascript Bookmarklet short enough and a browser bar on which to place it, and I shall jump over the web world’s paywalls.” I blabbed recently about the extraordinary story and service (archive.today) created by an elusive figure that lets you easily jump the paywall. It includes what i […] ➡
- 2017
- Pickles and Shoe Tying Is there a possible connection? Only in my blog, my mind. In a series on blogging (what a whacky idea in 2017), Doug Belshaw outlined ideas on Deciding what to write about in your blog post. I left a 2-3 paragraph comment that seems to have fallen into the cracks. I think we agree that […] ➡
- 2016
- Timber Framing & Interior Finish: Certification Building From GitHub to WordPress As a followup to a previously written post outlining the idea of having the source material for the Creative Commons Certifications residing in GitHub in Markdown, this post documents a bit more at a technical level my current efforts to show how the content can be ported easily to WordPress. If I might make a […] ➡
- “Mrs. Levine, Alan’s Watching!” None of the homes had fences in the suburban Baltimore neighborhood where I grew up. The kids ran freely from yard to the next. The C’s were a family around the corner, 3 boys, the middle Adam was a year younger than me. I spent a lot of time at playing at their house. They […] ➡
- 2012
- The Little Wiki Engine That Can cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by wsilver Last June, before the Northern Voice conference, I spent some extra time in Vancouver at UBC to get insight into their success with UBC Wiki as a community platform as well as a publishing engine (w.g. wiki content being pushed to WordPress). Part of it […] ➡
- Things I’m not Doing * starting or finishing a PhD * running a marathon, half marathon, quarter marathon, one eleventh marathon * watching tv * reading newspapers * giving a crap about MOOCs LOOCs., POOCS, * Eating beets * drinking Bud, Bud Light, Coord, or Coors Lite * baking cakes * filling out those little subscription cards that come […] ➡
- 2011
- What’s Wrong / What’s Right About Publishing Do you remember the Negropontism of bits vs atoms (from Being Digital) The best way to appreciate the merits and consequences of being digital is to reflect on the difference between bits and atoms. While we are undoubtedly in an information age, most information is delivered to us in the form of atoms: newspapers, magazines, […] ➡
- Question Search In this case, Calvin is Google and I might be the target. Let’s say, if you own a Chevy or Ford truck (I am the latter), you may have your preference for Calvin Peeing Stickers. It long predates Mac vs PC, so don;t f**** with me by giving me Chevy when I seek Ford. Huh? […] ➡
- Begging Support for Feed2JS cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Christian O. Harris I marvel that people still get regular use out of a small hack I started back in 2003, when I was first learning about RSS– Feed2JS keeps on humming. It ran a number of years on an Apple XServe in the […] ➡
- 2009
- Dead Trees cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I wandered down today to the Pine (AZ) Labor Day Festival- one of my favorite things at these summer fairs are the library’s used book sale. I wandered all the tables, and hit the jackpot on the last table, with Neil Gaimian’s Neverwhere and William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. […] ➡
- 2008
- Contest Loser Rashmi’s Vote Did Not Help by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ’08, 10.58am MDT PST on flickr Sigh. I did not win the MacBook Air in the Slideshare Best Presentation Contest, and did not even get close with what only I thought was clever as The Last PowerPoint. And how sad for Guy Kawasaki, I don’t […] ➡
- Bb Mug Custom Bb Mug by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ’08, 10.58am MDT PST on flickr Don’t settle for the swag they choose for you; make your own with the Mug Generator: www.metasolutions.us/mug/ More generator fun. Must stop. Someone pull my plug. Share this barking on social media ➡
- Are You Talking To Me? Are You Talking To Me? by cogdogblog posted 6 Sep ’08, 9.49am MDT PST on flickr Next time you need a good nom de plume, try the Mob Name Generator. Tell them Shakes Pretiili sent you. Yes, I am all over the Generator Blog a nearly infinite list of fun little things to do on […] ➡
- No Excuse Not To Blog A classic! Holy Snapping Duck Do! I just noticed I have not updated this since the long board was invented… You would not believe how terribly tardy the Victorian internet can be. Apologies to my regular readers! Even the little blue ones!. I am lost in a sea of pseudo-olde-english with responding to fanmail, hoping […] ➡
- 2003
- iSight – Great App, Great Packaging Still getting used to my new iSight, a nifty fireware camera for Apple OSX computers coupled with iChat AV allows beautifully clear, sharp, audio/video chat via broadband connections. Not only is it well-designed in typical Apple fashion (oops, there goes my bias), but what I also enjoyed was the cleverness of the package it came […] ➡
// 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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