Ok to Cross the Streams When Code Fixing

“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

Thanks to my On This Day page (thanks to @cogdog for that), I found my review of 2006: https://t.co/bsjJWahYlG (https://t.co/GQky8Cpz10)
— john johnston (@johnjohnston) December 29, 2019

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.

Red arrow points to missing number where the page output reads "There are posts previously published on December 29th"

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.

https://twitter.com/djwudi/status/1212871226953101313

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 23 posts previously published on February 9th

2025Attraction of Attention Sucking Machines In which I put forth an opinion grounded solely in one person’s observations, gut feeling, and in no means really expected to be accepted as a theory of merit. This is also blogging as in writing as in the Dave Winerian sense of the unedited voice of one person. As a preface and likely point […] That’s One (month of daily photos) Let’s hold of the self-congratulations… nope, it’s on. I am one month into the 18th year of (trying to do) taking/posting daily photos to flickr, yes 2025/365 is game on. Like who’s counting? C’est moi. The last two years I started strong, perfect for 5 or 6 months but fell off the boat around June, […]
2019The Little Things Big Data. Massive courses. Large scale. Yawn, I’ll take the other end of the graph. Like from this post, recounting how a DS106 Daily Create honoring an 1990s woman bronco rider named Bonnie McCarroll. Three months after Ron’s response to that daily create, sculptor Ann Ayers responded sharing info about her bronze works of Bonnie […]
2017I Tried Twice to Rent an HD Movie on my iPhone, And You Would Not Believe What Happened Next! Among the small sized life regrets list, add my decision to buy a 16GB iPhone. I store no music on it, offload all but a few key dog photos, and regularly toss off apps I stop using. Still, I regularly come to a point, like last night, when I checked and saw that there was […] Soylent Media Attribution I knew this blog post title was a terrible metaphor. But once the metaphor took a hold in my brain, it would not let go. And then I am in Photoshop, mashing up a collage of assorted images from web sites that do not provide the source of the same image (see the end of […]
2016The Inventiveness of a Simple #DS106 Daily Create There’s a lot to like about the DS106 Daily Create. There is also a lot of them, today’s was number 1493; this has gone on for 1493 days since January 8, 2012 without missing a beat. Four years. The best part is the unexpected range of responses, epecially when they seem so… simple. Maybe even […] Gone But Reminded The thing about remembering my parent’s anniversary on February 5 is knowing 3 days later is the date of Mom’s birthday. The calendar reminder popped up yesterday. Lest you think this is a sad thing, the photo above makes me smile at the fun we would have on her annual Thanksgiving visits to Arizona. From […] So Assignmenty This word has been rumbling around in my head for a while. I used it recently when a colleague (I’ll leave the name out but it’s too not hard to find, and I don’t think they will mind) asked for feedback on an assignment for students to do something in social media. The assignment was […] The Open Web Makes Possible a Museum of Endangered Sounds If the web was designed for you, then you might never enjoy the Museum of Endangered Sounds. But because much of the web is designed by us, we get gems like this that are weird, quirky, open to all and has a personality of it’s own. This site exists because someone like Charles wants it […]
2014Ten Years of Flickr Photos Weighs in at 75 Gb cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Gino Carteciano My first flickr photo was posted in late March 2004; my most recent one, last night (February 8, 2014), that’s 35,693 photos. I just downloaded almost all of them; a 71 Gb file that took more than 13 hours to download, and […] 85 Candles Yes, it’s was always and is still the double dipping of February family events- February 5 would have been my parents’ 64th Anniversary… and today would have been my Mom’s 85th Birthday. I am pretty sure she would be baking cookies this weekend, as she did here in 2010 during our regular Thanksgiving time here […]
2013GIFing the Silent Ones Angela, in dire need to get medicine for her dying mother, makes some unwise decision on the streets of Naples on how to get the 20 lire- the opening bit of the 1929 silent film, Street Angel. I’m watching this movie, well at least the first bit, as part of the Coursera open course on […]
2012Krazy Kat Bread! Get out in front of this meme or get out of the way! Beyond Cat Breading lies the bizarre space of Jim Groom Breading: This started with the almost incomprehensible Cat Breading ds106 assignment: The latest bizarre trend blowing up Facebook mini-feeds everywhere? Cat Breading. (Think LOLcats, but with a trippy twist””each adorable kitten has […] Slice 009: 90 Miles from F’burg cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This audio reflection comes close to the end of my cross country sprint from Arizona to Virginia, as I close in on Fredericksburg Virginia, where I am now, and not planning on driving away from for a while. Maybe it will become Hallowed Ground Slices […] Slice 008: Leaving Arizona cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Still catching up on the slices of life audio reflection, this one almost two weeks old. ALways Be ‘Poligizing for being behind? This audio recording is from January 26, the morning I left home in Strawberry Arizona, for the 220 mile express trip to Virginia. […]
2011ds106 Radio: Get Yer Ears On! I ought to go to sleep, but the shared assignments for ds106 keep tugging at me. And I cannot resist re-using this whacky flickr image. Assignment 50 is Come up with an aesthetic for ds106 radio. If you were to create a shirt, bumper sticker, poster, etc. what would it look like? See WFMU as […] 50 Eggs Taking a stab at the minimalist movie poster assignment for ds106. There are so many ways to slice this; I rifled through my DVD drawer and landed on this classic I rewatched (a few times), Paul Newman’s tour de force as Cool Hand Luke. While we know the classic opening parking meter decapitation, the “failure […]
2009Blog Muzzled: Fourth Annual Comment Blogging Extravaganza Starting tonight (Sunday February 8), the light is OFF for CogDogBlog regular posts, the muzzle is self applied for my own traditional of taking a week of not blogging to spend time writing in the comment spaces of other people's blogs, as I have done in 2006, 2007, and 2008. So no new blog posts here shall appear until after February 15.
2005Real Life Quotes From the Bicycle Lane This really happened. I promise. While biking home tonight, I came up on what I took to be a father riding along side a boy, perhaps 10 or younger. As my speed was greater, as I approached, Dad swung out far to the left, so I had to pass between the two. Dad says How […] ASU Mars Lecture (Was Geologist One Night Nostalgia) For the last 12 years at maricopa, my e-mail signature has been “Was Geologist, Now Technologist” a Readers Digest condensed version of my tale of transforming from a graduate student in Geology to a techie at Maricopa. Last night, I attended an event at Arizona State University, for one night of flashback nostalgia. The event […] (Not) Killing Me Softly With Your Feeds Just having set up some stats reports on this server, I find with no surprise the big consumer of activity is our Feed2JS script, which according to the data, in the last 7 days felt: 3,182,586 hits (96% of the total) 455,000 hits per day 18,943 hits per hour 315 hits per minute The server […]
2004A Sheep in Wolve’s Clothing: I am Teaching Online Time to be honest. For being immersed in instructional technology for 12 years, I have yet to teach online. I’ve taught classroom computer courses (Director / Animation), created and delivered lots of workshops, developed a batch of online self-paced tutorials… but never a for-real online course. So I grabbed the opportunity when colleagues from one […] We Got a Screen Shot in Syllabus While on the phone today with Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, he suggested I take a look at the latest issue of Syllabus— it was sitting on my “maybe I will read some dead trees” pile, but lo and behold, on page 36 is a screen shot from the presentation I did […]

and the default value, the link at the end is invisible.

On Michael’s site he might use

There are 23 posts previously published on February 9th

2025Attraction of Attention Sucking Machines In which I put forth an opinion grounded solely in one person’s observations, gut feeling, and in no means really expected to be accepted as a theory of merit. This is also blogging as in writing as in the Dave Winerian sense of the unedited voice of one person. As a preface and likely point […] &amp#x27A1; That’s One (month of daily photos) Let’s hold of the self-congratulations… nope, it’s on. I am one month into the 18th year of (trying to do) taking/posting daily photos to flickr, yes 2025/365 is game on. Like who’s counting? C’est moi. The last two years I started strong, perfect for 5 or 6 months but fell off the boat around June, […] &amp#x27A1;
2019The Little Things Big Data. Massive courses. Large scale. Yawn, I’ll take the other end of the graph. Like from this post, recounting how a DS106 Daily Create honoring an 1990s woman bronco rider named Bonnie McCarroll. Three months after Ron’s response to that daily create, sculptor Ann Ayers responded sharing info about her bronze works of Bonnie […] &amp#x27A1;
2017I Tried Twice to Rent an HD Movie on my iPhone, And You Would Not Believe What Happened Next! Among the small sized life regrets list, add my decision to buy a 16GB iPhone. I store no music on it, offload all but a few key dog photos, and regularly toss off apps I stop using. Still, I regularly come to a point, like last night, when I checked and saw that there was […] &amp#x27A1; Soylent Media Attribution I knew this blog post title was a terrible metaphor. But once the metaphor took a hold in my brain, it would not let go. And then I am in Photoshop, mashing up a collage of assorted images from web sites that do not provide the source of the same image (see the end of […] &amp#x27A1;
2016The Inventiveness of a Simple #DS106 Daily Create There’s a lot to like about the DS106 Daily Create. There is also a lot of them, today’s was number 1493; this has gone on for 1493 days since January 8, 2012 without missing a beat. Four years. The best part is the unexpected range of responses, epecially when they seem so… simple. Maybe even […] &amp#x27A1; Gone But Reminded The thing about remembering my parent’s anniversary on February 5 is knowing 3 days later is the date of Mom’s birthday. The calendar reminder popped up yesterday. Lest you think this is a sad thing, the photo above makes me smile at the fun we would have on her annual Thanksgiving visits to Arizona. From […] &amp#x27A1; So Assignmenty This word has been rumbling around in my head for a while. I used it recently when a colleague (I’ll leave the name out but it’s too not hard to find, and I don’t think they will mind) asked for feedback on an assignment for students to do something in social media. The assignment was […] &amp#x27A1; The Open Web Makes Possible a Museum of Endangered Sounds If the web was designed for you, then you might never enjoy the Museum of Endangered Sounds. But because much of the web is designed by us, we get gems like this that are weird, quirky, open to all and has a personality of it’s own. This site exists because someone like Charles wants it […] &amp#x27A1;
2014Ten Years of Flickr Photos Weighs in at 75 Gb cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Gino Carteciano My first flickr photo was posted in late March 2004; my most recent one, last night (February 8, 2014), that’s 35,693 photos. I just downloaded almost all of them; a 71 Gb file that took more than 13 hours to download, and […] &amp#x27A1; 85 Candles Yes, it’s was always and is still the double dipping of February family events- February 5 would have been my parents’ 64th Anniversary… and today would have been my Mom’s 85th Birthday. I am pretty sure she would be baking cookies this weekend, as she did here in 2010 during our regular Thanksgiving time here […] &amp#x27A1;
2013GIFing the Silent Ones Angela, in dire need to get medicine for her dying mother, makes some unwise decision on the streets of Naples on how to get the 20 lire- the opening bit of the 1929 silent film, Street Angel. I’m watching this movie, well at least the first bit, as part of the Coursera open course on […] &amp#x27A1;
2012Krazy Kat Bread! Get out in front of this meme or get out of the way! Beyond Cat Breading lies the bizarre space of Jim Groom Breading: This started with the almost incomprehensible Cat Breading ds106 assignment: The latest bizarre trend blowing up Facebook mini-feeds everywhere? Cat Breading. (Think LOLcats, but with a trippy twist””each adorable kitten has […] &amp#x27A1; Slice 009: 90 Miles from F’burg cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This audio reflection comes close to the end of my cross country sprint from Arizona to Virginia, as I close in on Fredericksburg Virginia, where I am now, and not planning on driving away from for a while. Maybe it will become Hallowed Ground Slices […] &amp#x27A1; Slice 008: Leaving Arizona cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Still catching up on the slices of life audio reflection, this one almost two weeks old. ALways Be ‘Poligizing for being behind? This audio recording is from January 26, the morning I left home in Strawberry Arizona, for the 220 mile express trip to Virginia. […] &amp#x27A1;
2011ds106 Radio: Get Yer Ears On! I ought to go to sleep, but the shared assignments for ds106 keep tugging at me. And I cannot resist re-using this whacky flickr image. Assignment 50 is Come up with an aesthetic for ds106 radio. If you were to create a shirt, bumper sticker, poster, etc. what would it look like? See WFMU as […] &amp#x27A1; 50 Eggs Taking a stab at the minimalist movie poster assignment for ds106. There are so many ways to slice this; I rifled through my DVD drawer and landed on this classic I rewatched (a few times), Paul Newman’s tour de force as Cool Hand Luke. While we know the classic opening parking meter decapitation, the “failure […] &amp#x27A1;
2009Blog Muzzled: Fourth Annual Comment Blogging Extravaganza Starting tonight (Sunday February 8), the light is OFF for CogDogBlog regular posts, the muzzle is self applied for my own traditional of taking a week of not blogging to spend time writing in the comment spaces of other people's blogs, as I have done in 2006, 2007, and 2008. So no new blog posts here shall appear until after February 15. &amp#x27A1;
2005Real Life Quotes From the Bicycle Lane This really happened. I promise. While biking home tonight, I came up on what I took to be a father riding along side a boy, perhaps 10 or younger. As my speed was greater, as I approached, Dad swung out far to the left, so I had to pass between the two. Dad says How […] &amp#x27A1; ASU Mars Lecture (Was Geologist One Night Nostalgia) For the last 12 years at maricopa, my e-mail signature has been “Was Geologist, Now Technologist” a Readers Digest condensed version of my tale of transforming from a graduate student in Geology to a techie at Maricopa. Last night, I attended an event at Arizona State University, for one night of flashback nostalgia. The event […] &amp#x27A1; (Not) Killing Me Softly With Your Feeds Just having set up some stats reports on this server, I find with no surprise the big consumer of activity is our Feed2JS script, which according to the data, in the last 7 days felt: 3,182,586 hits (96% of the total) 455,000 hits per day 18,943 hits per hour 315 hits per minute The server […] &amp#x27A1;
2004A Sheep in Wolve’s Clothing: I am Teaching Online Time to be honest. For being immersed in instructional technology for 12 years, I have yet to teach online. I’ve taught classroom computer courses (Director / Animation), created and delivered lots of workshops, developed a batch of online self-paced tutorials… but never a for-real online course. So I grabbed the opportunity when colleagues from one […] &amp#x27A1; We Got a Screen Shot in Syllabus While on the phone today with Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, he suggested I take a look at the latest issue of Syllabus— it was sitting on my “maybe I will read some dead trees” pile, but lo and behold, on page 36 is a screen shot from the presentation I did […] &amp#x27A1;

to get the arrow codes he likes. This works because output for each found post looks like

// 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.