“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 June 5th
- 2023
- One More Descript Thing People still read blogs. Well, maybe a few of them. I was happy to see others get intrigued and interested in my sharing of the ways Descript had really revolutionized my way of creating podcast audio. More than likes and reposts there’s not much more positive effect when you can capture Jon Udell’s interest as […]
- Five and Five Equals Forever It’s about five days since a key date but, there is, after all, something about the fives. Get ready, here it comes. Yes, one of 365 blocks on the calendar is rather key here at Ursa Acres… Five years ago was when Cori and I “did a thing” and tied our lives forever together on […]
- 2016
- Taking a Spin on HyperDev Prefixing many words with “Hyper” makes them more interesting. Go from ordinary space into Hyperspace. Leave the everyday 3 dimensions of a cube for a Hypercube. What Apple did for me and many of us with a card on a little square computer? Hypercard. (okay my wordplay goes bad for medical conditions, as a diabetic, […]
- A Bot That… I can love for recursively tweeting This post provides no insight to new technology, forces that might “fix” education, nor anything that addresses injustice in the world. Instead, I celebrate the pure, unanticipated reach of what remains for now an open internet, one that each time you think you’ve seen an edge, infinity yawns open. It’s about twitter, and those is […]
- 2015
- Time Traveling With Google Streetview Well, you might only be able to go back to 2007. And Google Streetview often does not provide too many exit doors. But this seemed like a cool discovery, simply at random. Last weekend I was driving north from home on highway 87, and coming down the hill from the top of the Rim was […]
- 2013
- A Most Potent Brew For no real good reason- this is based on a single photo, duplicated in PhotoShop as layers. In each layer, I selected the glass and applied different settings of the Wave Filter, just to make it seem like a strange world inside my glass. Combining two of my interests into one act. For no good […]
- 2009
- Meet The New Boss cc licensed flickr photo shared by The Pug Father LMS. CMS. LCMS. La La La La La. Will they be toppled by a Wave? I feel rather blessed I have not had much responsibility or even been inside a Course Management System for a looooooong time. I aonnot say I find them inherently evil, but […]
- 2008
- Yawn, Twitter’s Down, Yawn… Yawn, Twitter’s Down, Yawn… by cogdogblog posted 5 Jun ’08, 8.38pm MDT PST on flickr Hardly news, but at least the folks at twitter are not wasting time spell checking the error messages .I’m guessing a LOLCAT is at the keyboard. Twitter is currently down for We are quickly fixing some discrepancies across our webserves. […]
- Woot I Want a Woot Sticker by cogdogblog posted 5 Jun ’08, 8.34pm MDT PST on flickr Society for the Irrationally Exuberant I often feel irrationally exuberant, how do I apply? Share this barking on social media
- 1 Tool Per 2 Audience 50 Ways Audience by cogdogblog posted 5 Jun ’08, 8.32pm MDT PST on flickr A pretty big turn out at the University of Delaware to hear me blab about 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wow, what a turnout today for my session at the University of Delaware on 50 Web 2.0 Ways […]
- 2007
- dotSUB This Movie Previously, I’ve noted a cool video site, dotSUB, that takes an interesting approach to ultimately add multi-lingual captions to video– allowing visitors to the site to add translations of the captions into any of the numerous other languages supported on the site.. or, as I call it, “user generated video captioning”. Today, I chatted with […]
- The Cat In the Server is Gone Twitter has grown up and disbanded the silly and annoying cat in the server photos for times when the service is off kilter. They’ve gone uptown with a new bird warning: Dogs rule! Share this barking on social media
- 2005
- Today’s Jots PeanutButterWikiMake a free, password protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich.Tags: wiki Share this barking on social media
- 2003
- BlogShop Flies Like an Eagle Yesterday’s workshop, or “blogshop” for faculty at Chandler-Gilbert Community college went very well. It was much to cover (and most was not) in 2 hours, but we got many of these teachers excited, curious, interested in the tools available via a blog. The blog provides all of the information needed to do this as a […]
- QuickTopic and Quick Doc Review Some very slick small tools that might be helpful as teaching tools (and other uses). You have to like something with the tagline “your free, preposterously easy instant discussion space” (almost as good as “software that doesn’t suck”) QuickTopics is a simple platform for web based brief discussions on a single topic (un threaded), that […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 15 posts previously published on June 5th
- 2023
- One More Descript Thing People still read blogs. Well, maybe a few of them. I was happy to see others get intrigued and interested in my sharing of the ways Descript had really revolutionized my way of creating podcast audio. More than likes and reposts there’s not much more positive effect when you can capture Jon Udell’s interest as […] ➡
- Five and Five Equals Forever It’s about five days since a key date but, there is, after all, something about the fives. Get ready, here it comes. Yes, one of 365 blocks on the calendar is rather key here at Ursa Acres… Five years ago was when Cori and I “did a thing” and tied our lives forever together on […] ➡
- 2016
- Taking a Spin on HyperDev Prefixing many words with “Hyper” makes them more interesting. Go from ordinary space into Hyperspace. Leave the everyday 3 dimensions of a cube for a Hypercube. What Apple did for me and many of us with a card on a little square computer? Hypercard. (okay my wordplay goes bad for medical conditions, as a diabetic, […] ➡
- A Bot That… I can love for recursively tweeting This post provides no insight to new technology, forces that might “fix” education, nor anything that addresses injustice in the world. Instead, I celebrate the pure, unanticipated reach of what remains for now an open internet, one that each time you think you’ve seen an edge, infinity yawns open. It’s about twitter, and those is […] ➡
- 2015
- Time Traveling With Google Streetview Well, you might only be able to go back to 2007. And Google Streetview often does not provide too many exit doors. But this seemed like a cool discovery, simply at random. Last weekend I was driving north from home on highway 87, and coming down the hill from the top of the Rim was […] ➡
- 2013
- A Most Potent Brew For no real good reason- this is based on a single photo, duplicated in PhotoShop as layers. In each layer, I selected the glass and applied different settings of the Wave Filter, just to make it seem like a strange world inside my glass. Combining two of my interests into one act. For no good […] ➡
- 2009
- Meet The New Boss cc licensed flickr photo shared by The Pug Father LMS. CMS. LCMS. La La La La La. Will they be toppled by a Wave? I feel rather blessed I have not had much responsibility or even been inside a Course Management System for a looooooong time. I aonnot say I find them inherently evil, but […] ➡
- 2008
- Yawn, Twitter’s Down, Yawn… Yawn, Twitter’s Down, Yawn… by cogdogblog posted 5 Jun ’08, 8.38pm MDT PST on flickr Hardly news, but at least the folks at twitter are not wasting time spell checking the error messages .I’m guessing a LOLCAT is at the keyboard. Twitter is currently down for We are quickly fixing some discrepancies across our webserves. […] ➡
- Woot I Want a Woot Sticker by cogdogblog posted 5 Jun ’08, 8.34pm MDT PST on flickr Society for the Irrationally Exuberant I often feel irrationally exuberant, how do I apply? Share this barking on social media ➡
- 1 Tool Per 2 Audience 50 Ways Audience by cogdogblog posted 5 Jun ’08, 8.32pm MDT PST on flickr A pretty big turn out at the University of Delaware to hear me blab about 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wow, what a turnout today for my session at the University of Delaware on 50 Web 2.0 Ways […] ➡
- 2007
- dotSUB This Movie Previously, I’ve noted a cool video site, dotSUB, that takes an interesting approach to ultimately add multi-lingual captions to video– allowing visitors to the site to add translations of the captions into any of the numerous other languages supported on the site.. or, as I call it, “user generated video captioning”. Today, I chatted with […] ➡
- The Cat In the Server is Gone Twitter has grown up and disbanded the silly and annoying cat in the server photos for times when the service is off kilter. They’ve gone uptown with a new bird warning: Dogs rule! Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2005
- Today’s Jots PeanutButterWikiMake a free, password protected wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich.Tags: wiki Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2003
- BlogShop Flies Like an Eagle Yesterday’s workshop, or “blogshop” for faculty at Chandler-Gilbert Community college went very well. It was much to cover (and most was not) in 2 hours, but we got many of these teachers excited, curious, interested in the tools available via a blog. The blog provides all of the information needed to do this as a […] ➡
- QuickTopic and Quick Doc Review Some very slick small tools that might be helpful as teaching tools (and other uses). You have to like something with the tagline “your free, preposterously easy instant discussion space” (almost as good as “software that doesn’t suck”) QuickTopics is a simple platform for web based brief discussions on a single topic (un threaded), that […] ➡
// 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.
