“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 16 posts previously published on September 25th
- 2019
- A Generator for Martin I saw Martin Weller’s tweet out for a randomizing text generator: He got lots of replies (which is what make twitter useful when often it can not be), though many were just offering tools, not necessarily web producing ones (cough Excel). Were I not busy with other tasks Sunday, I would have liked to not […]
- 2018
- Twenty Five Years on Myst Island Among the list of “wow it was 25 years ago” was this Fast Company article that came across my twitter stream, “Myst” at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies. In Myst, you explore an ornately detailed island that leads to other vaguely Victorian sci-fi worlds (called ages) created by a character […]
- Announcing WP-Lens a new, simple WordPress Theme for Photographers Here is another new experimenting in porting a Creative Commons licensed HTML5 Up template into a WordPress theme, say hello to WP-Lens. This joins my three previous HTML5 Up to WordPress themes, I was thinking recently of what other templates might be useful inside a WordPress site. The static html site Lens really puts images […]
- 2016
- 2012
- Never Miss a ds106 Assignment Announcement Yes there was some trouble on the ds106 web site Sunday night, right about 30 minutes before all weekly assignments were due. Hmmm is there some correlation? Some students got a little worried http://twitter.com/Twerkooo/status/250068227814744064 @RudyXtable the #ds106 website isn't loading for me at all! -_- — Kiersten Pyrtle (@KierstenPyrtle) September 24, 2012 @cogdog no link […]
- GNA Es Verdad Here is GNA taking off from Toronto in her not too shabby ride for getting to Phoenix: Follow her travel at http://gypsyroguescholar.tumblr.com/ and of course, on twitter Back in the U S of A! — GNA Garcia (@DrGarcia) September 25, 2012 Welcome to INDIANA?!! What the crap? I took a wrong turn somewhere. The vortex […]
- 2011
- Son of Nicecasting Tutorial: Now With Voiceover UPDATE July 6, 2012: Now there is a grandson, I now run my setup through Ladiocast, which offers much more mixing capability and manages the use of Skype as a source- see http://cogdogblog.com/2012/07/06/rube-goldberg-broadcast-machine/ Lots of people seem to have gotten a start on ds106 radio broadcasting using Nicecast on Mac OSX and my first guide […]
- The Animated MacGIFfin: The Sting Card Game He got there first. Todd Conaway was onto the combination of the MacGuffin Alternative movie ending combined with last year’s craze activity of animmated GIFs. I decided to take an animated GIF I did last time around from the classic card game between Harry Gondorf (Paul Newman) first out hustles Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) in […]
- Book Report: Cloud Atlas Six are the vignettes that make up David Mitchell’s time spanning novel, Cloud Atlas. Six stories that are loosely connected over six time periods, past and future. Six stories that play themselves out partly in first halves, then sequentially reverse themselves backward to completion. Alas, sick I am (a cold) in finishing this book, attempting […]
- I’m Trying to do Most of This Found via the ever bag of gold of brainpickings comes the Holstee Manifesto: No, I am trying to dl all of it. Life is short. Life your dream and share your passion. Add- Make some (MacGuffin Art) Damnit! Share this barking on social media
- 2008
- Discover Discovers My Photo How cool and fast is the net connected world? Last night I snapped a photo on my iPhone, uploaded it to flickr via MobileFotos app, and today it is part of a story on the Discover Magazine Blog: Last night, I guess I was at Mission Control in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, at a Korean […]
- 2007
- Phone Roaches 01 roach flick treatment posted 29 Sep ’05, 4.19am MDT PST on flickr A nightmare. Reoccuring. I was cleaning off my Edirol of old files and forget I had recorded this phone spam. I get recurring automated message calls on my do not call listed work number- they leave no number, so its hard to […]
- 2005
- Google Mapped Zip Codes Will the marriage of Google maps top other data forms ever stop? I hope not… Click for a Zip Code Picture overlays the boundary of a US zip code on a Google Map… here is a snapshot of the zip where I grew up: Keep the cool stuff coming… A tip of the blog hat […]
- 2003
- A Blog-volution Anyone RSS-ing or surfing the education weblog scenes (e.g. Weblogg-ed) know that educator weblogs are catching on as a quiet revolution. And it is happening here in our system, a quiet revolution thaking place in and under the radar. Out at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, their home-grown eportfolio system features a blog tool, and last we […]
- MovableType Search: Seeking, Finding and Editing Old Posts I enjoy accidental discoveries (the title for this entry, Scott, is no metaphor reference to fences). The search form on a weblog is very handy service for site visitors to find content you may have written. But it has an extra hidden value for MovableType (MT) authors. Once you have more than a handful of […]
- InfoZine Takes on RSS via JavaScript A news source from Kansas City has taken on News RSS Syndication with feeds down to 20 feeds for various news interest areas. They are making use of our RSS to JavaScript script running on their own server and offering the code to allow other sites to inline synidcate the InfoZine News. infoZine headlines can […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 16 posts previously published on September 25th
- 2019
- A Generator for Martin I saw Martin Weller’s tweet out for a randomizing text generator: He got lots of replies (which is what make twitter useful when often it can not be), though many were just offering tools, not necessarily web producing ones (cough Excel). Were I not busy with other tasks Sunday, I would have liked to not […] ➡
- 2018
- Twenty Five Years on Myst Island Among the list of “wow it was 25 years ago” was this Fast Company article that came across my twitter stream, “Myst” at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies. In Myst, you explore an ornately detailed island that leads to other vaguely Victorian sci-fi worlds (called ages) created by a character […] ➡
- Announcing WP-Lens a new, simple WordPress Theme for Photographers Here is another new experimenting in porting a Creative Commons licensed HTML5 Up template into a WordPress theme, say hello to WP-Lens. This joins my three previous HTML5 Up to WordPress themes, I was thinking recently of what other templates might be useful inside a WordPress site. The static html site Lens really puts images […] ➡
- 2016
- 2012
- Never Miss a ds106 Assignment Announcement Yes there was some trouble on the ds106 web site Sunday night, right about 30 minutes before all weekly assignments were due. Hmmm is there some correlation? Some students got a little worried http://twitter.com/Twerkooo/status/250068227814744064 @RudyXtable the #ds106 website isn't loading for me at all! -_- — Kiersten Pyrtle (@KierstenPyrtle) September 24, 2012 @cogdog no link […] ➡
- GNA Es Verdad Here is GNA taking off from Toronto in her not too shabby ride for getting to Phoenix: Follow her travel at http://gypsyroguescholar.tumblr.com/ and of course, on twitter Back in the U S of A! — GNA Garcia (@DrGarcia) September 25, 2012 Welcome to INDIANA?!! What the crap? I took a wrong turn somewhere. The vortex […] ➡
- 2011
- Son of Nicecasting Tutorial: Now With Voiceover UPDATE July 6, 2012: Now there is a grandson, I now run my setup through Ladiocast, which offers much more mixing capability and manages the use of Skype as a source- see http://cogdogblog.com/2012/07/06/rube-goldberg-broadcast-machine/ Lots of people seem to have gotten a start on ds106 radio broadcasting using Nicecast on Mac OSX and my first guide […] ➡
- The Animated MacGIFfin: The Sting Card Game He got there first. Todd Conaway was onto the combination of the MacGuffin Alternative movie ending combined with last year’s craze activity of animmated GIFs. I decided to take an animated GIF I did last time around from the classic card game between Harry Gondorf (Paul Newman) first out hustles Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) in […] ➡
- Book Report: Cloud Atlas Six are the vignettes that make up David Mitchell’s time spanning novel, Cloud Atlas. Six stories that are loosely connected over six time periods, past and future. Six stories that play themselves out partly in first halves, then sequentially reverse themselves backward to completion. Alas, sick I am (a cold) in finishing this book, attempting […] ➡
- I’m Trying to do Most of This Found via the ever bag of gold of brainpickings comes the Holstee Manifesto: No, I am trying to dl all of it. Life is short. Life your dream and share your passion. Add- Make some (MacGuffin Art) Damnit! Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2008
- Discover Discovers My Photo How cool and fast is the net connected world? Last night I snapped a photo on my iPhone, uploaded it to flickr via MobileFotos app, and today it is part of a story on the Discover Magazine Blog: Last night, I guess I was at Mission Control in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, at a Korean […] ➡
- 2007
- Phone Roaches 01 roach flick treatment posted 29 Sep ’05, 4.19am MDT PST on flickr A nightmare. Reoccuring. I was cleaning off my Edirol of old files and forget I had recorded this phone spam. I get recurring automated message calls on my do not call listed work number- they leave no number, so its hard to […] ➡
- 2005
- Google Mapped Zip Codes Will the marriage of Google maps top other data forms ever stop? I hope not… Click for a Zip Code Picture overlays the boundary of a US zip code on a Google Map… here is a snapshot of the zip where I grew up: Keep the cool stuff coming… A tip of the blog hat […] ➡
- 2003
- A Blog-volution Anyone RSS-ing or surfing the education weblog scenes (e.g. Weblogg-ed) know that educator weblogs are catching on as a quiet revolution. And it is happening here in our system, a quiet revolution thaking place in and under the radar. Out at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, their home-grown eportfolio system features a blog tool, and last we […] ➡
- MovableType Search: Seeking, Finding and Editing Old Posts I enjoy accidental discoveries (the title for this entry, Scott, is no metaphor reference to fences). The search form on a weblog is very handy service for site visitors to find content you may have written. But it has an extra hidden value for MovableType (MT) authors. Once you have more than a handful of […] ➡
- InfoZine Takes on RSS via JavaScript A news source from Kansas City has taken on News RSS Syndication with feeds down to 20 feeds for various news interest areas. They are making use of our RSS to JavaScript script running on their own server and offering the code to allow other sites to inline synidcate the InfoZine News. infoZine headlines can […] ➡
// 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.
Share this barking on social media
