“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 24th
- 2025
- Greetings From Wordland So I am listening to Dave Winer talk about WordPress and The fediverse, and just had to try Wordland and I am now using it to write a post— it’s gonna happen! What happens next? Is it perfectly imperfect? Share this barking on social media
- Chase, Your Bad Reviews The first word in that there blog post title is not a verb, not a command, but a noun. An improper noun that is the name of a commercial megamonster corporation that exists to extract more or less Matrix like, the life of its puny little customers. I’ll start from the end, a review in […]
- 2017
- All You [ideally] Should Need to Know About Digital Content Sue me, I’m an idealist. Okay, I will add one more to that note on the fridge: “Say thanks.” I still maintain that way too much emphasis on the realm of advocating openness, open licenses, is based on the creators side. That putting a license on your work “protects” it from uses you prefer not […]
- 2015
- Me and Aunt Martha Oh those calendar notifications. Sunday would have been the birthday of my Aunt Martha, though she was not technically my aunt. Possibly she grew up in the same part of Baltimore as my parents, Forrest Park High School area (?), she and her husband George were my godparents. Her passing away in 2010 was a […]
- 2014
- WordPress Hidden OPML Gem I often don’t know what I don’t know. Ben Harwood posed a question this morning @cogdog Looking for a way to export FWP list to another site. Not that I'm lazy, well.. but maybe there's a post that isn't on WP org site? — Ben (@BenjaminHarwood) September 24, 2014 Basically to export the sites you […]
- From the Wop Wops of Arizona to New Zealand creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I won’t get to see Milford Sound again on this next trip, but I will get a whirlwind swirl around the North Island of New Zealand. The journey into the future has me leaving home at 10am, driving to Phoenix, flying to San Francisco […]
- 2013
- Hangout For Week 5 Okay folks, we are setting up a live google hangout for Wednesday, September 25 at 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT (check your local time) to talk about photography and the visual storytelling exercises for Week 5 of the Headless ds106. I will kick things off, and we will have Giulia Forsythe there for the first […]
- Expanding Circles of Communication The first means of communication touched only a small circle of people utilizing their bodies as their tool, these people conveyed their thoughts and emotions through their facial expressions and body movements. But as their thoughts became more complicated they found it difficult to express their feelings just through their bodies. They looked for another […]
- Thimbling a Can of Beans I spent nearly most of my day working to design a label for a can of beans… UPDATE: Nov 25, 2013: Wowzers! I see about 30 different remixes of this project… This was created/published with Mozilla Thimble, my first full go with this web-based tool for working with web page code where you see your […]
- 2011
- Road Stats: Week 14 cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Number of days on the road: 84 Miles Driven: 9569 Number of States/Provinces driven in: 17 Number of US/Canadian Border Crossings: 2 Money spent on gas: $2553 Amount of time required to drive 47 miles from Falls Church VA to Baltimore DC: 2.5 hours (frustration: […]
- 2010
- Presenting From Bed cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog No matter how many titles I created for this post, all of them went the wrong way down innuendo lane. This morning, at 1:00 AM local time on Brisbane, Australia, I gave an online presentation for the KU Village conference… from bed. I agreed to do this almost […]
- 2009
- Dogs Rule see more Funny Graphs Need any more data for the superiority of dogs? Share this barking on social media
- 2008
- Two Great Tastes Sept 2006 037 by madaise posted 5 Sep ’06, 8.37pm MDT PST on flickr Peanut butter (2/3 c.) and chocolate chips (1 c.) – headed for the microwave. See Puppy Chow Recipe. Better than mixing peanut butter and chocolate, and much more logical… digital cameras and GPS chips. I’m very keen on what creative things […]
- 2004
- Spam Test The demo blog I set up for the Low Threshold Applications site as the pro-bestiality cluns, the online gambling groups, and the freaky flesh photographers and their assorted scary friends have been paying daily visits. I have a new scheme which has plugged them up pretty good, so I am hoping to get a good […]
- 2003
- Building a Fence (real object) and Building Things out of Learning Objects Last weekend I built a fence around a vegetable garden in our yard. I am not really much of a craftsman, but this project came out pretty nice. Working with the hands got me thinking about (reaching for the metaphor) building things out of learning objects. I have harped before that there has been way […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 15 posts previously published on September 24th
- 2025
- Greetings From Wordland So I am listening to Dave Winer talk about WordPress and The fediverse, and just had to try Wordland and I am now using it to write a post— it’s gonna happen! What happens next? Is it perfectly imperfect? Share this barking on social media ➡
- Chase, Your Bad Reviews The first word in that there blog post title is not a verb, not a command, but a noun. An improper noun that is the name of a commercial megamonster corporation that exists to extract more or less Matrix like, the life of its puny little customers. I’ll start from the end, a review in […] ➡
- 2017
- All You [ideally] Should Need to Know About Digital Content Sue me, I’m an idealist. Okay, I will add one more to that note on the fridge: “Say thanks.” I still maintain that way too much emphasis on the realm of advocating openness, open licenses, is based on the creators side. That putting a license on your work “protects” it from uses you prefer not […] ➡
- 2015
- Me and Aunt Martha Oh those calendar notifications. Sunday would have been the birthday of my Aunt Martha, though she was not technically my aunt. Possibly she grew up in the same part of Baltimore as my parents, Forrest Park High School area (?), she and her husband George were my godparents. Her passing away in 2010 was a […] ➡
- 2014
- WordPress Hidden OPML Gem I often don’t know what I don’t know. Ben Harwood posed a question this morning @cogdog Looking for a way to export FWP list to another site. Not that I'm lazy, well.. but maybe there's a post that isn't on WP org site? — Ben (@BenjaminHarwood) September 24, 2014 Basically to export the sites you […] ➡
- From the Wop Wops of Arizona to New Zealand creative commons licensed ( BY-SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog I won’t get to see Milford Sound again on this next trip, but I will get a whirlwind swirl around the North Island of New Zealand. The journey into the future has me leaving home at 10am, driving to Phoenix, flying to San Francisco […] ➡
- 2013
- Hangout For Week 5 Okay folks, we are setting up a live google hangout for Wednesday, September 25 at 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT (check your local time) to talk about photography and the visual storytelling exercises for Week 5 of the Headless ds106. I will kick things off, and we will have Giulia Forsythe there for the first […] ➡
- Expanding Circles of Communication The first means of communication touched only a small circle of people utilizing their bodies as their tool, these people conveyed their thoughts and emotions through their facial expressions and body movements. But as their thoughts became more complicated they found it difficult to express their feelings just through their bodies. They looked for another […] ➡
- Thimbling a Can of Beans I spent nearly most of my day working to design a label for a can of beans… UPDATE: Nov 25, 2013: Wowzers! I see about 30 different remixes of this project… This was created/published with Mozilla Thimble, my first full go with this web-based tool for working with web page code where you see your […] ➡
- 2011
- Road Stats: Week 14 cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Number of days on the road: 84 Miles Driven: 9569 Number of States/Provinces driven in: 17 Number of US/Canadian Border Crossings: 2 Money spent on gas: $2553 Amount of time required to drive 47 miles from Falls Church VA to Baltimore DC: 2.5 hours (frustration: […] ➡
- 2010
- Presenting From Bed cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog No matter how many titles I created for this post, all of them went the wrong way down innuendo lane. This morning, at 1:00 AM local time on Brisbane, Australia, I gave an online presentation for the KU Village conference… from bed. I agreed to do this almost […] ➡
- 2009
- Dogs Rule see more Funny Graphs Need any more data for the superiority of dogs? Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2008
- Two Great Tastes Sept 2006 037 by madaise posted 5 Sep ’06, 8.37pm MDT PST on flickr Peanut butter (2/3 c.) and chocolate chips (1 c.) – headed for the microwave. See Puppy Chow Recipe. Better than mixing peanut butter and chocolate, and much more logical… digital cameras and GPS chips. I’m very keen on what creative things […] ➡
- 2004
- Spam Test The demo blog I set up for the Low Threshold Applications site as the pro-bestiality cluns, the online gambling groups, and the freaky flesh photographers and their assorted scary friends have been paying daily visits. I have a new scheme which has plugged them up pretty good, so I am hoping to get a good […] ➡
- 2003
// 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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