“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 27 posts previously published on December 5th
- 2024
- [Almost] Cracking the Nut on Listening to YouTube Stuff on a Podcast Catcher Hey, I have another blog post in my drafts to finish, but now something intervenes. Gotta blog it before I bleep it out in the socials. Through that Grand Old Technology That Everyone Pretends is Dead But They Are Dead Wrong and from his Mastodon posts too, I know that Jim Groom and Michael Branson […]
- 2019
- Making Google Forms and Spreadsheets a Bit Less Rigid Block Style The Form/Sheet architecture is more dynamic than you may think, once you crack open the lid on Google Scripts. I’ve long seen the creative things Martin Hawksey and Tom Woodward (and plenty of others) have done with Google Scripts. It’s been on a list of “one day I will learn some of this” for, well […]
- Recipe or Toolkit for Building Toolkits Building collections of resources is among the oldest things to build on the web (and definitely before that). Heck, I made a “Bag of URLs” for this that ran for like 10 years. My first week on the job in 1992 as a green horned instructional technologist at the Maricopa Community Colleges I heard first […]
- 2017
- The [Quasi] Official SPLOT Origin Story One day, future educational technologist yearlings will gaze up in earnest to their parental units, and say, “Mommy, Daddy, will you tell me the origin of SPLOT story again?” Imagination at work. It’s been beyond rewarding to see the results of an idea I likely initially laughed at over a beer in Kamloops spread and […]
- 2016
- You Can Feed Anything You Want at WordPress’s Restaurant You can feed anything you want at any WordPress blog You can feed anything you want at any WordPress blog Right on the URL, tack on "feed" Syndicated almost anything you need You can feed anything you want at any WordPress blog Bear with me on Chapter 156 of my WordPress love. And for RSS. […]
- Networked Narratives Open Course? Nurse Ratched Sez “CogDog, Time for Your Medicine” Did you ever have an idea you were so excited about that you feel like your head my burst? When you try to share it with your friends, colleagues, it comes out sounding like a random burst of mashed up radio transmissions? Maybe you are a resident of the Cuckoos Nest. In a break from […]
- 2014
- Peek in the SPLOT: TRU Writer So far on my fellowship here at TRU I have partially developed three Smallest Possible Learning Online Tools (again give all credit/blame for the acronym to Señor Borregoruido). I am not quite convinced they will evolve into anything usable, but hey, that’s what experimentation is about. A main principle we are trying to is give […]
- 2013
- Yet Another Story of Open Sharing: My Dad’s Drafting Table on the Cover of Cell Magazine I collect stories of unexpected things that happen to people when they share what they create in the open. They used to be amazing, but after a copyright slap, they are true. The only time I usually add is when I get a chance to present the stories; there is (ahem) (cough) (ahem) an easy […]
- 50Ways + 6 Years Although the project is six years old, I still get regular wikispace member requests for the original 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wiki — out of curiousity I sorted the members role to see the earliest subscribers Look at that, no surprise, Nancy White was the first. I am still quite not […]
- Wonder Woman Wants YOU to Participate in a MultiDay ds106 Daily Create Remixathon Are you going you ignore a woman in leather boots, a starred bikini bottom, and armed with a whip? Are you? Once she is done inspecting the Japanese Navy, she’s looking for you. Get cracking. I’ve set in motion over the next four days another experiment in the ds106 Daily Create. In the last year, […]
- Mark G As a photographer, I know how many of us prefer to be in the back side of a camera, so I was really pleased to capture this image of Mark, a fellow camera dude. We were both in the front row of the annual storytelling festival, Tellabration, in Pine, AZ (his wife Liz is a […]
- 2011
- A Three Animated GIF Day Lastly, and I really ought to just finally go to sleep– today’s photo adventure presented three scenes that turned into animated GIFs. I am finding that keeping my T1i in the mode the shoots successive shots, I can get a series of photos suitable for GIFing. First up, while waiting for the bored barista to […]
- Melbourne The Rowan Peter Way Today was another treat to hang out here with Rowan Peter as we had a few adventures in the Melbourne CBD playing theremin, opening the StoryBox, and pleading with some Canadian to come ice skating. It was so nice of him to take a day off of work (though that seemed to be a bonus) […]
- Lawn Art with Rowan Peter cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This may be the highlight of my trip to Australia. I came all this way to where a Team Canada hockey jersey to push a lawnmower.. But this art spells COGDOG! Woooooooot Cutting grass. I’ve not pushed a power lawnmower since sometime the 1980s, but […]
- 2009
- World Traveler Rebus cc licensed flickr photo shared by kaset cc licensed flickr photo shared by caribb cc licensed flickr photo shared by CARLOS62 cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed flickr photo shared by trazomfreak View MacBookPro Travelogue in a larger map Share this barking on social media
- 2008
- Sawubona! Flickr Mobile New Flickr mobile by cogdogblog posted 5 Dec ’08, 9.25am MST PST on flickr Flickr has spiffed up their mobile page see m.Flickr.com including video playback! The new flickr mobile url is worth adding to the iPhone desktop icons. I was eager to see some of my videos, but missed the fine print that it […]
- Good / Bad ? Travel Good / Bad by cogdogblog posted 5 Dec ’08, 12.11am MST PST on flickr This has been a year of travel clocking close to 60k miles so far in 2008. I wanted to take this opportunity to hang some travel providers on appropriate hooks (I seem to be lacking a hook for “Ugly”) for my […]
- 2007
- How Did I Qualify For This? Looks like I can be a Silicon Indian– from my inbox: Next stop.. CogDogBangalore? SNF is increasing daily Share this barking on social media
- 2006
- Slideshare = Microcontent (Cue the E.R. Music) Previously… on CogDogBlog: PowerPoint is 2.0-fied with SlideShare It has been a few weeks since I looked at slideshare, and today uncovered some things that likely were always there. I am swiping the notion from Bryan Alexander’s vocabulary in terms of talking about “microcontent” — each slide in an uploaded PowerPoint, […]
- New On Google At Home It was a few months ago I shared my use of Google’s Personal Home page, (get yours now) which has been for some time the home page on the 4 or so computers I use. I was recently helping Rachel set up hers with some modules and decided it was time to clean up and […]
- 2005
- All’s Quiet on The Blogging Front I’ve been hibernating but not necessarily in a subconscious state. First it was the Thanksgiving cold that decided to stay at least a week. Then it was the rush at the deadline of our Learning Grants applications, our internal grants program that has a 100% online application and review system (which means about 100% of […]
- A.K.A. Swallowed whole. The Company Formerly Known As Macromedia. No funny joined names. 7 years ago, I might have cared. Today? A collective yawwwwwwn. Share this barking on social media
- 2004
- Title Tag Silliness Unanswered Nitpicky Technical Wonderment Number 894: Why do people put HTML tags inside content within a web page’s <TITLE>....</TITLE> tags? Why would one want line breaks in a title bar string, and what is used in browser history and even RSS Feeds? Why http://audiences.blogspot.com/? Why http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1735546,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532 (well, if the ASP error ever is fixed, you […]
- The Day Blackboard Died Ouch, can you feel the pain, of faculty, students, tired techies… The servers hosting the Blackboard Enterprise system 6 of our colleges share had some sort of “cataclysmic” failure of the SAN- the data storage. It has been down and out about 2 weeks before finals. Ouch. I am not directly involved with Blackboard in […]
- MT Blog Search Bookmarklet I am a bit amazed I never thought of this earlier… the primary use for CogDogBlog is pure selfish- tracking things or projects so I can have a record I can find later. More often than not, i am trying to remember a site or reference from a few months/years back, and the only way […]
- Wisdom Quotes Site- Smells Like a Blog… And It Is? For those who have swirled around the blog-verse a while, the question of “what is a blog?” may feel archaic. But there are more than not who are just stumbling into it, especially now having been
- 2003
- Metadata for weblogs– blizg Go ahead, try and pronounce it… Blizg – The Blog Resource. Blizg is a blog index that focuses on metadata. We want to promote the use of metadata in the blogging community. We’re also excited about finding new ways to use metadata that will create useful connections between and among blogs. It does offer a […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 27 posts previously published on December 5th
- 2024
- 2019
- Making Google Forms and Spreadsheets a Bit Less Rigid Block Style The Form/Sheet architecture is more dynamic than you may think, once you crack open the lid on Google Scripts. I’ve long seen the creative things Martin Hawksey and Tom Woodward (and plenty of others) have done with Google Scripts. It’s been on a list of “one day I will learn some of this” for, well […] &#x27A1;
- Recipe or Toolkit for Building Toolkits Building collections of resources is among the oldest things to build on the web (and definitely before that). Heck, I made a “Bag of URLs” for this that ran for like 10 years. My first week on the job in 1992 as a green horned instructional technologist at the Maricopa Community Colleges I heard first […] &#x27A1;
- 2017
- The [Quasi] Official SPLOT Origin Story One day, future educational technologist yearlings will gaze up in earnest to their parental units, and say, “Mommy, Daddy, will you tell me the origin of SPLOT story again?” Imagination at work. It’s been beyond rewarding to see the results of an idea I likely initially laughed at over a beer in Kamloops spread and […] &#x27A1;
- 2016
- 2014
- Peek in the SPLOT: TRU Writer So far on my fellowship here at TRU I have partially developed three Smallest Possible Learning Online Tools (again give all credit/blame for the acronym to Señor Borregoruido). I am not quite convinced they will evolve into anything usable, but hey, that’s what experimentation is about. A main principle we are trying to is give […] &#x27A1;
- 2013
- Yet Another Story of Open Sharing: My Dad’s Drafting Table on the Cover of Cell Magazine I collect stories of unexpected things that happen to people when they share what they create in the open. They used to be amazing, but after a copyright slap, they are true. The only time I usually add is when I get a chance to present the stories; there is (ahem) (cough) (ahem) an easy […] &#x27A1;
- 50Ways + 6 Years Although the project is six years old, I still get regular wikispace member requests for the original 50+ Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story Wiki — out of curiousity I sorted the members role to see the earliest subscribers Look at that, no surprise, Nancy White was the first. I am still quite not […] &#x27A1;
- Wonder Woman Wants YOU to Participate in a MultiDay ds106 Daily Create Remixathon Are you going you ignore a woman in leather boots, a starred bikini bottom, and armed with a whip? Are you? Once she is done inspecting the Japanese Navy, she’s looking for you. Get cracking. I’ve set in motion over the next four days another experiment in the ds106 Daily Create. In the last year, […] &#x27A1;
- Mark G As a photographer, I know how many of us prefer to be in the back side of a camera, so I was really pleased to capture this image of Mark, a fellow camera dude. We were both in the front row of the annual storytelling festival, Tellabration, in Pine, AZ (his wife Liz is a […] &#x27A1;
- 2011
- A Three Animated GIF Day Lastly, and I really ought to just finally go to sleep– today’s photo adventure presented three scenes that turned into animated GIFs. I am finding that keeping my T1i in the mode the shoots successive shots, I can get a series of photos suitable for GIFing. First up, while waiting for the bored barista to […] &#x27A1;
- Melbourne The Rowan Peter Way Today was another treat to hang out here with Rowan Peter as we had a few adventures in the Melbourne CBD playing theremin, opening the StoryBox, and pleading with some Canadian to come ice skating. It was so nice of him to take a day off of work (though that seemed to be a bonus) […] &#x27A1;
- Lawn Art with Rowan Peter cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog This may be the highlight of my trip to Australia. I came all this way to where a Team Canada hockey jersey to push a lawnmower.. But this art spells COGDOG! Woooooooot Cutting grass. I’ve not pushed a power lawnmower since sometime the 1980s, but […] &#x27A1;
- 2009
- World Traveler Rebus cc licensed flickr photo shared by kaset cc licensed flickr photo shared by caribb cc licensed flickr photo shared by CARLOS62 cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed flickr photo shared by trazomfreak View MacBookPro Travelogue in a larger map Share this barking on social media &#x27A1;
- 2008
- Sawubona! Flickr Mobile New Flickr mobile by cogdogblog posted 5 Dec ’08, 9.25am MST PST on flickr Flickr has spiffed up their mobile page see m.Flickr.com including video playback! The new flickr mobile url is worth adding to the iPhone desktop icons. I was eager to see some of my videos, but missed the fine print that it […] &#x27A1;
- Good / Bad ? Travel Good / Bad by cogdogblog posted 5 Dec ’08, 12.11am MST PST on flickr This has been a year of travel clocking close to 60k miles so far in 2008. I wanted to take this opportunity to hang some travel providers on appropriate hooks (I seem to be lacking a hook for “Ugly”) for my […] &#x27A1;
- 2007
- 2006
- Slideshare = Microcontent (Cue the E.R. Music) Previously… on CogDogBlog: PowerPoint is 2.0-fied with SlideShare It has been a few weeks since I looked at slideshare, and today uncovered some things that likely were always there. I am swiping the notion from Bryan Alexander’s vocabulary in terms of talking about “microcontent” — each slide in an uploaded PowerPoint, […] &#x27A1;
- New On Google At Home It was a few months ago I shared my use of Google’s Personal Home page, (get yours now) which has been for some time the home page on the 4 or so computers I use. I was recently helping Rachel set up hers with some modules and decided it was time to clean up and […] &#x27A1;
- 2005
- All’s Quiet on The Blogging Front I’ve been hibernating but not necessarily in a subconscious state. First it was the Thanksgiving cold that decided to stay at least a week. Then it was the rush at the deadline of our Learning Grants applications, our internal grants program that has a 100% online application and review system (which means about 100% of […] &#x27A1;
- A.K.A. Swallowed whole. The Company Formerly Known As Macromedia. No funny joined names. 7 years ago, I might have cared. Today? A collective yawwwwwwn. Share this barking on social media &#x27A1;
- 2004
- Title Tag Silliness Unanswered Nitpicky Technical Wonderment Number 894: Why do people put HTML tags inside content within a web page’s <TITLE>....</TITLE> tags? Why would one want line breaks in a title bar string, and what is used in browser history and even RSS Feeds? Why http://audiences.blogspot.com/? Why http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1735546,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532 (well, if the ASP error ever is fixed, you […] &#x27A1;
- The Day Blackboard Died Ouch, can you feel the pain, of faculty, students, tired techies… The servers hosting the Blackboard Enterprise system 6 of our colleges share had some sort of “cataclysmic” failure of the SAN- the data storage. It has been down and out about 2 weeks before finals. Ouch. I am not directly involved with Blackboard in […] &#x27A1;
- MT Blog Search Bookmarklet I am a bit amazed I never thought of this earlier… the primary use for CogDogBlog is pure selfish- tracking things or projects so I can have a record I can find later. More often than not, i am trying to remember a site or reference from a few months/years back, and the only way […] &#x27A1;
- Wisdom Quotes Site- Smells Like a Blog… And It Is? For those who have swirled around the blog-verse a while, the question of “what is a blog?” may feel archaic. But there are more than not who are just stumbling into it, especially now having been &#x27A1;
- 2003
- Metadata for weblogs– blizg Go ahead, try and pronounce it… Blizg – The Blog Resource. Blizg is a blog index that focuses on metadata. We want to promote the use of metadata in the blogging community. We’re also excited about finding new ways to use metadata that will create useful connections between and among blogs. It does offer a […] &#x27A1;
// 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.
