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 19 posts previously published on May 17th

2024Enduring Web Stuff, Giving It Away For Free, N=1 The web as whatever we thought we knew it is all going to poop, eh? I don’t disagree about the large parts of it most see on an every day basis. I do wonder though how much we can make these grand assumptions when so many un-explored bits and crevices exist out there that are […]
2023Fourth Month of Daily Doubles: The April Slide Alas, the first three months of the year I kept to my goal/obsession to stay on form for daily flickr photo posting and daily #ds106 daily creates. Yes, I hit the mark for January, February, and March. Alas by April 30, 2023, day 120, my slippage is showing, with 118 daily flickr photos and 108 […]
2018Show/Fork Us The SPLOTS! Daniel Villar has been on fire with the SPLOTs. Not only did he invite me for a workshop last month in Coventry University (and that site is a SPLOT), where we got pre-made versions of them available on Conventry.domains, he recently put three different ones into play for his new OWLTEH project. Beyond this, Daniel […]
2016Passbook Memories… with Interest With time you cannot help accruing memories, they just keep happening, piling up. I’ve read opinions about ed-tech people who go on about how great things were in the early days of the web, or moaning how “twitter is not the same as it was,” are pathetically nostalgic, or worse, for an era that was […] Dog and Cat Look in Vain for Their Attribution Who would have thought a cute photo of a dog and cat hanging out together, used for a DS106 Daily Create, would send me on a journey of non-discovery? This post is part pondering the state of lack of photo attribution, and some speculation that it’s less to do with following rules of giving credit, […]
2013Storytelling: Means/Ends Telling/Making cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by JLM Photography. Disclaimer: Yet another blog post without a destination in mind; this is in the vein of open ended wondering, probably ripe for shooting arrows at. Batteries not included, void where prohibited. I’ve been dabbling, writing, teaching about digital storytelling for years, I […] Drummers, Trains, and Mural Artists I kind of forgot how funky, cool, and outgoing a town is Flagstaff. After settling in at the Monte Vista Hotel, downing some custom brewed coffee, i walked towards the sound fo drums, and found this group of young people dancing, chanting, and pounding drums. I’m here for the tracks, and was treated to a […] Ready to Rail I’ve driven as far as I need to on this trip, 70 miles to Flagstaff. My neighbor was going to drive me here, but he shopped by 2 hours before our planned departure and said he was a bit too nauseous to drive. I was able to ask another friend to drive, even though it […] Three Weeks on The Rails Tomorrow I hit the road again, actually so Saturday I can hit the rails. This is the start of a 3 week trek to the East coast and back. Having done a lot of airline travel, and in 2011-2012 going back and forth by driving, I got this idea/hallucination that it would be fun to […]
2009Flickr CC Attribution Helper Greasemonkey Script This morning I drove down a new coding rode- I’ve never done a Greasemonkey script, so with some help poking around ones I have and Dive into Greasemonkey — here is my crude Flickr CC Attribution Helper. What is does is adds a box on the right side of flickr photo pages — only for […]
2007Being There: nets, tweets, avatars Title is a nod to colleagues in the audience who are film buffs. Is anyone a fan of Chance the Gardner? My metaphor may land askew (not the first time), but as a simple person thrust into a strange new world by sheer circumstance, maybe he was foreshadowing web 2.0– and his child like basic […]
2006Googling the Obscure Technical Answer OR if at first you don’t succeed, search and search again? What started as a simple task chewed up a good hour of time today… Eager to start dabbling in Drupal, I decided to get the needed parts running locally on my MacBookPro. I got MySQL 5.x downloaded and installed. I mucked up my root […] What’s Good About Social Software? There’s been more then enough sound and loud reverberations to the DOPA (or is it DOPE-A?) proposal hovering over Washington D.C. to do.. Tom Hoffman has summarized it better than I could under Being Unreasonably Reasonable (and here too): When it comes to dubious web filtering laws like DOPA, I think you should start with […]
2005The Matrix flickr foto Hybrid Courses Matrixavailable on my flickr Our Ocotillo Hybrid Courses Action Group chair Shelly Rodrigo went wildly over the top with a “Matrix” theme for her demo on the group’s efforts this year… with red pills and blue pills for those faculty considering the plunge into hybrid courses. But I cannot help but […] What a Day! flickr foto We Made The Marqueeavailable on my flickr South Mountain Community College rolled out the big red carpet as host for our Ocotillo Retreat including getting the event on the electronic marquee. I’m too tired to blog much, but today’s Ocotillo retreat was a raging, energetic success, with some 200 attendees taking in 2 […] I Missed My Own Mark (and it’s not about the tools)… Blogging (for me) is a stream of consciousness, not a definitive final answer, but something evolving. In my recent playing with screencasts I leaped to pitching it as another flavor of digital storytelling… but driving in today I was thinking it was a wrong leap… what Jon Udell has done so brilliantly with his screencasts […] The Answer is “#*!$ No!” Robin Good asks, “RSS Ads: Should We Push Unrequested Advertisements Into RSS Pull?” No commentary needed here. Nope. Nada. Go away. Share this barking on social media
2004Google.Vanity: RSS2JS Sprinklings Again, I should be working on something important, but for idle curiosity I was fishing in the Ocean Google to try and find where other folks have been using our RSS To Javascript code/service: http://www.google.com/search?q=rss2js.php%3Fsrc%3D It is an interesting mmix of people running off of our server as well as running it on their own […] Group Communication Tools: Big Multi-tools? Pliers and Screwdriver? I’ve been in a number of collaboration initiatives that aim to use online collaboration tools or “virtual community building” and sometimes it feels like the frustration of combing through one of those 90 function multi-tools when all you really need is a basic knife. While not convinced the tools make or break the projects (it […]

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

On Michael’s site he might use

There are 19 posts previously published on May 17th

2024Enduring Web Stuff, Giving It Away For Free, N=1 The web as whatever we thought we knew it is all going to poop, eh? I don’t disagree about the large parts of it most see on an every day basis. I do wonder though how much we can make these grand assumptions when so many un-explored bits and crevices exist out there that are […] &amp#x27A1;
2023Fourth Month of Daily Doubles: The April Slide Alas, the first three months of the year I kept to my goal/obsession to stay on form for daily flickr photo posting and daily #ds106 daily creates. Yes, I hit the mark for January, February, and March. Alas by April 30, 2023, day 120, my slippage is showing, with 118 daily flickr photos and 108 […] &amp#x27A1;
2018Show/Fork Us The SPLOTS! Daniel Villar has been on fire with the SPLOTs. Not only did he invite me for a workshop last month in Coventry University (and that site is a SPLOT), where we got pre-made versions of them available on Conventry.domains, he recently put three different ones into play for his new OWLTEH project. Beyond this, Daniel […] &amp#x27A1;
2016Passbook Memories… with Interest With time you cannot help accruing memories, they just keep happening, piling up. I’ve read opinions about ed-tech people who go on about how great things were in the early days of the web, or moaning how “twitter is not the same as it was,” are pathetically nostalgic, or worse, for an era that was […] &amp#x27A1; Dog and Cat Look in Vain for Their Attribution Who would have thought a cute photo of a dog and cat hanging out together, used for a DS106 Daily Create, would send me on a journey of non-discovery? This post is part pondering the state of lack of photo attribution, and some speculation that it’s less to do with following rules of giving credit, […] &amp#x27A1;
2013Storytelling: Means/Ends Telling/Making cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by JLM Photography. Disclaimer: Yet another blog post without a destination in mind; this is in the vein of open ended wondering, probably ripe for shooting arrows at. Batteries not included, void where prohibited. I’ve been dabbling, writing, teaching about digital storytelling for years, I […] &amp#x27A1; Drummers, Trains, and Mural Artists I kind of forgot how funky, cool, and outgoing a town is Flagstaff. After settling in at the Monte Vista Hotel, downing some custom brewed coffee, i walked towards the sound fo drums, and found this group of young people dancing, chanting, and pounding drums. I’m here for the tracks, and was treated to a […] &amp#x27A1; Ready to Rail I’ve driven as far as I need to on this trip, 70 miles to Flagstaff. My neighbor was going to drive me here, but he shopped by 2 hours before our planned departure and said he was a bit too nauseous to drive. I was able to ask another friend to drive, even though it […] &amp#x27A1; Three Weeks on The Rails Tomorrow I hit the road again, actually so Saturday I can hit the rails. This is the start of a 3 week trek to the East coast and back. Having done a lot of airline travel, and in 2011-2012 going back and forth by driving, I got this idea/hallucination that it would be fun to […] &amp#x27A1;
2009Flickr CC Attribution Helper Greasemonkey Script This morning I drove down a new coding rode- I’ve never done a Greasemonkey script, so with some help poking around ones I have and Dive into Greasemonkey — here is my crude Flickr CC Attribution Helper. What is does is adds a box on the right side of flickr photo pages — only for […] &amp#x27A1;
2007Being There: nets, tweets, avatars Title is a nod to colleagues in the audience who are film buffs. Is anyone a fan of Chance the Gardner? My metaphor may land askew (not the first time), but as a simple person thrust into a strange new world by sheer circumstance, maybe he was foreshadowing web 2.0– and his child like basic […] &amp#x27A1;
2006Googling the Obscure Technical Answer OR if at first you don’t succeed, search and search again? What started as a simple task chewed up a good hour of time today… Eager to start dabbling in Drupal, I decided to get the needed parts running locally on my MacBookPro. I got MySQL 5.x downloaded and installed. I mucked up my root […] &amp#x27A1; What’s Good About Social Software? There’s been more then enough sound and loud reverberations to the DOPA (or is it DOPE-A?) proposal hovering over Washington D.C. to do.. Tom Hoffman has summarized it better than I could under Being Unreasonably Reasonable (and here too): When it comes to dubious web filtering laws like DOPA, I think you should start with […] &amp#x27A1;
2005The Matrix flickr foto Hybrid Courses Matrixavailable on my flickr Our Ocotillo Hybrid Courses Action Group chair Shelly Rodrigo went wildly over the top with a “Matrix” theme for her demo on the group’s efforts this year… with red pills and blue pills for those faculty considering the plunge into hybrid courses. But I cannot help but […] &amp#x27A1; What a Day! flickr foto We Made The Marqueeavailable on my flickr South Mountain Community College rolled out the big red carpet as host for our Ocotillo Retreat including getting the event on the electronic marquee. I’m too tired to blog much, but today’s Ocotillo retreat was a raging, energetic success, with some 200 attendees taking in 2 […] &amp#x27A1; I Missed My Own Mark (and it’s not about the tools)… Blogging (for me) is a stream of consciousness, not a definitive final answer, but something evolving. In my recent playing with screencasts I leaped to pitching it as another flavor of digital storytelling… but driving in today I was thinking it was a wrong leap… what Jon Udell has done so brilliantly with his screencasts […] &amp#x27A1; The Answer is “#*!$ No!” Robin Good asks, “RSS Ads: Should We Push Unrequested Advertisements Into RSS Pull?” No commentary needed here. Nope. Nada. Go away. Share this barking on social media &amp#x27A1;
2004Google.Vanity: RSS2JS Sprinklings Again, I should be working on something important, but for idle curiosity I was fishing in the Ocean Google to try and find where other folks have been using our RSS To Javascript code/service: http://www.google.com/search?q=rss2js.php%3Fsrc%3D It is an interesting mmix of people running off of our server as well as running it on their own […] &amp#x27A1; Group Communication Tools: Big Multi-tools? Pliers and Screwdriver? I’ve been in a number of collaboration initiatives that aim to use online collaboration tools or “virtual community building” and sometimes it feels like the frustration of combing through one of those 90 function multi-tools when all you really need is a basic knife. While not convinced the tools make or break the projects (it […] &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.