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 June 27th

2025After So Long, Meeting Lachance, the Mysterious Comment Blogger The web is at its best, for me, when it yields the unexpected, scented with sweet serendipity. I see myself at odds with the bulk of where the web is sliding, as a Gimme Machine, that we just keep kicking until one gets the desired shiny candy. The web of machines, not the web of […]
2022Useful Way to Taste a WordPress Plugin or Theme I must get a dozen or two emails a week from so-called SEO experts asking if I want guest posts or will insert their clients link in my site. So I almost too quickly read this one from Emma at TasteWP: I have a cool WordPress tip for you! I see that you’re linking to […]
2020Stories and Histories of Histories and Stories This blog post title likely makes no sense. I must have typed it in and backspaced it out eight times. Maybe nine. And if I can pull together what feels like disparate strands of ideas, that too would be an accomplishment. More likely a good breeze will send it flittering. Would you like more rambling […]
2018Dave Has a Better Magic RSS Box One of the biggest speed bumps in doing a connected course in the Feed WordPress style approach is having people figure out the arcane URL for their Blog’s RSS Feed. It’s relatively easy and discoverable if someone’s entire blog is devoted to the course or project, but gets messier if someone wants to use a […] Unmasking the Masking Used for an @ontarioextend Daily Extend A core of the ethos from my years participating and teaching ds106 is the importance of not only creating media, but sharing the behind the scenes “how”. Typically the idea of doing a DS106 Daily Create or an Daily Digital Extend is to do it quickly. One aspect I always enjoy about the daily _____ […]
2016I Recognized That Spot in Iceland Score another one for having a personal archive. Or having a shred of a memory. I cannot say I follow the European Football Championships but did pick up a sense of the surprise victory by Iceland over England (skip all Brexit puns here). But something triggered when I saw this tweet that Pat Lockley re-tweeted […] ASU’s Collection of 4500 Historic Photos of Arizona, All CC Licensed I never would have guessed I’d be in the internet rabbit hole triggered by an article in my ASU Alumni magazine. But in there I found “ASU releases photos of early Phoenix taken by McCulloch Brothers” describing a collection of 4500 photographs from 1884-1947 by two brothers who emigrated here from Scotland and ran a […]
2014The ImageSeek Mozilla Webmaker Teaching Kit There is no shortage of online tutorials and guides on how to search for images on the web. To overly generalize, this boils down to “here is a list of sites, go there and type your keywords in a box”, with the added bits about how stealing is bad and a few links or videos […]
2011Announcement from Management cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog (who would be a better announcer than Dr Bags of Gold Campbel?l) FROM THE MANAGEMENT DESPITE THE LEMMING LIKE BEHAVIOR OF OTHERS THE DECISION MAKERS AT COGDOGBLOG.COM ASSURE YOU THAT WE SHALL NEVER ABANDON THIS SITE AS OUR MAIN OUTLET; NOT FOR FACEBOOK NOR TUMBLR […]
2008Track Satellites on the Web Real Time Satellite and Space Shuttle Tracking by cogdogblog posted 27 Jun ’08, 4.45pm MDT PST on flickr Nifty site for getting info about satellites and tracking them in real time on a google map. This shows locations of GPS satellites and my home location. www.n2yo.com/ Share this barking on social media You Had Me at “China” It is an understatement, but I was extremely ecstatic when I got an email in January from Jeff Utecht asking me if I’d be interested in speaking at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai. Must details got fuzzy as I thought about going to China. So I paused an appropriate amount of milliseconds before replying […] Please No, Not Ms. Gesler! I love the cleverness of Ken Rodoff’s description of the teacher you don’t want to be in “an unexamined summer“. I’d say more, but don’t want to give it away. linkribution across the seas to Graham Wegner Share this barking on social media Gigapanning Sedona After waiting for a replacement camera battery and a new 8 Gb memory card, I was eager to try out a first Gigapan image. I was introduced to this nifty technology by Keene Haywood at University of Texas, Austin; since Keene knows the developer of the robotic camera control developed by CharmedLabs, he got me […]
2007Turn your Friends to Followers Ratio Past 11.. err 15 Some interesting and funny too comments came in to my mini exploration of twitter friends to followers ratio. And vavoom, todays inbox has about 6 more friends notifications; of them maybe one I know and added. But get this, for those want to push the ratio even higher, is TwitterAdder with a new record of […]
2006A Quest For Understanding (In Pictures) I should have never left the TV on. Oh, How Could ??? How the ^#%$& Did the spirit of ever end up in an ad for freakin’ mini-vans? what kind of happened? Help me understand, ! Share this barking on social media Bigger Map Dots, Please I’ve seen those little world maps on other blogs that show where people are visiting from. Pffff, I may have said, what sidebar clutter fluff. Extra bandwidth ego churning. But recently, I was sharing some of my favorite ed-tech blog links with a colleague, one of them Josie Fraser’s EdTechUK, and my colleague was rather […] Installer, Know Thyself? Sigh. Maybe it is multiple personalty disorder given its Adoption of Macromedia, but my Adobe PhotoShop CS2 Updater does not allow me to choose itself, so it can update itself? Weird. Abort. Retry. Fail? Share this barking on social media
2005Meme It? Delicious Tagging For Online Professional Development for Teachers A faculty colleague from one of our colleges emailed recently from an institute up in the northwest, asking for recommendations he could share on online professional development opportunities for faculty. I have somewhat limited experience myself with the TCC Online conferences and some ones from the Australian Flexible Learning programs I did a few clicks […] This Old Phone flickr foto This Old Phoneavailable on my flickr This may shatter my reputation as a techie, but I have hung on to this Nokia phone since 2001– I really am not a huge mobile phone user, and I come it at max maybe 150 minutes a month. All this phone does is enable me to […]

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 June 27th

2025After So Long, Meeting Lachance, the Mysterious Comment Blogger The web is at its best, for me, when it yields the unexpected, scented with sweet serendipity. I see myself at odds with the bulk of where the web is sliding, as a Gimme Machine, that we just keep kicking until one gets the desired shiny candy. The web of machines, not the web of […] &amp#x27A1;
2022Useful Way to Taste a WordPress Plugin or Theme I must get a dozen or two emails a week from so-called SEO experts asking if I want guest posts or will insert their clients link in my site. So I almost too quickly read this one from Emma at TasteWP: I have a cool WordPress tip for you! I see that you’re linking to […] &amp#x27A1;
2020Stories and Histories of Histories and Stories This blog post title likely makes no sense. I must have typed it in and backspaced it out eight times. Maybe nine. And if I can pull together what feels like disparate strands of ideas, that too would be an accomplishment. More likely a good breeze will send it flittering. Would you like more rambling […] &amp#x27A1;
2018Dave Has a Better Magic RSS Box One of the biggest speed bumps in doing a connected course in the Feed WordPress style approach is having people figure out the arcane URL for their Blog’s RSS Feed. It’s relatively easy and discoverable if someone’s entire blog is devoted to the course or project, but gets messier if someone wants to use a […] &amp#x27A1; Unmasking the Masking Used for an @ontarioextend Daily Extend A core of the ethos from my years participating and teaching ds106 is the importance of not only creating media, but sharing the behind the scenes “how”. Typically the idea of doing a DS106 Daily Create or an Daily Digital Extend is to do it quickly. One aspect I always enjoy about the daily _____ […] &amp#x27A1;
2016I Recognized That Spot in Iceland Score another one for having a personal archive. Or having a shred of a memory. I cannot say I follow the European Football Championships but did pick up a sense of the surprise victory by Iceland over England (skip all Brexit puns here). But something triggered when I saw this tweet that Pat Lockley re-tweeted […] &amp#x27A1; ASU’s Collection of 4500 Historic Photos of Arizona, All CC Licensed I never would have guessed I’d be in the internet rabbit hole triggered by an article in my ASU Alumni magazine. But in there I found “ASU releases photos of early Phoenix taken by McCulloch Brothers” describing a collection of 4500 photographs from 1884-1947 by two brothers who emigrated here from Scotland and ran a […] &amp#x27A1;
2014The ImageSeek Mozilla Webmaker Teaching Kit There is no shortage of online tutorials and guides on how to search for images on the web. To overly generalize, this boils down to “here is a list of sites, go there and type your keywords in a box”, with the added bits about how stealing is bad and a few links or videos […] &amp#x27A1;
2011Announcement from Management cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog (who would be a better announcer than Dr Bags of Gold Campbel?l) FROM THE MANAGEMENT DESPITE THE LEMMING LIKE BEHAVIOR OF OTHERS THE DECISION MAKERS AT COGDOGBLOG.COM ASSURE YOU THAT WE SHALL NEVER ABANDON THIS SITE AS OUR MAIN OUTLET; NOT FOR FACEBOOK NOR TUMBLR […] &amp#x27A1;
2008Track Satellites on the Web Real Time Satellite and Space Shuttle Tracking by cogdogblog posted 27 Jun ’08, 4.45pm MDT PST on flickr Nifty site for getting info about satellites and tracking them in real time on a google map. This shows locations of GPS satellites and my home location. www.n2yo.com/ Share this barking on social media &amp#x27A1; You Had Me at “China” It is an understatement, but I was extremely ecstatic when I got an email in January from Jeff Utecht asking me if I’d be interested in speaking at the Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai. Must details got fuzzy as I thought about going to China. So I paused an appropriate amount of milliseconds before replying […] &amp#x27A1; Please No, Not Ms. Gesler! I love the cleverness of Ken Rodoff’s description of the teacher you don’t want to be in “an unexamined summer“. I’d say more, but don’t want to give it away. linkribution across the seas to Graham Wegner Share this barking on social media &amp#x27A1; Gigapanning Sedona After waiting for a replacement camera battery and a new 8 Gb memory card, I was eager to try out a first Gigapan image. I was introduced to this nifty technology by Keene Haywood at University of Texas, Austin; since Keene knows the developer of the robotic camera control developed by CharmedLabs, he got me […] &amp#x27A1;
2007Turn your Friends to Followers Ratio Past 11.. err 15 Some interesting and funny too comments came in to my mini exploration of twitter friends to followers ratio. And vavoom, todays inbox has about 6 more friends notifications; of them maybe one I know and added. But get this, for those want to push the ratio even higher, is TwitterAdder with a new record of […] &amp#x27A1;
2006A Quest For Understanding (In Pictures) I should have never left the TV on. Oh, How Could ??? How the ^#%$& Did the spirit of ever end up in an ad for freakin’ mini-vans? what kind of happened? Help me understand, ! Share this barking on social media &amp#x27A1; Bigger Map Dots, Please I’ve seen those little world maps on other blogs that show where people are visiting from. Pffff, I may have said, what sidebar clutter fluff. Extra bandwidth ego churning. But recently, I was sharing some of my favorite ed-tech blog links with a colleague, one of them Josie Fraser’s EdTechUK, and my colleague was rather […] &amp#x27A1; Installer, Know Thyself? Sigh. Maybe it is multiple personalty disorder given its Adoption of Macromedia, but my Adobe PhotoShop CS2 Updater does not allow me to choose itself, so it can update itself? Weird. Abort. Retry. Fail? Share this barking on social media &amp#x27A1;
2005Meme It? Delicious Tagging For Online Professional Development for Teachers A faculty colleague from one of our colleges emailed recently from an institute up in the northwest, asking for recommendations he could share on online professional development opportunities for faculty. I have somewhat limited experience myself with the TCC Online conferences and some ones from the Australian Flexible Learning programs I did a few clicks […] &amp#x27A1; This Old Phone flickr foto This Old Phoneavailable on my flickr This may shatter my reputation as a techie, but I have hung on to this Nokia phone since 2001– I really am not a huge mobile phone user, and I come it at max maybe 150 minutes a month. All this phone does is enable me to […] &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.