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 16 posts previously published on March 21st

2025Back to Zero to Zillions via the Web Link Curiosity Trick I admit my weirdness. As a kid (and still one) I love math. I loved doing long division. I loved when my 10th grade whacky Chemistry teacher Bloom Friedmen taught us all about dimensional analysis for unit conversions all it is is multiplying stuff by one. There goes a tangent again. But math and this […]
2019Silly Media Offered at 24th TCC Conference Teaser Session Yesterday I had the fun opportunity to talk about attributed and possibly [semi] serious use of the kinds of media people see/share all the time. This session was a free pre-conference teaser for the 24th annual Teaching, Colleges and Community (YCC) conference. That’s right, 24… and it’s still being organized by the very people who […]
2017The #NetNarr Virtual Bus is Driven with the Hands Loose on the Wheel Here comes the excuse about not blogging… I’ve not written much here about the Networked Narratives course I am co-teaching with Mia Zamora at Kean University. That might be because each week’s announcement is a long post, plus there are weekly event pages to assemble, like for this month’s “virtual bus” tours, not to mentione […]
2016A Case For Comments. Two Stories. (Yes, third blog post tonight). I must do it for torture, I have no idea why a few days ago I was reading another one of those Medium blarge pieces about “Top 10 Reasons I Write” or “8 Powerful Lessons for Writers” or whatever. This person was writing about daily writing, which I think is […] Links Across Time and Space. It’s Us. Besides frequent topics here of dogs, photos, and sometimes catfishing, I do like to share the wonders of the humble link, the thing that connects one idea to another. They might be deliberately places, but I find more interesting are the ones we make, ones not built into any designed system. Get ready for a […] Unlike Lightning, My Audrey Watters Photo Luck Strikes Twice Last month I wrote about some of the photos I have taken of friends, colleagues who honor me by using them as social media avatars. The crowning prize has been the one I took of Audrey Watters in 2013 at a small meeting of ed-tech folks at the University of Mary Washington. Audrey uses it […]
20121901 Wow, I needed a does of ds106 creativity, so I set out tonight to do the very assignment I submitted, Return to the Silent Era: The dawn of cinema had no audio; silent movies created an atmosphere with music and the use of cue cards. Take a 3-5 minute trailer of a modern movie and […] Movie Making Link-o-Rama Below are some resources likely to me mentioned/shown in class tonight when we spend time reviewing (and doing) video. Classic and Modern audio/video from the Internet Archive It’s all free, and the collection is vast. Try browsing the collections or searching. Note that there may be some variety in the types of video formats available- […]
2011Help! I’ve Fallen into an Internet Wormhole and I Cannot Get Out Actually I don’t want to… cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Martin_Heigan I enjoy sitting back and seeing how one small comment, remark, phrase sends by down a google lined wormhole of information (or pseudo-information). It’s not even from one link to another, it branches so much I cannot even […]
2010Aunt Martha I spoke to my Mom last night, one of our almost weekly phone calls. It was a bit ominous when she called me at 8:00am this morning… she shared the sad news that my Aunt Martha had passed away. She lived alone in Baltimore. Ten days ago, the people who clean her place found Martha […] On Video… and the box Bear with me on what my unravel as a long strand here, Im trying to weave into one a stream that’s been flowing all day. Never one to write in that organized a fashion, I see a path: celebration of some incredibly original, creative video forms- and I want more; reading something way out my […]
2006Local Gems Still catching up with piles of unread RSS fed stories, reams of email, I am happily taking in a few new web things that have popped up around the Maricopa web neighborhood. Out at Paradise Valley Community College, they have set up a WordPress.com site for a book club – they are posting descriptions of […] Blog Trading From Clip To House Just when you think you have exhausted all the oddly strange things people have cooked up in a blog, comes along just one more. One Red Paper Clip is documenting the North American (?) Dream: My name is Kyle MacDonald. I started with one red paperclip on July 12th, 2005 and I am making a […] (Trying) Doing The Right Thing Interspersed among the many nice comments to my “By Maricopa / Hello NMC” post, was one comment that ended up addressing directly with the writer, rather than in the comment stream. Gemma had commented (likely via the first place to write) about her displeasure that I had used a screen shot and a link to […] How 2 Go Please, let’s take the high road, and ignore any literal, body action interpretations of this title. My pending transition from Maricopa to NMC is likely to occupy much of my blog space, considering this is a transition from my first “real” job to my second. Here is a very odd thing about Maricopa. People stay […] The Line flickr foto Fir and Snowavailable on my flickr I’ve just returned from a week’s hideaway at our cabin in Strawberry, AZ. I deliberately left the computers at home, and this was my longest offline experience in 5 or 6 years. The first few days were a bit shakey, and the sweats and convulsions were intense. […]

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

On Michael’s site he might use

There are 16 posts previously published on March 21st

2025Back to Zero to Zillions via the Web Link Curiosity Trick I admit my weirdness. As a kid (and still one) I love math. I loved doing long division. I loved when my 10th grade whacky Chemistry teacher Bloom Friedmen taught us all about dimensional analysis for unit conversions all it is is multiplying stuff by one. There goes a tangent again. But math and this […] &amp#x27A1;
2019Silly Media Offered at 24th TCC Conference Teaser Session Yesterday I had the fun opportunity to talk about attributed and possibly [semi] serious use of the kinds of media people see/share all the time. This session was a free pre-conference teaser for the 24th annual Teaching, Colleges and Community (YCC) conference. That’s right, 24… and it’s still being organized by the very people who […] &amp#x27A1;
2017The #NetNarr Virtual Bus is Driven with the Hands Loose on the Wheel Here comes the excuse about not blogging… I’ve not written much here about the Networked Narratives course I am co-teaching with Mia Zamora at Kean University. That might be because each week’s announcement is a long post, plus there are weekly event pages to assemble, like for this month’s “virtual bus” tours, not to mentione […] &amp#x27A1;
2016A Case For Comments. Two Stories. (Yes, third blog post tonight). I must do it for torture, I have no idea why a few days ago I was reading another one of those Medium blarge pieces about “Top 10 Reasons I Write” or “8 Powerful Lessons for Writers” or whatever. This person was writing about daily writing, which I think is […] &amp#x27A1; Links Across Time and Space. It’s Us. Besides frequent topics here of dogs, photos, and sometimes catfishing, I do like to share the wonders of the humble link, the thing that connects one idea to another. They might be deliberately places, but I find more interesting are the ones we make, ones not built into any designed system. Get ready for a […] &amp#x27A1; Unlike Lightning, My Audrey Watters Photo Luck Strikes Twice Last month I wrote about some of the photos I have taken of friends, colleagues who honor me by using them as social media avatars. The crowning prize has been the one I took of Audrey Watters in 2013 at a small meeting of ed-tech folks at the University of Mary Washington. Audrey uses it […] &amp#x27A1;
20121901 Wow, I needed a does of ds106 creativity, so I set out tonight to do the very assignment I submitted, Return to the Silent Era: The dawn of cinema had no audio; silent movies created an atmosphere with music and the use of cue cards. Take a 3-5 minute trailer of a modern movie and […] &amp#x27A1; Movie Making Link-o-Rama Below are some resources likely to me mentioned/shown in class tonight when we spend time reviewing (and doing) video. Classic and Modern audio/video from the Internet Archive It’s all free, and the collection is vast. Try browsing the collections or searching. Note that there may be some variety in the types of video formats available- […] &amp#x27A1;
2011Help! I’ve Fallen into an Internet Wormhole and I Cannot Get Out Actually I don’t want to… cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by Martin_Heigan I enjoy sitting back and seeing how one small comment, remark, phrase sends by down a google lined wormhole of information (or pseudo-information). It’s not even from one link to another, it branches so much I cannot even […] &amp#x27A1;
2010Aunt Martha I spoke to my Mom last night, one of our almost weekly phone calls. It was a bit ominous when she called me at 8:00am this morning… she shared the sad news that my Aunt Martha had passed away. She lived alone in Baltimore. Ten days ago, the people who clean her place found Martha […] &amp#x27A1; On Video… and the box Bear with me on what my unravel as a long strand here, Im trying to weave into one a stream that’s been flowing all day. Never one to write in that organized a fashion, I see a path: celebration of some incredibly original, creative video forms- and I want more; reading something way out my […] &amp#x27A1;
2006Local Gems Still catching up with piles of unread RSS fed stories, reams of email, I am happily taking in a few new web things that have popped up around the Maricopa web neighborhood. Out at Paradise Valley Community College, they have set up a WordPress.com site for a book club – they are posting descriptions of […] &amp#x27A1; Blog Trading From Clip To House Just when you think you have exhausted all the oddly strange things people have cooked up in a blog, comes along just one more. One Red Paper Clip is documenting the North American (?) Dream: My name is Kyle MacDonald. I started with one red paperclip on July 12th, 2005 and I am making a […] &amp#x27A1; (Trying) Doing The Right Thing Interspersed among the many nice comments to my “By Maricopa / Hello NMC” post, was one comment that ended up addressing directly with the writer, rather than in the comment stream. Gemma had commented (likely via the first place to write) about her displeasure that I had used a screen shot and a link to […] &amp#x27A1; How 2 Go Please, let’s take the high road, and ignore any literal, body action interpretations of this title. My pending transition from Maricopa to NMC is likely to occupy much of my blog space, considering this is a transition from my first “real” job to my second. Here is a very odd thing about Maricopa. People stay […] &amp#x27A1; The Line flickr foto Fir and Snowavailable on my flickr I’ve just returned from a week’s hideaway at our cabin in Strawberry, AZ. I deliberately left the computers at home, and this was my longest offline experience in 5 or 6 years. The first few days were a bit shakey, and the sweats and convulsions were intense. […] &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.