“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 14 posts previously published on February 17th
- 2025
- Back After a Break: The CogDogBlogMuzzle for a Week of Comment Blogging Given the faithful rising to the Reverend’s Come to Bava call to Blog or Die I want to pick up on the followup invocation of Always Be Commenting. I’ve long clung to the idea that the scope of blogging is not just what you publish on your site but how you contribute, participate to others […]
- 2017
- A Direct Connection For Certification Content While I have a fairly well-formed image in my head how the Creative Commons Certification system will flow, at times (many times) despite efforts to sketch and explain, I wonder if others do. I will keep trying. And I think/hope it will be clearer as we roll out in the next month or two, more […]
- 2016
- 2015
- 2014
- A New Round of Tricks This blog has been rekindled in preparation for the next ds106 class I am teaching, this time for George Mason University. The class is EDIT 572: Digital Audio/Video Design and Applications: Provides basic knowledge of the range of capabilities of available audio and video design applications. Students learn to cultivate effective audio and video design […]
- Be More Careful Erasing History, Todd! Todd Conaway created a masterful animated GIF, riffing from John Johnston. I am concerned for Todd’s safety as seems to be not aware of the consequences of erasing history! I think we’re gonna need a bigger GIF. Share this barking on social media
- 2013
- I Sent This For You to Read [markup, remix, etc] cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Do not get me wrong, I am rather proud and excited to have my 10 copies of Educause Review that includes my article. The thing is… I don’t know what to do with them. I’ve read my own piece more than enough before publication, […]
- No More Stories From Jack cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog “Alan hope this finds you well. Jack passed away quietly on Friday, Feb 1, at 7 am.” In one short email message, a doorway sadly closed. Jack was my neighbor here in Strawberry. With the last few years of my traveling and his health […]
- Vacation Lost / Found Today I helped a friend cart some stuff to the Buckhead Mesa dump, located between Payson and Pine. We were struck by seeing snapshots scattered on the ground at the base of this junk pile, how someone dumped photo memories. Whose photos are they? Why trashed? This one suggests a lost vacation, my first guess […]
- 2012
- I WANT YOU TO MAKE ART (damnit) It’s hard to resist a good ds106 assignment submitted by a student- such as the ds106 Propaganda Posters by Daniel Zimmerman (who is taking zero prisoners in this class) Time to let out your inner Big Brother! Create a propaganda poster for ds106. Use your photo editing software of choice and write a message to […]
- Geology of a Canyon via Excel I’ve been daunted by the ds106 Spreadsheet Invasion assignment where you are charged with creating an animation using the software designed for… sales reports, etc. It is, ironically, the first Design Assignment. And one that is least frequently done. But thankfully, it was my student Tiffany who undertook it bravely in her Tale of a […]
- Nation Needs Bagman It is about time we had a Bag in Charge we can trust, which is why I am on board to elect BAGMAN for President! My contibution is this campaign poster for the ds106 assignment BAGMAN Campaign Poster. Although not of the same political ilk, I was compulsed to reach back for another unlikely candidate, […]
- 2011
- License to Font A quickly composed entry for the What the Font design assignment… Even as a kid I had a thing for the James Bond movie- I am not quite sure what parental supervision I was receiving. I had this little 007 car with petals I rode up and down the sidewalk- I cant say what connection […]
On Michael’s site he might use There are 14 posts previously published on February 17th
- 2025
- 2017
- A Direct Connection For Certification Content While I have a fairly well-formed image in my head how the Creative Commons Certification system will flow, at times (many times) despite efforts to sketch and explain, I wonder if others do. I will keep trying. And I think/hope it will be clearer as we roll out in the next month or two, more […] ➡
- 2016
- 2015
- 2014
- A New Round of Tricks This blog has been rekindled in preparation for the next ds106 class I am teaching, this time for George Mason University. The class is EDIT 572: Digital Audio/Video Design and Applications: Provides basic knowledge of the range of capabilities of available audio and video design applications. Students learn to cultivate effective audio and video design […] ➡
- Be More Careful Erasing History, Todd! Todd Conaway created a masterful animated GIF, riffing from John Johnston. I am concerned for Todd’s safety as seems to be not aware of the consequences of erasing history! I think we’re gonna need a bigger GIF. Share this barking on social media ➡
- 2013
- I Sent This For You to Read [markup, remix, etc] cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Do not get me wrong, I am rather proud and excited to have my 10 copies of Educause Review that includes my article. The thing is… I don’t know what to do with them. I’ve read my own piece more than enough before publication, […] ➡
- No More Stories From Jack cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog “Alan hope this finds you well. Jack passed away quietly on Friday, Feb 1, at 7 am.” In one short email message, a doorway sadly closed. Jack was my neighbor here in Strawberry. With the last few years of my traveling and his health […] ➡
- Vacation Lost / Found Today I helped a friend cart some stuff to the Buckhead Mesa dump, located between Payson and Pine. We were struck by seeing snapshots scattered on the ground at the base of this junk pile, how someone dumped photo memories. Whose photos are they? Why trashed? This one suggests a lost vacation, my first guess […] ➡
- 2012
- I WANT YOU TO MAKE ART (damnit) It’s hard to resist a good ds106 assignment submitted by a student- such as the ds106 Propaganda Posters by Daniel Zimmerman (who is taking zero prisoners in this class) Time to let out your inner Big Brother! Create a propaganda poster for ds106. Use your photo editing software of choice and write a message to […] ➡
- Geology of a Canyon via Excel I’ve been daunted by the ds106 Spreadsheet Invasion assignment where you are charged with creating an animation using the software designed for… sales reports, etc. It is, ironically, the first Design Assignment. And one that is least frequently done. But thankfully, it was my student Tiffany who undertook it bravely in her Tale of a […] ➡
- Nation Needs Bagman It is about time we had a Bag in Charge we can trust, which is why I am on board to elect BAGMAN for President! My contibution is this campaign poster for the ds106 assignment BAGMAN Campaign Poster. Although not of the same political ilk, I was compulsed to reach back for another unlikely candidate, […] ➡
- 2011
- License to Font A quickly composed entry for the What the Font design assignment… Even as a kid I had a thing for the James Bond movie- I am not quite sure what parental supervision I was receiving. I had this little 007 car with petals I rode up and down the sidewalk- I cant say what connection […] ➡
// 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.
