BUT! One good thing came out of my insomnia. I can now read barcodes! It's easy, really. Kind of like binary, but not at all. And now I will teach it to you.
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There are fat black bars, skinny black bars, white fat spaces, and white skinny spaces. The skinny white spaces are just the spaces between the numbers, so don't worry about them.
Skinny black bars represent 0's.
Fat black bars represent 1's.
Fat white spaces represent dashes.
At the beginning and end of every barcode is an asterisk. (Like this: *) Asterisks are represented by a series of bars, or 1's and 0's, that are identical at the beginning and end of the barcode. So, the easiest way to figure these out is to compare the beginning and end of the barcode. Take the fat bar/skinny bar combination from the very end and find an identical combination near the beginning. From that place on back is the asterisk, so you find the matching combination at the end and take those away.
Really, just throw them out. We don't need them. They're on every one.
Now you just have the plain barcode. My advice is to write out the 1, 0, and - combination, and then make a mark every 5 numbers. This doesn't include dashes. Actually, if you do it right, there will be two digits, a dash, and then three digits every time.
The combinations are arranged like this:
- 0 is 00-110
- 1 is 10-001
- 2 is 01-001
- 3 is 11-000
- 4 is 00-101
- 5 is 10-100
- 6 is 01-100
- 7 is 00-011
- 8 is 10-010
- 9 is 01-010
(If I ever get a tattoo, it will be of the above list.)
This is only the most basic and common form of barcodes, and it doesn't work on packaging. You can't read your mail wrappers like this. At least, that's what the Wired website told me. There are a few other kids of barcoding, but my arm started hurting after that, so I just went to bed.
And now you know.
Happy Father's Day! *waves random flag*
(*Go back to the instructions, you moron; this isn't a footnote!)
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