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dusty2229 · Veteran Joined: 14 May 2005 Posts: 128 Location: London

Larger supermarkets have customer scanners where they can check the price of goods themselves

**Posted:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 12:23 pm

Mikeyj

I've been trying to find the format of the first of the barcodes...the other three are standard formats for shop consumables (EAN-8 and EAN-13), but the first one isn't.

**Posted:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:48 pm

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NovacaineX

Here's what I could manage with Photoshop. The spacing might not be perfect since the original scan is so small though, hopefully it's close enough. Those of you with barcode readers, try them out and see if the results are any better.

**Posted:** Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:10 pm

nynxer · Boot Joined: 15 May 2005 Posts: 24

kurts blog

**Posted:** Sat Jul 16, 2005 4:42 am

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Mikeyj

People have had this problem with IE...Kurt is obviously a Firefox fan and taking revenge! Time to take the plunge and make the switch Nynxer (trust me, you'll never loook back!)

**Posted:** Sat Jul 16, 2005 7:01 am

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SteveC · Unfettered Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 381

Still nowhere on this, so I thought I'd root around and see if I could get a barcode generated for these..

If I get to tesco or sainsbury today, I'll try these three, they appear to be identical to the ones that are on the card. I can't figure out how to generate the final one.

(side note) any chance we can start using PNG to upload files? They can have full colour and no compression, would mean we could make best use of the allowed resolution.

**Posted:** Sun Jul 17, 2005 5:10 am

SteveC · Unfettered Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 381

BTW, kurt is just demonstrating why tables refuse to die. MS and the CSS people managed to conspire to create a "standard" that doesn't actually allow decent layout. The problem is that IE is using relative positioning while firefox is using absolute. Ho hum, it's fixable, but it's far easier just to use good old <table> Smile

**Posted:** Sun Jul 17, 2005 5:15 am

Mikeyj

On barcode formats this is useful. The only format I can see that first one being is UPC-E, with the last digit being generated automatically as check and therefore an extra.

Not that this helps much!

**Posted:** Sun Jul 17, 2005 2:44 pm

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dusty2229 · Veteran Joined: 14 May 2005 Posts: 128 Location: London

These barcodes have got me completely stumped
The ones with letters in them don't even look like food items at all
All codes have been put through a supermarket scanner with no results and searched on the UPC Database http://www.upcdatabase.com/ with only one semi hit on 5034739000005 - Hoo Hing Ltd which has already been mentioned.
So.....does anyone have an aspirin

**Posted:** Sun Jul 17, 2005 7:56 pm

oliverkeers13

It's just gotta be a stir fry.

**Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:57 am

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spugmeistress

silly silly tangential idea, but does anyone still have a working 'barcode battler' handheld game from the early 90s? i doubt it would give us any clues if we scanned these barcodes in but itd be fairly interesting to see what characters it brought up :)

rach =)

**Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:24 pm

SteveC · Unfettered Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 381

1/ Barcodes are simply machine readable versions of the text that is displayed below them.

2/ Tried the three I made in Tesco, no luck it told me I should call customer services. I may get to try Sainsbury self-scan tomorrow...

**Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:27 pm

Mikeyj

Unless you get exactly the right shop chain, it's not going to work this way. We need to try the big ones I guess, but there's got to be another way to find out. I know the first couple of numbers specify the country (500-509 is UK, 888 Singapore), and these are followed by codes assigned to specific shops. Will e-mail GS1 who seem to be responsible for this sort of thing and see whether they can give us any pointers.

Sorry, GS1 that I mentioned are here in case anyone is interested in what they do.

**Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:41 pm

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aleph13

Maybe we're looking at this from the wrong angle.

Speaking pedantically, the card says "Here are the barcodes for four different products. What could you cook if you had them?" Note that nowhere does it specify food products.

Food is inferred with the title word "Recipe," but you can have recipes for non-food items.

Since the semacode leads to Kurt's page, and he's a technophile, what would he be "cooking?" Maybe he's into overclocking?

**Posted:** Mon Jul 18, 2005 10:57 pm

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SteveC · Unfettered Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 381

I don't know a lot about barcodes, but aren't they allocated in singles/batches to manufacturers? Eg, if we were talking about a can of coke, it'd be the same code regardless of outlet. Of course, that doesn't cover own brand...

Anyone registered for self scam/have a self scan in waitrose or safeway (whoever owns it now)? Mind you, if these were the case, that wouldn't be very nice for the non-uk perplexed...

**Posted:** Tue Jul 19, 2005 3:16 am