Zebras and Lasers

Presented at PyBay 2018, Aug 2018, San Francisco, CA

Video

Slides

Links

Python libraries mentioned in the talk

Barcode Generators:

• treepoem
• pyBarcode
• ↳ python-barcode (fork of pyBarcode)
• ↳ viivakoodi (fork of pyBarcode)
• ↳ steenzout.barcode (fork of pyBarcode)
• ↳ reBarcode (fork of pyBarcode)
• pyStrich (fork of huBarcode)
• qrcode
• PyQRCode
• segno
• pdf417gen
• code128
• PubCode
• candybar

Barcode Decoders

DNA barcodes:

• barcode

Books

• Roger C. Palmer: The Bar Code Book: A Comprehensive Guide To Reading, Printing, Specifying, Evaluating, And Using Bar Code and Other Machine-Readable Symbols, 5th ed., Trafford Pub. 2007
• John Berry: The Secret Life of Bar Codes, Wirksworth Books, 2013
• Gavin Weightman: Eureka: How Invention Happens, Yale University Press, 2017. Excerpt available at smithsonianmag.com

I didn’t read the following but came across references to them during my research for this presentation:

• Ben Nelson: Punched Cards to Barcodes: A 200 Year Journey with Descriptions of over 260 Cods, Helmers Publishing, 1997.
• Stephen A. Brown: Revolution at the Checkout Counter: The Explosion of the Bar Code, Wertheim Publications in Industrial Relations, 1997.
• Bill Selmeier: Spreading the Barcode, Lulu.com, 2010.
• George J. Laurer: Engineering Was Fun, 3rd ed., Lulu.com, 2012.

Videos & Talks

• Barcode in Black and White, Groupe Média TFO. (published to Youtube by OCR Canada Ltd.)
• “FX” Felix Lindner: Toying with Barcodes, DEFCON 16 (2008).
• Karsten Nohl, Nemanja Nikodijevic: Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego, Becoming a Secret Travel Agent, 33c3 (2016).
• Karina Ruzinov: Shipping secret messages through barcodes, PyCascades 2018.

Articles & Blog Posts

• Katie Mingle: Barcodes. 99 Percent Invisible. 2014.
• Ernie Smith: Right Track, Wrong Station, Tedium. 2017.
• Ernie Smith: Switching Labels, Tedium. 2017.
• Ernie Smith: When Tech Hit Retail, Tedium. 2017.
• Larry Silverman: Barcodes, A Brief History, TrackAbout, 2015.
• Brian Krebs: Why It’s Still A Bad Idea to Post or Trash Your Airline Boarding Pass, 2017.
• Jonas Neubert: Intro to Barcode Readers, 2017.
• Shaun Ewing: What’s contained in a boarding pass barcode, 2011.