I was hoping this would be a linear algebra joke.
That probably isn’t a good sign.
It would be fun to buy just so that random people try to scan it.
I’d be interested in it if it scanned. I’ll feel like an idiot when I wear this and people ask me “COOL! Where does it go when you scan it?”
… “Uh, nowhere it’s not a real code. It’s a fake code, but it kind of looks like a marble notebook.”
Does the QR code take you to a website that instructs people to say that the code doesn’t take you to a website?
Some kind of QR-scanner inside joke, probably.
Love how everyone feels the same.Great creativity but definitely loses point in the geek factor without a real QR code…Probably would have bought it.
Would have pulled the trigger if the QR code actually worked. FAIL.
When I scanned it, it came up as The Snow Whale (Paperback) for $69.95, but I think that was a fluke.
A true geek wouldn’t have even tried scanning it. QR codes need to be perfect squares; this is a rectangle. It’s plain to see it wouldn’t work.
I thought the exact same thing! I couldn’t believe so many people tried to scan it, it’s obviously not a code 
Would be cool if it was though!
Now, this is how this concept could have been taken that much further, making this tee EPIC instead of a FAIL:
It would have totally sold it for me had the QR code taken you to a story about an old, lonely composition notebook, once loved and written in by a child with a vivid imagination, only to have the child grow old and that book end up in storage for years… Then a young child finds it upstairs in the grandparent’s attic, with a story left unfinished, and the child picks up where the grandmother/father left off…
The QR code could have linked to a video on youtube, or woot could have hosted it themselves. A “Storytelling Tee” would have made me buy a bunch.
I beg to differ:
http://i.imgur.com/v8at8.png
Stick that in your QR scanner and decode it. A true geek would know that QR codes are built to be very error-resistant, so they can be pretty distorted/obscured and work just fine.
Now, I looked at it and noticed the lack of the fourth reference point in the lower-right and was sad - that, unlike non-squareness, is a dead giveaway - but tried scanning it anyway out of desperation and disappointment, because really, why would someone do this and not make it a real QR code? Sigh.
And thats why im not buying it.
See, as noted above, this would have been very possible, and I definitely would have bought the shirt had this been the case. But no…it’s just a disappointment. Ah well.
You don’t need a fourth reference point, but you do need a perfect square. There can be interruptions in the square that error-correction will eliminate for less gathered data; but even if distorted, the reference points do need to form a square, and can’t contain MORE data in one dimension than the other.
(ps. the exception is the new iQR, which does work with rectangular codes, but hasn’t been implemented much yet)
For those of you wanting to scan barcodes, here are a few games with barcode scanning:
or, for you more esoteric types who like the weird and interesting:
You are a hero. Woot reprint this shirt and give this man a sandwich!
Oh wait, it didn’t say QR Decomposition? Damn, linear algebra has infected my brain and I haven’t even done it in years. I hope that was the pun that the artist was trying to go for though, otherwise I’m very disappointed.
Oh… I get it.
If it really worked it would be Hella Cool.
There is a particular brand of notebook that has a cover like this and it looks kinda like a QR Code.
Also your example wouldn’t work since the positional elements define the QR code’s edges. Your outer black area would be ignored by the scanner.
For those confused from the front page: I created an alternate version up above that does actually scan, I don’t have a magic phone that can scan things that aren’t QR codes. Here’s my version, which you should be able to scan just fine:
http://i.imgur.com/v8at8.png
Orrriginal post:
Umm, sorry, but did you try scanning the image I put up there?
My phone (with QR Droid) scans that without a hitch. It has to be a perfectly square grid of pixels, yes, but nothing says those pixels themselves have to be square. And in fact, there are mechanisms in the QR code precisely so that those pixels don’t have to be square - because they almost never actually are. Almost no one takes a picture of a QR code exactly straight on, so the pixels will always be distorted and trapezoids - or, in this case, rectangles.
And of course the outer black area will be ignored (as well as the right black bar) - I want them to be! They’re not part of the QR code! I repeat: grab the nearest smartphone and scan the thing. It works. I didn’t just throw together a concept, I threw together a proof of concept.
And I’m pretty confident that (except for QR version 1), the fourth square is a crucial part of the format, but I don’t know that for sure.