Out of the six ways for me to store a QR code (in this case a yearly entry pass for a local museum), the one I chose today was the worst, most unreliable, least efficient, but way coolest method: I drew it by hand in the back of my Techo Weeks paper planner. It took one hour but that includes starting over because I messed up the first attempt.
It was a 21 × 21 module grid and I used 1.5 mm modules, using a 0.5 mm pen for the corners and single-module areas and a 0.8 mm pen to fill in bigger areas. The Weeks has 3mm grid paper so I made modules one quarter the actual grid size, freehanding that half of them while following the grid lines where they did align. Maybe a ruler would’ve been good, I didn’t think of that.
I tested it, it works!
The second coolest method, I couldn’t do. That would’ve been printing it out and using a transfer pen to transfer a copy. My printer is laser and I wonder if printing it out, mirror flipped, on normal printer paper works with transfer pens?
Third coolest I could’ve done: printing it out, cutting it out, and pasting it in.
Fourth would’ve been printing it out and keeping it folded in the calendar’s back pocket, and fifth would’ve been printing out and keeping it at home and just trying to remember to bring it. (That’s what I did with my concert pass last summer, downside is that it got pretty banged up in my bag.
Sixth would probably have been the best and smartest, although it (like the first method, admittedly) only works for 21 × 21 QR codes: crop the image out tightly and use an USB cable to put it in the “gallery” section on my Nokia 8210 4g dumb phone. Higher rez QR codes don’t work on this stamp-sized screen, but I’ve tried this QR resolution on the Doro 5517 which had pretty much the same screen and that worked. That’s what I used to do for movie tickets. Once movie theaters stopped requiring Macromedia Flash to buy tickets. That was a dark time where I never bought any tickets for years.
Least cool because it’s still flashing my phone like a dork but least work and also best for the environment. Once Light Phone III arrives that’s probably what I’m gonna do, put the file in the gallery section or just take a photo of the tablet screen. Or get a transfer pen and go with method two.