Tall Trees

parkrun

For a change, I did barcode scanning instead of the finish tokens at parkrun this morning. Everything was perfect except for when I cocked it up.

Scanning barcodes involves using an app on your phone to scan each participant’s personal barcode then the barcode on the finish token they’re given – usually by me at our parkrun.

The top half of the screen in the app is used as the camera viewscreen so you can see what you’re scanning. The bottom half shows a table of personal barcodes in the first column and the corresponding number from the finish tokens in the second. This information is collated with the times from one of the timekeepers to give the final results table.

I aimed my phone camera at this boy’s personal barcode, but it wouldn’t scan, so I sent him to the other barcode scanner to see if his would work. It did, and all was well.

Except it wasn’t. A few people later, I noticed a gap in the table of scanned barcodes in the app on my phone: the boy’s barcode was listed alongside a blank entry where his finishing position should have been. The other barcode scanner had a complete entry for the boy.

I fessed up to the results processor, who had apparently just been saying how nice and green the results were last week. Not so this week; there’d be a swathe of red thanks to me.

But this isn’t like school or work; as long as the results processor knows what’s occurred, all is well.

I said that next week, I’d go back to finish tokens because I know what I’m doing.

Later

After homemade pancakes and bacon and homemade blueberry compote and maple syrup and (for me only) squirty cream, we went to Cambridge.

We ended up in the Tall Trees, which used to be The Snug, where the service was so slow when we went, we left without getting a drink, and something else before that. It looks empty, but that’s because everyone else is sitting outside, leaving no room for us.

They had the best dirty-vegan menu I’ve seen since San Diego, but for long-winded and not fully understood reasons, we couldn’t order anything. We were very disappointed.