meeting summary

[Aaron Swartz]

Rebecca: Been working on the store but it's frustrating and slow.
(Currently: http://watchdog.spreadshirt.com/) Will try a bit more but
may gave up. Haven't heard back on the cards. Have a new design (e.g.
http://invisible.net/watchdog/fec.html), mocking up pages to replace
the sidebar. Should have the new design all ready in a couple days and
we can do migration.

Devi: Been fixing wyr bugs. Had a problem with the *.senate.gov crawl;
will try to work on that, and about 20 zipauth forms which failed.
Aaron to test more.

Jeff: Looking at Drew's earmark parser. Will make a page for
individual earmarks (1 day), add the placement numbers (e.g. 141th)
next to the sparklines, then (maybe) start experimenting with
handshake seeking -- see how Kragen is doing.

Kragen: Parsing FEC data files. Successfully works on 3.0, 5.1, 5.2,
and 5.3 files. Still trying to understand amendments and some
formatting quirks, but should have workable data with a few hours.
Will generate test SQL dumps for others to work with and try to track
down some remaining quirks and work on pages for donors (ala
http://invisible.net/watchdog/fec.html).

Aaron: Been working on scanning personal financial disclosures --
should be able to get everything back to the beginning for the House.
Also trying to bring new programmers on board to pick up the slack.