Phlegiscope, Keeping Track of Laws Being Made

What is Phlegiscope?

UPDATE – We’ve been Scooped! Yippee!! (Friday, 2nd of October 2015): This morning, I got a message from James E. that gave me an exciting jolt. In this post on newschallenge.org, Gang Badoy of RockEd Philippines describes their Polimetrics project, launched in July 2015 that does legislation tracking in a better-focused manner, with an agile team that includes a data science expert and statistician, and advisers with links to publishers and academe. While they’re using a different set of technologies and with broader goals, the “technology stack” they and I are using differ sufficiently that it makes sense to continue working on Legiscope. For more on the Polimetrics project, see the Knight News Challenge article, here

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Thinking CNC – Frame done in OpenSCAD (Updated)

Guess which parts will be made of wood? — First stab at designing a CNC frame

Updated 25 November 2012, 1:17am. Continue reading “Thinking CNC – Frame done in OpenSCAD (Updated)”

Rolling October Smog

Rolling Smog - 1 — Rolling October Smog I

Rolling Smog - 2 — Rolling October Smog II

Bad Law Rears It’s Ugly Head – Incidents

Tracking uses and abuses of RA 10175

Saturday, 20 October 2012 – An Aparri Regional Trial Court Judge, Hon. Conrado Tabaco, issued an arrest warrant for Esperlita Garcia, President of the Gonzaga Alliance for Environmental Protection and Preservation, despite the Supreme Court temporary restraining order issued sometime 9 October 2012. This warrant was issued on the basis of a libel complaint by Gonzaga Mayor Carlito Pentecostes Jr., over a Facebook posting that has subsequently been deleted from the FB account. Ms. Garcia was subsequently released on PhP 10,000 bail after being detained overnight Thursday, 18 October 2012. Continue reading “Bad Law Rears It’s Ugly Head – Incidents”

Thinking CNC – Baking wires

It is the day. Today is the day when we finally assemble the first of three motor controllers. Rather than ruin a perfectly well-etched board, we’ll experiment with a vise-mounted, handheld power tool to drill 0.8mm vias into our test board. The test board is a reject from a previous expose-and-etch attempt that had uneven trace widths.

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Thinking CNC – Before reflow

Haven’t gone out to get an oven toaster yet, so assembly of the first prototype board will have to wait until next weekend. Meanwhile here’s an update of what’s been done so far.

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Paper Prototype

Taking a paper prototype to places it really can’t go. This is just a test of placement – the 1-1 size layout simply serves to verify that our parts will rest correctly on the pads.

The circuit layout was done in Cadsoft Eagle, with circuit traces that are at minimum 0.5mm wide. It took several days of tweaking the schematic and the layout to ensure that this board could be assembled at all: The screw terminal block (for the motor) and pin headers (for the Arduino) needed to have solder pads all on one side of the board. Any vias would have to be hand-soldered after oven reflow, using snippets of copper wire.

Now to get back to work – etching this over the weekend, after I buy a small oven toaster and thermometer.