I have a few projects going right now. One is a benefit calculator that, after entering your information, displays whatever welfare/VA benefits you're eligible for. The second I'm still working out how I'd like to accomplish, but in theory it will parse medical documents to further determine disability eligibility and potential percentage. The criteria that disability analysts use is can be fickle, and it's done a bit differently between the VA service connected disability and Social Security Disability Insurance. It's going to be a challenge. I'm also helping my friend's new non-profit get started with grant research, general organization, building its website, helping him write their operation guidelines, setting up internal infrastructure like email and keeping records digitally, defining the boundaries of the services they want to provide, etc. Would love to officially work part-time for him if I had the time, but I'm content with volunteering. I'd love to continue working on my low income housing map and flesh it out with every cost of living, but I'm pretty tired of it. I'll pick it back up again soon. I just finished this semester of school Saturday, so I'll have much more time to pick up stuff, but I need to catch up on my reading. These projects show a certain kind of trend, I think. My proudest accomplishment is wholly different... Back in 2005, I made a shoutcast server with a friend. I wanted an audience, so I spammed it on 4chan. Eventually, I renamed it to /b/radio. I wanted to include video, so I found an obscure codec called NSV (Nullsoft Streaming Video, made by winamp) that could be streamed from a server and viewed with WinAmp. This became /b/tv, which along with /b/radio was /b/media. /h/tv (for hentai) spawned as an off-shoot from one of my admins. I made a lot of smart friends and we tried to expand this so that people could upload their own music to the server and it would play itself on the shoutcast, along with allowing voting on songs in IRC. We also tried to do the same with videos, so that stuff uploaded to the server would be encoded to NSV and queued. NSV was underdeveloped though, and the way it streamed had it's errors; different resolutions or framerates would cause an interruption and people would have to reconnect. Generally, though, we made our own playlist mixed with banned movies, small strange clips, home-made commercials, or whatever. Sometimes it was themed streams. Because it was annoying being tied to winamp to stream like this, we tried to move into streaming it through the browser. It was far above our level of knowledge, and didn't really work. In the middle of all of this I joined the army and eventually we let it die around late 2007 or early 2008. It will probably remain my favorite project forever.
Damn dude, how did I take so long to notice your post. That's really awesome, I've always held the view that health care / accounting law is There Be Dragons territory, where only lawyers and seasoned corporations can make headway without missing an obscure detail which invalidates their entire calculations.One is a benefit calculator that, after entering your information, displays whatever welfare/VA benefits you're eligible for. The second I'm still working out how I'd like to accomplish, but in theory it will parse medical documents to further determine disability eligibility and potential percentage. The criteria that disability analysts use is can be fickle, and it's done a bit differently between the VA service connected disability and Social Security Disability Insurance. It's going to be a challenge.
For most welfare programs, it's pretty easy. For example, here are the qualifications for VA Pension: - Discharged from service until other than dishonorable conditions - Served 90 days or more of active duty with at least 1 day during a period of war time - Countable income is below a threshold (changes with dependents, spouse, needing a caregiver) - Net worth is below a threshold - Age 65 or older, or have a disability not connected to military service, or receiving social security This makes for very simple programming logic. You can even estimate the amount you'll receive because VA Pension won't pay you an amount that would push your monthly income over $1054 (which generally increases annually due to cost of living/inflation). I have one client that receives an extra $14.00/mo this way. Percentage can be much easier to predict with the VA for service connected disability, since many percentages are set in stone, such as 10% for tinnitus (ringing in the ears). It's far more difficult for Social Security Disability because your amount can fluctuate with how much you've paid into Social Security over your lifetime, and this is where I will probably fail and where many others fail. Ultimately, a predictor of eligibility for Social Security Disability is more important and that can be generally gleaned from medical records. They have a habit of denying these claims on the first go except in obvious cases. Many eligible people are denied when they absolutely qualify, so calculating it to perfection is beyond the scope of what I want to do. This is when the lawyers come in, and there are pro bono lawyers a plenty for SSDI appeals. If the first denial is not just an oversight, I imagine the rationale is that "those who really need it are going to fight for it."