Here's a quick and dirty demonstration of turning an old hard drive into a very poor disc sander. It took all of twenty minutes, but don't worry: the video's been sped up considerably. Hope you like it!

• Complete one 5k footrace: My knees are still not healthy; as soon as I start running again (perhaps I do this too soon?), it's not long before they start giving me pain.
• Earn Fechter rank in HEMA: No progress as yet.
• Do 10 pullups in a set: I've reached 9 pull-ups in a set, only one off of my goal, without any particularly dedicated training; it's more a side-effect of all the push-ups and planks and various other strength-training I've been doing.
• Do 100 pushups in a set (I tested at 21 at the beginning of January): I'm in the high thirties now.
• Do 200 situps in a set (right now I'm at 50–60): achieved on March 11. I've started doing a lot more planking as it feels like a more concentrated and efficient workout for the core muscles.
• Add five new videos to Youtube: none as yet.
• Launch three new web projects: One launched, the administrative interface for our embedded linux terminal server.
• Add five significant projects to my personal site: none as yet.
• Add eight artworks to my personal site: none as yet.
• Post 24 new blog entries: this is my eighth blog post this year; I've fallen off the pace considerably.
• Launch my crowd-funded project: Still prototyping.

Easter came recently, and so I was finally able to dispose of the bag of onion skins I'd been accumulating in my kitchen since the New Year. To understand why, you have to know something about an old, as in pre-PAAS, technique used in Estonia for egg coloring. Other countries in Eastern Europe do something like this too, but I don't know what subtle variations may exist from nation to nation, so I'll just present my own family's method.

The final result

As promised at the beginning of the year, I'm publishing on a quarterly schedule my progress in achieving this year's quantifiable goals. Here's the list so far:

• Complete one 5k footrace: I started training for this but had to stop owing to knee problems. Under doctor's orders I'm strengthening my quadriceps muscles before proceeding.
• Earn Fechter rank in HEMA: No progress to report as yet.
• Do 10 pullups in a set (I can do about 3 at present): I'm up to five in a set.
• Do 100 pushups in a set (I tested at 21 at the beginning of January): After a strong start my training reached a bit of a plateau, possibly due to nutrition. Nonetheless, I'm up to 32 pushups at present.
• Do 200 situps in a set (right now I'm at 50–60): achieved on March 11. I followed a well-known two hundred situps program with success; now I never need to do another situp again. Just kidding.
• Add five new videos to Youtube: none as yet.
• Launch three new web projects: I'm nearly ready to release my first web project this year, an internal administrative interface for one of our embedded linux products, using the front-end framework Foundation 5.
• Add five significant projects to my personal site: none as yet.
• Add eight artworks to my personal site: none as yet.
• Post 24 new blog entries: this is my sixth blog post this year, so I'm on schedule.
• Launch my crowd-funded project: I'm in the prototyping stage for this product.

I'll be updating this with additional blog posts quarterly, to keep myself on track.

Consider the following scene from Batman Begins, where Bruce Wayne, preparing for his new life as the Dark Knight, sharpens his bat-shaped throwing blades on an ordinary bench grinder as might be found in workshops and indeed, suburban garages around the world. Unlike much of what makes Bruce Wayne Batman—his bat-vehicles, his supercomputers, his Tibetan ninja training—this is low-tech blue-collar stuff, accessible to the home DIYer and therefore dangerous to the home DIYer, if the movie's depiction of grinder use should be unsafe. And it is.

Bruce Wayne attempts a DIY project