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