You Don't Want Another Computer! On Dash-Top PCs, Set-Top PCs and Pocket Supercomputers

A decade ago, I started to get obsessed with the idea of hooking a computer to my car. I thought about storing and displaying diagnostic and status information, about storing music and podcasts, about having it handle navigation and all sorts of stuff. I hit the point where I considered the trade-off between storage media — solid state would be more survivable, but I could get literally hundreds of much bigger spinning hard drives for the cost of an SSD — and decided to keep it a mental exercise.

I'm certainly not the only one who considered putting computers in cars. And, eventually it became easy, because the iPhone came around, phones all had data and GPS, so the media and navigation parts of the equation were solved, and with Bluetooth and even 1/8" jacks, cars became stereos with four wheels. The only parts remaining are diagnostics and auto behavior modification. You can get the Garmin ecoRoute for $100 or a Bluetooth-talking ELM327 OBDII dongle for much less, plus many free apps for your phone. To my knowledge, chipping isn't dynamic yet — you can't remap your engine control unit's behavior on-the-fly — but I'm sure it's coming. Andy Greenberg wrote in Forbes about all the things two security researchers could do to pwn a Toyota Prius, and they were looking at capabilities, not attack vectors.

Point I'm trying to make is, for all my dreaming of putting a car into my computer, I now have one every time I sit down in my car, and even better, it comes back out every time I get out, so I don't have to worry about it when I go to the office, and it isn't locked in there if I have an accident. Things like Ford's Sync work best when they realize they're just an interface between your phone and your car.

(I now have an OBDII-to-USB cable and a Raspberry Pi, so I will have a computer in my car, but I'm going to explore the API and try to do more of the controlling-the-car things than a phone app would do. Certainly I'll still listen to podcasts while driving with my phone, not my Pi. I'll be sure to blog about it later.)

But I am not here to talk about car PCs.

I'm here to talk about home theater PCs.

I have one. It's an old HP that was handed down to me because it had connection issues I have never been able to replicate. The CMOS battery had died and corroded, too. Now it runs Windows 8.1 — will the indignities never end? — and I have it in my bedroom connected to the VGA port of my TV. I don't often use it, because when I start throwing pixels through the video card, the fan starts up and I have to turn it up to hear anything. I use it when I want to play with Windows 8, so not a lot.

When I want to consume media these days, I pull out my phone or tablet and point it at the Chromecast. More and more apps are coming — Google's opened the ChromeCast API — so the sweet spot between "essentially a wireless HDMI cable" and "smart thing that holds on to your credentials and streams you stuff" is being filled with more and more things.

I have a BluRay player. It comes with a wired ethernet jack in the back, and I have on occasion had it set up so I could use the networking portions, but when you're searching for YouTube videos or trying to type in passwords, the remote is a poor interface. Updates to YouTube's TV interface and others now bring up a URL you browse to that sets up the connection between your box and your account, but that's an update nobody ever pushed to my BluRay player; basically, once they make the next device, they don't care about the old one, so nothing cool is ever going to come back to my several-year-old player. This is what I fear is the fate of proprietary smart TV interfaces: the next cool thing in streaming apps will come next year, while I'll hold on to any TV I buy for several years, which means I'd have an ugly interface I hate for a decade after the company doesn't care.

We just got a Roku; I haven't even used it yet, and have only touched the remote once. It makes sense for the living room TV, which is old enough that it doesn't have an HDMI port. There is a Roku app for Android, so I'm sure I'll use it in a similar way to how I use the ChromeCast.

I saw a presentation recently that showed the older Google TV interface next to the Apple TV remote, arguing that every button in the full-keyboard-rethought-as-an-XBox-controller is a delayed design decision, and that the sparseness of the Apple TV is a selling point; I haven't used the Apple ecosystem, and I understand it's really slick, but trying to handle deep, full and varied content through such a limited interface. (Sophie Wong has a fuller discussion with photos of both remotes in a blog post.) The Roku's remote adds to that by having a hardware button to go directly to Blockbuster's app; Blockbuster is defunct and now there's a button always pointing to a dead thing. Software remotes like the Roku app should be easily updated to the sweet spot of usability.

When some people I know have tried the ChromeCast, they've objected, because they want a computer they control, not a second screen for their phone. I recognize that thinking, because really, that's what I was looking for in a car PC, before I realized that it isn't what I really want. Nothing built-in, as little smarts as I need to talk to it, and as much controllable from my phone as possible.

Do you have an argument for set-top boxes I haven't talked through? The only one I can think of is that content providers sometimes allow their content to be viewed in one forum and not others; the video to the left of Marina Shifrin telling her boss she quits through the art of interpretative dance is one of many that is cleared to be shown through TV only. As the use of phones for connectivity dwarfs the use of desktops and laptops, I'm sure that'll fall. If there's another argument, I'm game to engage it.

Using Fitbit to keep me moving

I have a FitBit Ultra (which I have discussed before) that I use to keep track of my daily activity, trying to force myself into higher and higher numbers, toward the AHA-suggested 10,000 steps per day.

In all honesty, I have dropped my personal goal from 10,000 steps to 6000, because 6000 is an amount that I can adjust my day to get, while I have to spend hours of my evening walking around to get myself up to 10,000. With 6000, I have a lower barrier, so I don't beat myself up with disappointment as easily. I still do, because I still have <3000-step days, but with 6000, I feel I have a fighting chance.

I have a FitBit but I don't pay for the upgraded API, but I can check every hour. And now I do. 

#!/usr/bin/env python

from oauth import oauth
import datetime 
import httplib
import os
import pymongo
import simplejson as json
import time

import fitbit
import locked
import pushover as p

def main():
    checker = locked.locked()   # determines if screen is locked
    if not checker.is_locked():
        from pymongo import MongoClient # connect to mongodb
        client = MongoClient()          # connect to mongodb
        db = client.fitbit              # connect to fitbit DB 
        reads = db.daily_reads          # connect to collection 
        now = datetime.datetime.now()       # what time is now?
        datestr = now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d")  # now in date format
        isostr  = now.isoformat()           # now in ISO format
        fb = fitbit.make_class()                    # connect 
        fbr = fb.activities_date_json( datestr )    # get updates
        summary         = fbr['summary']            # get summary
        steps  = summary['steps']                   # pull out steps 
        new_read = {}               # create new read
        new_read["date"] = datestr     # date == datestr
        new_read["time"] = isostr      # time == ISO
        new_read["steps"] = steps      # steps is steps to date
        
        if 0 == reads.find( { "date" : datestr } ).count(): # if nada 
            for read in reads.find():       # clear out 
                id = read["_id"]
                reads.remove( { "_id" : id } )
            reads.insert( new_read )        # insert 
        else:
            old_read = reads.find_one()
            delta_steps = new_read["steps"] - old_read["steps"]
            if delta_steps < 100:
                msg = "You took " + str(delta_steps) 
                msg = msg + " steps in the last hour. "
                msg = msg + "Go take a walk."
                pu = p.pushover()
                pu.send_message( msg )
            id = old_read["_id"]
            reads.update( { '_id' : id } , new_read )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

There are three modules that are mine: the fitbit module which comes from my fitbit_tools repository; locked module which uses xscreensaver-command to determine if the screen is locked (if I'm not at my desk, my step counter isn't being updates; and pushover, which uses the Pushover service to keep me informed. I could and maybe should have it do speech with Festival or pop to my screens with Notify or Snarl, which also are desktop-centered tools, but this is what I have.

Similarly, perhaps this task is better suited to a key-value store like Redis than MongoDB's document store. At most I'm having one entry per day and the first entry of a day clears out all previous entries.

But, notwithstanding all the perhaps-suboptimal design decisions, this is an example of how coding and quantifying yourself can help you improve your life.

If ( starting_over() ) { start( this ) } # 'this' undefined

I listened to FLOSS Weekly's podcast on nginx today, and it hit a cap on something that I've been considering for a while. Basically, I have worked in a few technology stacks over the years, but if I was to say what I've spent most of my development time with, I'd have to say Linux machines, Apache web servers, MySQL databases and programs written in Perl. 

This is not exclusive: For a while, I did work with Windows on whatever their default server was, doing Active Server Pages with VBScript connecting to an Oracle DB, while being admin for a VMS system. I've written Python, Bash, R and JavaScript. I've tied hashes to Berkeley DB and used flat-file databases before I learned the next steps. Not that I ever got it into production, but I've written Visual Basic for Embedded to build an app on an iPaq in the days before .NET. And I'm sure there's more that I've forgotten. But the things I write for myself tend to be hosted on Linux, distributed over the web, served by Apache, storing to MySQL and generally written in Perl.

We'll call that my comfort zone.

The comfort zone is a good place. You have a job that works in the comfort zone, you know where to start. You likely have a "framework" in place that you can adapt to what the new thing is. The world can turn quite a lot while you sit in your comfort zone.

Aside: I generally don't use frameworks, because I know my comfort zone well enough that I can make separate things fast enough by adapting existing things that I'd rather do that than spend time trying to learn a framework. With Catalyst, I timed out twice before getting to the point I could do something with it. I'm better with Dancer, which is closer to the level of web programming I'm comfortable with, but the individual-pieces-of-CGI I work with doesn't lend itself to the web-applications world. Our lab still does puppies, not cattle. Consider that part of the comfort zone.

The first thing I missed was Python and Django. I was the last remaining Perl guy when most everyone I knew went to Python in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Then there was Ruby and Rails. I could probably get to iterative and recursive Fibonacci on both without looking too much at the documentation, but I've not spent quality time with either. 

There are two problems with staying in a comfort zone. First is, the world goes on, and eventually nobody values your comfort zone. There are still places where they want Perl people, but other languages are higher in the desired skills list. The other is that it's a good way to burn out. Everything looks like X and you get tired of looking at X. 

I think the hot spot for web development, the place I'd be if I was starting out right now, is still Linux, still Web, but nginx, MongoDB and Node.js. I like what I've seen of Redis and have used it in a personal project (and really, I've spent enough time with it to REALLY like MySQL; I still think in tables), but I think that MongoDB maps well with JSON (which works well with Perl hashrefs, which is the source of my love for it all, I won't lie) and is my fave so far of all the NoSQL databases I've played with so far.

So, I'm curious: if you were starting over today, knowing the computing environment and your own preferences, what would you start with? Why? Is this stuff you use right now?

Question about New School Web Authentication and Images

Time was, you authenticated via htaccess, and the server handled the details for you. If you gave the right password, you could access the materials in a directory, and if you didn't, you couldn't.

Now, we're authenticating with OAuth with Google or the like, and the smart stuff you write knows whether you're authenticated or not, but that kinda happens at the client level, and your server doesn't know whether it's authenticated or not.

xkcd

If you're talking to the database to get content, there has to be some code there that says "OK, there's authentication, so we know Alice's content from Bob's, but if there's something saved to file, like an image — You could put your images in a database table, and I've done it, but in practice it's kinda stupid — that means that image is hardcoded, so anyone could browse around your authentication.

So, is the solution to have the images in a non-web-shared directory and have code determine whether it's OK to send the image or not? I've done that, too, but it seems like you stop the server from doing what it's good at. As efficient as you can make a program that takes in a user identifier, determines if it's acceptable, reads in a file and sends either a good image or a "that's not okay" image, that's always going to be slower than letting your server just send that image.

So, do I own that slowness? Is there another way that I just don't know yet? I'd put this on Stack Overflow if I even knew how to pose the question. Any thoughts?

Trying just MongoDB, and it works!

And it works!

#!/usr/bin/perl

use feature qw{ say state } ;
use strict ;
use warnings ;
use Data::Dumper ;
use MongoDBx::Class ;
use MongoDB ;

my @movies ;
push @movies,
    {
    title           => 'Blade Runner',
    rating          => 'R',
    releaseYear     => '1982',
    hasCreditCookie => 1
    } ;
push @movies,
    {
    title           => 'Thor',
    rating          => 'PG-13',
    releaseYear     => '2011',
    hasCreditCookie => 1
    } ;

{
    my $client     = MongoDB::MongoClient->new( host => 'localhost', port => 27017 ) ;
    my $database   = $client->get_database( 'test' ) ;
    my $collection = $database->get_collection( 'movies' ) ;
    my $movies     = $collection->find( ) ; # READ
    while ( my $movie = $movies->next ) { # would prefer for ( @$movies ) {} but oh well
        my $title = $movie->{ title } ? $movie->{ title } : 'none' ;
        my $releaseYear = $movie->{ releaseYear } ? $movie->{ releaseYear } : 'none' ;
        my $count = $movie->{ count } ? $movie->{ count } : 0 ;
        say qq{$title ($releaseYear) - $count } ;
        my $id = $movie->{ _id } ; # every mongodb record gets an _id
        $collection->remove( { _id => $id } ) if $title eq 'none' ; # DELETE
        $collection->update(
            { title => $title },
            { '$set' => { count => 1 + $count } }
            ) ; # UPDATE
        }
    #LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE CRUD!!!
    }
exit ;
{
    my $client     = MongoDB::MongoClient->new( host => 'localhost', port => 27017 ) ;
    my $database   = $client->get_database( 'test' ) ;
    my $collection = $database->get_collection( 'movies' ) ;
    my $data       = $collection->find( ) ;
    for my $movie ( @movies ) {
        say qq{$movie->{ title } ($movie->{ releaseYear })} ;
        $collection->insert( $movie ) ; # CREATE
        }
    }

The lesson might be Don't Trust ORMs, Do It Yourself, but I hope that there's some reason to use these things.

You Had One Job, MongoDBx::Class Documentation

So, after yesterday, I started back with the command line interface to MongoDB. I found I can do what I want with it, which of course is creating, retrieving, updating and deleting records. So, I try working with Perl, my go-to language, and I install MongoDBx::Class. The following code, especially the $db-&gtlinsert() is closely adapted from the CPAN page.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use feature qw{ say state } ;
use strict ;
use warnings ;
use MongoDBx::Class ;

my $dbx = MongoDBx::Class->new( namespace => 'MyApp::Model::DB' ) ;
my $conn = $dbx->connect(host => 'localhost', port => 27017 , safe => 1 );
my $db = $conn->get_database( 'test' ) ;

my @movies ;
push @movies , {
    title => 'Blade Runner' ,
    rating => 'R' ,
    releaseYear => '1982' ,
    hasCreditCookie => 1
    } ;
push @movies , {
    title => 'Thor' ,
    rating => 'PG-13' ,
    releaseYear => '2011' ,
    hasCreditCookie => 1
    } ;

for my $movie ( @movies ) {
    say qq{$movie->{ title } ($movie->{ releaseYear })};
    $db->insert($movie) ; # How the documentation says it should go
    }

You Had ONE Job, Mongoose.js Documentation

Source

I'm trying to learn Node.js, MongoDB and Mongoose.js as an ORM connecting the two. I don't know what I'm doing yet, going through the early example code. I come to this as a reasonably experienced hand with Perl and MySQL. The first thing people write is a "Hello World" application, where you give it an input, commonly your name, and it gives you an output. In data, the four actions you want are Create, Read, Update and Delete, often used as CRUD. When trying out a data-storage system, you want to be able to Hello World your data.

The following is code adapted from the front page of Mongoosejs.com and the first link to documentation.

#!/usr/bin/js

/*
 * test_mongo.js
 *  adapted from mongoosejs.com
 *  
 * Getting up to speed with MongoDB, Mongoose as an ORM, ORMs in general,
 * and Node.js. 
*/

// Testing direct from http://mongoosejs.com/

// initiallizing connection to MongoDB 
var mongoose = require('mongoose');
mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/cats');
var db = mongoose.connection;
db.on('error', console.error.bind(console, 'connection error:'));
db.once('open', function callback () {
    console.log( "Yay" );
    });

// Schema - what comes from DB
var kittySchema = mongoose.Schema({ name: String }) ; 
kittySchema.methods.speak = function () {
    var greeting = this.name
        ? "Meow name is " + this.name
        : "I don't have a name" ;
    console.log(greeting);
    } ;
kittySchema.methods.save = function ( err , cat ) {
    console.log( cat ) ;
    if ( err ) {
        console.log(err) ;
        }
    cat.speak() ;
    } ;

// Model - what we work with
var Kitten = mongoose.model('Kitten', kittySchema) ;
Kitten.find(function (err, kittens) {
    if (err) // TODO handle err
    console.log(kittens)
    })

// Objects - instances of models
var silence = new Kitten({ name: 'Silence' }) ;
var morris = new Kitten({ name: 'Morris' }) ;
var fluffy = new Kitten({ name: 'Fluffy' });
var blank  = new Kitten({ });

console.log( '------------------------' ) ;
silence.speak() ;
morris.speak() ;
fluffy.speak() ;
blank.speak() ;
console.log( '------------------------' ) ;
silence.save() ;
morris.save() ;
fluffy.save() ;
blank.save() ;
console.log( '------------------------' ) ;

process.exit(0) ;

save() doesn't seem to save, or do anything, really. speak() works, but why shouldn't it? The reason I'm doing this is so that Mongoose can stand between me and MongoDB. Mongoose has one job. The documentation has one job: to show people me how to do just that.

One Job!

Coming to Terms with Javascript's Not-Quite-Procedural Nature

I'm creating a web application. I've written HTML code on the server before and have decided templates are best, because whatever language, writing code that generates HTML is always worse than making a template that has holes you can fill with your data. This is why I now love Perl's Template Toolkit.

Funny thing is, making the code client-side doesn't make it much better. For now, I'm using Mustache.

There are many things you can easily do in JavasScript, but multi-line variables are not pretty in JavaScript, so it's far better to have external templates and import them. This is my current code to import a list of templates, which so far are div_request.m, div_sample.m and div_final.m.

var accordion_request = {} ;
accordion_request.m_path    = '/dev/dave' ;
accordion_request.templates = {} ;
accordion_request.template_fetch = []
accordion_request.template_fetch.push( 'div_request' ) ;
accordion_request.template_fetch.push( 'div_sample' ) ;
accordion_request.template_fetch.push( 'div_final' ) ;

accordion_request.get_templates = function ( ) {
    for ( var t in accordion_request.template_fetch ) {
        var template = accordion_request.template_fetch[t] ;
        var name = [ template , 'm' ].join( '.' )
        var url = [ accordion_request.m_path , name ].join('/') ;
        console.log( template ) ;
        console.log( name ) ;
        console.log( url ) ;
        $.get( url , function ( data ) {
            console.log( ': ' + url ) ;
            accordion_request.templates[template] = data ;
            }  ) ;
        }
    }

Do you see the problem?

JavaScript does not block. So, we convert div_request to div_request.m to /dev/dave/div_request.m, then we set the jQuery $.get() off to get that url, then we convert div_sample to div_sample.m to /dev/dave/div_sample.m and set that off to $.get(), then jump back to div_final.

By the time $.get() starts working, url is "/dev/dave/div_final.m", so we get a console log that looks like:

div_sample
div_sample.m
/dev/dave/div_sample.m
div_request
div_request.m
/dev/dave/div_request.m
div_final
div_final.m
/dev/dave/div_final.m
: /dev/dave/div_final.m
: /dev/dave/div_final.m
: /dev/dave/div_final.m

I now believe I need to write a function that takes url and gets and writes it, so that it has it's own scoped url rather than using the one in get_templates(). We will see.

My Body Plans For 2014: January and February

I've covered my 2014 priorities and goals previously. Now, I'm starting to make plans, but I'm not going too far ahead. Just the first quarter. Will make further plans in support of my goals as the years go on.

It is important when planning behavior change to remember that willpower is finite, and so changing too many behaviors will doom a plan to failure. So, the plans will be set by month, not by task.

January

Sticking to strength training and diet at the beginning of the year, because running in snow sucks. 

Caffeine -- I have been trying to cut down of caffeine, and now follow these rules:

• coffee only when I'm at work 
• no coffee after work 
• no more than two cups a day 

 I will be coming off a two-week vacation, so I'll be reset with caffeine. I could either see if I can code without coffee, or I can go down to one cup a day. I believe I'll go to one cup a day. 

Strength -- I have been going to the gym after work when I can, which tended to be Mondays and Thursdays. It's been ill-defined thing, with me picking up things as I figure them out. I know nothing about the gym -- the only thing I learned from gym class in school is to fear my fellow man -- but I've found some sources and now think I have a protocol to start with.

Area	Exercise	Current Weight
Chest	Dumbell Fly	15lbs
	Dumbell Bench Press	25lbs
Back	Dumbell Row	25lbs
Shoulder	Dumbell Press	--
	Dumbell Shrug	25lbs
Arms	Dumbell Curl	25lbs
	Dumbell Extensions	--
Glutes	Dumbell Deadlift	--
Quads	Body Weight Squats
Core	Planks
	Sit-Ups

Once I get solid with Body Weight Squats, I might start doing them with weights. I'll work up how the circuit goes with the Quads and Core as I start to work through them. 

The source I read suggested that you do reps and sets such that they add up to 25. I put it to 30 to make all the math right, and came up with this.

Monday	Wednesday	Friday
6 sets of 5 reps	3 sets of 10 reps	2 sets of 15 reps

My plan is to do the circuit following this, going in before work on Monday Wednesday and Friday. That'll help get my body and mind going without coffee those days.

February 

Feet -- Starting this month, I start to do range of motion exercizes to get my right foot's range of motion to more closely approximate the left. Will get into that later.

Tools --  Will also develop tools to prepare for coming months. Specifically: 

• check against Forecast.io to see if the day will be dry and warm. If so, have it tell me to run.  
• additions to weight tools to 1) accept Google+, Facebook and Twitter login 2) allow multiple users 3) show progress on weight goals with sexy plots done with D3.js 
• additions to FitBit tools 1) add to handled API calls 2) find best/worst days of the week 
• obWeightTrainingApp work 

March

Endurance -- This month, I start preparing for the 5K, beginning the Couch to 5K. Adding HIIT Tabata sprints. Also, start finding and signing

My Body Goals For 2014

I've established my priorities previously. This is to establish the goals that flow from those priorities. This is where the priorities interact.

 There's little in this that independently affects brain power (that I know of), so there's nothing here that I'm marking with (Brain), but otherwise, in order, here are my body goals for 2014:

• Significantly greater range of motion for my right foot, less pain from both feet (Feet)
• Weight of less than 200 lbs. Waist of 32 inches or less. (Weight/Body Fat) 
• Meeting daily steps goal of 6000 daily. Raising to AHA-standard 10,000 steps and meeting that. (Feet,Stamina/Endurance) 
• At least one 5K race completed in 40 minutes or less. (Stamina/Endurance) 
• A set of ten standard push-ups (Strength) 
• One successful pull-up or chin-up (Strength) 

You will notice no specific dietary or exercise regimines here. This is because I consider then as "plans", not "goals". You take on Paleo or Slow Carb or Atkins or whatever in order to take control over your weight, not as a goal in and of itself. You might become a Vegetarian for political/humanitarian reasons, but then "Stop participating in cruelty" is the goal and eating a Vegetarian diet is your plan to do fulfill that goal.

Significantly greater range of motion for my right foot, less pain from both feet (Feet)

As previously mentioned, my feet are weird. My left foot shows -- showed? It's been a while since I saw the doctor -- signs of pronation and bunions, but my right foot is far far worse.

It is my belief that it has always been worse and I just never noticed until 42 years in. It might be the case that I can't fully fix the problem without surgery, and any invasive surgery is problematic and likely to leave it in a continually compromised state. I intend to use stretching and other non-invasive means to get it worked out.

Related, though, is the fact that the mere fact of hitting the American Heart Association's recommendation of 10,000 steps leads me to believe that my years of neglect as a mostly-sitting student and computer professional has caused muscle atrophy in my feet and ankles, and an amount of physical therapy that'll lead me through pain is necessary before I get to where they're where they should be.

I'm finding that, while my ankle hurts when I start moving, once I'm going for a while, the pain subsides. I'm thinking that I have to move more all the time to get my ankles to a better point.

Weight of less than 200 lbs. Waist of 32 inches or less. (Weight/Body Fat)

I am on a downward trend, and the evidence tends to show that I have more to lose if I keep the way I am, but I'm into a time where many people hit a plateau due to the increased consumption around Christmas and the decreased activity due to Winter. I expect this, I hope to work against it, and I expect further loss come Spring. I suspect 2014's weight loss, unlike 2012 and 2013, will be something I have to work for.

I'm tossing in a Kickstarter-like stretch goal of getting and staying within 5 lbs of 180. I think much less than that and I'll look like a bean-pole, but we'll see.

Meeting daily steps goal of 6000 daily. Raising goal to AHA-standard 10,000 steps and meeting that. (Feet,Stamina/Endurance)

I dropped my daily steps goal in FitBit to 6000 steps because it seemed doable without heroic measures, and while I often have spike days above the goal -- even above the 10,000 step goal -- but weeks where my daily average is above 6000 are rare, and weeks when my worst days were above 6000 steps just do not exist.

Kinda goes with the first goal, and certainly relies on it. If my ankles and legs aren't happy, I won't be pushing myself to move.

At least one 5K race completed in 40 minutes or less. (Stamina/Endurance)

As mentioned before, I've "run" a 5K with a time of 45 minutes. I'm happy with it -- I came, I saw, I didn't stop, I got the t-shirt! -- but I believe I can do better. So, my goal here is to prove it.

A set of ten standard push-ups (Strength) 
One successful pull-up or chin-up (Strength)

I am grouping these, as they are predicated on upper-body strength. There's a bunch of core in pushups, but that isn't my primary reason. I've been trying to keep body weight squats in my endurance work, like ten squats every lap, but I don't have a strong way to gauge that, nor a strong reason (pun intended) to work on it. (Did a 5K nature run followed by some Cross Fit including squats, and the squats made my thighs ache for the better part of a month. That is why I do squats.)

I also intend to get my form together for burpees (a perfectly sadistic exercise in it's own right, one where my form so far has been spastic and ill-disciplined), but that's that would be nice, not I will do this.

Up soon, at least before New Year, is my plans to achieve these. After that, progress reports as I knock these things down.