At 11pm I started some CAD work. At 12pm I was back on paper. At 1am I was visited by Jon and Andy. At 2am I said I'd be finished by three. At 3am I said I'd call it a day at four. At four I wanted to polish up a couple of things. At five I went to bed.

This was the start of January 17th for Andy Higgs; overworked and... well... overworked. Give me a break! But despite all this work, and the hand-in I made at 12 noon today, the work does not cease. Tomorrow is my Enterprise exam, and haven't even done so much as a sniff of revision yet. I decided to get some more kip as soon as I got in, and now it's four o'clock. It sounds stupid that the day before a 100% module that you should be more concerned about beauty sleep than revision, but the fact is if I get less that four hours sleep I probably won't be awake for that exam, and then all the revision has gone to waste.

I'm fairly confident anyway. It mostly appears to be common sense applied, and I'm looking forward to getting it out of the way. Provided I can keep my eyes peeled I might even go out tomorrow night - the first time in Lufbra for just over four weeks.

My room needs a tidy, my cupboard needs restocking and this frickin' ulcer is getting worse by the day. I'm practically wading in Bon Gela but to no avail; the pain is just hanging around like a chav near a half empty can of lager on the train.

According to PharmWeb the following advice is given to people with ulcers,

Firstly, do not expose the ulcer to foods which cause pain and aggravate the symptoms. These types of food are acidic, spicy, salty, coarse or hot and cold.

If I can't eat either hot or cold food then there seems no point going to Tescos.

Only another five months to go...

There is only one thing better than writing an essay, and that is knowing what you are doing when writing an essay. Thankfully I made that transition today.

Tomorrow is my last full day to get motivated and produce something awe inspiring. A number of things have fallen into place which should make the whole process a little easier, one of them being Jon coming over and letting me know he still hasn't started. It's like unprofessional suicide in my opinion, but he always manages to get a good grade at the end of the day, which makes me feel much better that if he can start after me and get a good grade, then I shouldn't do too badly. I hope.

I've managed to eat my way through an entire week's shopping which means that tonight I had to order Chinese. I'm not complaining, I bloody love Chinese food, but if I have to do it again tomorrow and the next day, prices start adding up. Although McDonalds is just over the road I still can't bring myself to buy one for one of my staple meals of the day. As I detect no time for shopping in the interim, I could be shedding pounds this next week.

I had to write to an Italian guy yesterday regarding linking directly to a file on my website (therefore eating my bandwidth). I could turn it off, but I'm too busy, so instead I sent him an email (politely) via the Babelfish translator. His response was as equally mumbled as mine (Babelfish again) but I got the jist he hadn't understood most of it. This is not a surprise really, as when I fed my Italianised email back through the translator it made less sense than the Italian on it's own. One more reason for me to take up something linguistic; I've always wanted to learn Italian.

I also have been misbehaving. While I should be concentrating on Project 100, I have found myself today:

• Watching football
• Reading BBC News
• Creating brand identities
• Reading BBC News again (then checking it)
• Reading my RSS Feeds
• Reading BBC News over
• Dousing my infernal ulcer with salt water

Tomorrow is the big push.

According to Sean, the reason I have an ulcer on my inside lower lip is because I am not getting enough fruit. Ironically, any attempt to get any sort of fruit inside me makes the ulcer growl more than ever. It's a strange and painful paradox.

I've been working again today, which is becoming more and more necessary as the deadline is approaching faster and faster. Flash's CD arrived today which I am eternally grateful for; at least now I have some guidance, although I do find myself writing some pretty woolly stuff.

I sat down with Jono today to discuss some options regarding another new venture today. Maybe I should finish at least one before I start another.

The others went out last night, which has done nothing but make me jealous.

Thanks to Swanny for correcting my spelling today, which I have noticed is becoming more and more like my sentence structure, convoluted or just plain wrong.

Ideally the executive summary is written at the end of a project, however for me it currently more of an aspirational statement. I'm looking at it as a nice way of looking forward and thinking, "Yeh, it'd be good to have that in the project," then I go and do it to fill the gap. I'm not sure if that is strictly the way around that you are meant to do it, but then again, it's not like I have the time to worry about that right now.

I had a tutorial today which could have gone badly, but it didn't. Thankfully we spent most of the time discussing the content of this report, and pushing mechano models around the table top. In line with this new found fascination for toys, I bought three large blocks of modelling clay today, and yesterday when we were asked what new module might be a beneficial option for in future years I suggested 'Playtime'. I think I'm slowly losing my sanity.

That said, I'm feeling pretty composed considering the looming deadlines and exams. For some unfortunate reason the university decided that having a major project handin on Tuesday could only be bettered by placing the Enterprise and Innovation exam the day after (the same thing they did as last year, which indicates they really do think it's a good idea).

I've had one or two other unfortunate things crop up of recent (today), which have annoyed me slightly. On top of this the fact I won't have been out in a week means I'm only borderline on the edge of reality anyway. I've hardly seen anyone since I got back and the social side of me is lamenting.

Come on Higgs, lets see some progress.

There is nothing stronger to prove that you are indeed a web geek when you get 90% and 81% in two web assignments. Although this may not sound particularly high to the people who are not fully paid up members of the Industrial Design Reich, it is the closest thing to perfection, at least for me, this year. Granted I should be expecting a grade higher than most - I am only doing this for a living(ish) and failing miserably (or at least doing worse than Jon "Pull it out of the bag" Hickman) would have mean I'd have to throw in the towel.

On other IDT fronts, things aren't looking so rosy. I need a 3000 word report by Tuesday and the prospects are looking increasingly bleak, or at least busy. I can see some pro-plus fuelled nights ahead. There is a spare pack of glucose tablets on my desk and even they are beginning to look like Honey & Lemon to Godzilla with a broken back. This is going to need some serious powering. It's not like I've not been working... you don't create a sauna like this (my room) without several hours of unbroken graft. What is concerning me most is I'm churning out designs like there is no tomorrow, yet haven't constructed a single design matrix (oh whoopee for bringing in mathematical terms at a time like this) or put pen to paper for the next winner of the Pulitzer prize.

I kipped mid-afternoon again. For some reason my dopey little head can't stomach more than four hours up and about before I starts to pine for the Land of Nod. Once again I found myself drifting off to a podcast on liquid layouts. God knows what I've learnt subliminally.

Sister One called me from home about an three hours ago requesting assistance with the computer. Apparently it was vomiting up all sorts of error messages which sounded like the work of some renegade spyware. Forty five minutes later and the problem was solved. Sister One received her lecture on installing Third Party crap and the computer was back up and running. However by this time I had stalled. Getting into a rhythm and keeping to it is a nightmare, especially when motivation is proving to be as elusive as Kate Moss in a cocktail stick factory.

I've been getting on today. My 9am lecture meant I had to drag myself out of bed for a revision session on the ins and outs of SME business analysis. Not too bad really in the end, and it finished 50 minutes earlier than expected. It also reassured me that my thinking about the exam next week was right; just because last year's past papers look like a bitch, doesn't mean this year's paper is going to be a bitch. Well, fingers crossed.

I've been soaking up the finer points of CSS wireframe prototyping, XHTML semantic markup and various other bits and pieces that could only interest a web developer. Good to stay on top of it though, and podcasts are so much easier to digest than browsing the interweb and stumbling across important concepts you should be spending more time learning about. One day I might even have the time to use some of this knowledge.

While aurally I was being entertained by some highbrow Australian web conference, the rest of my body was concentrating on knocking out some sketches and trying to draw together as much of the project as I could stomach. Unfortunately I haven't got to flat out yet, but if anyone wants to witness me in total panic, come over at around 12pm on Monday evening.

I drew up a logo for the Industrial Design Degree Show, half-heartedly knowing that the rest of my work is likely to obstruct any chance of me getting a design in on time for the deadline - hand in day. I'm not so bothered about it this year (more pressing issues at hand), but I love this stuff more than the course itself, so why not. Oh yeh, my degree, that's why.

I had to get the tube in the front wheel of my bike fixed yesterday, and once again I will plug Cycletrax up by McDonalds on the Ashby Road, Loughborough for their incredibly fast service and that my fiver not only replaced the tube, installed it, but I also got my gears tweaked for free. Credit where it's due. I suppose that also means I need to point out it was Devito who turned up on my bike 'reporting' the puncture. Strangely enough he had to to put his bike in at exactly the same time for exactly the same problem. Coincidence? I think not. Charnwood Borough must have acquired some new 'sharper' roads for Christmas (or Devito has found an alternative route to campus through a carpet tack factory).

The Tours4 brochures also showed up. Very pleased, partially because they turned out well, partially because I can't afford to be worrying about print jobs at this point in my university career. Come on MDP1 if you think you're hard enough...

Even if now I am one day down towards the deadline, progress has been slow. Despite an early rise, I spent the earlier parts of the day mopping up money-related tasks and tidying the ends of nearly finished projects. All this wore me out, and by 2pm I was back in bed for two hours kip before I was able to tackle anything else with a level head.

Despite a less-than-satisfying-start, I managed to put pen to paper briefly this evening, punctuated only by shopping, Baseketball (so good, but so long since I last was treated to a viewing) and some more Bluetooth sleuth work.

One of the major reasons for my early start was shopping. Unlike my housemates, My Parents had failed to supply me with any more than half a bar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and although delicious, is unlikely to sustain me properly for an entire term (unlike Sean, who is wallowing in pasta sauces and tins of spaghetti hoops). For your information, if you choose to shop at Tescos this week, it maybe inadvisable to pick Checkout One. The length of the queue was deceptively short, and I soon discovered why. The checkout girl who (lets call her Jo, because that was her name) let me finish waiting for her to complete her conversation before beginning to scan through any of my shopping. I then discovered Jo was Mrs Popular amongst the other staff. When I'd done all my packing, Jo started a couple of conversations with 'satellite shop assistants' (in that they were orbiting Checkout One) about the reasons why Jill wasn't in today and questions on how to fill out the holiday-leave form. When she was quite done she asked for my card and in a number of short bursts, completed the transaction. The sleep in the afternoon was directly related to the time I spent wearing myself out while passing time at the till in Tescos, playing word games and the like.

I popped some stuff in the post for Le Scarpe and tried to teach myself Sudoku but these didn't take long, leaving plenty of time for me to dwell on what my Major Project is going to look like. I have since stumbled on one idea I'm fairly keen on, but the thought that this might have to be a real product in ten weeks time is probably more than I can bear to think about at the moment.

Swan got up at 5pm and then went to bed at 8pm. This makes me sick.