No it doesn't feel any different being 21.

I'm finally able to say I've actually got some plans for my birthday. Apparently Mr. Waters has been putting in some legwork and has booked out Curryholics for a end-of-course celebration tonight and so that will be the way the evening will begin. It's quite likely this will be followed by a trip back to the Union for Hey Ewe. The rest of my house are all locked in exam revision at the moment, so celebrations are fairly mute right now, but we've decided that once all their work as cleared we'll sort out some decent group activity like hitting the races. I feel quite impressed that anything is happening at all considering the absolute ability for me to organise anything like this in the past.

Some good news this morning from DDS. Apparently his Delboy-esque lifestyle has been rewarded with the first prize in the Loughborough Business Plan Competition, pretty good going really. Well done Mr Currin.

I've just had a call from Jim who has just finished his degree and told me that he didn't realise our department was involved in the strike action, and that the only reasonable course of action is to use the standard show of student protest, by going out and getting drunk. I think his reasoning has got a little twisted somewhere, although I am willing to try.

Anything to stop the strike.

Although I said Degree, Done a few days back, I can reiterate the point today. At approximately noon today I delivered a ten minute presentation to my tutors (prepared in some haste) and therefore put the final nail in the coffin dotted the i's and crossed the t's on my degree. I have the degree show in two week's time, and graduation to hurdle, but these don't actually count for anything. Today I reached a milestone.

Tomorrow I reach another. Being 21 doesn't come along that often (it's never happened to me before) but despite this I still haven't managed to fix any sort of festivities at all. Maybe that's what I want; maybe not. I really don't know. I'm not a big birthday person, and I think tomorrow will be mostly about the other half of the course finishing.

I had to get suited and booted for the presentation, which was, like a Muller Fruit Corner, a mixture of pleasure and pain. The suit as always was comfortable, the shoes however were anything but, and I am nursing shin splints and blisters. Brilliant. I can't think of anything else that I really want more than painful feet and ankles.

Another night another party. On consulting some of the people at Plev's and Sophie's last night it was apparent that some people haven't actually sobered up since Thursday, and Sunday night was no different.

I initially had hoped to get around there with Rosie and Mario at about 7.30pm, but things went wrong a bit and I didn't arrive until 11pm. Also, being a Sunday (although I had clearly forgotten this) there was nowhere open to vend booze at that sort of late hour, so I arrived fashionably (people were drunk enough to be pleased to see me but sober enough to remember me arriving) but with no present for the punch. Two glasses from the water butt (which I am assured had been full earlier) and that was my fill; the place was dry and the next two hours were spent on pure grit and determination alone.

Actually it quite nice to take a chill. There was a chance to reminisce about the other night with Tillman and Pal, time to talk over my own birthday arrangements with Robbie and other snippets of socialisation scattered in between. Everyone seemed pretty happy; there was music, limbo, Tigg appearing from a bush, gratuitous use of a trumpet and it was discovered if anyone had been responsible for the punch disappearing it was likely to be something to do with Rosie.

Aside from my night-time activities, I have completed Olivia's site, which you can check out here. There is some really fantastic vivid textiles stuff going on, so have a peek.

Today I need to think about my presentation for tomorrow. I also need to finalise what exactly I will be doing for my 21st birthday, being that it is only two days away and so far I have little to nothing set in stone.

If yesterday was physical spring cleaning, today is website spring cleaning. How exciting does that make my life seem? Don't answer that.

I've managed to finally sort my desktop into two sections - 'photos for upload to the gallery' and 'other crap'. The new photos for upload have been sliced, diced and levelled and the important ones can now be seen here:

• Degree Finishing Social at Rain
• Final Year Loughborough Gallery
• Everything all together

I'm also about to compile a number of resources for people starting out with CSS and the 'semantic web' as not only has there been some high profile interest, I have also had a number of requests from people I know, but who are not 'in the know'.

Yesterday I got a text from Olivia asking if I had any spare time at the moment. Do I have spare time at the moment? Well I think we know the answer is yes, and within a couple of hours I was working on a new commission. It's good to finally get back to something creative, however it is also becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate on anything when you have a shiny new Macbook next to you.

So far I have been very impressed. This is my first Apple computer, and also my first notebook, and although I have very basic knowledge of OS X, I so far have encountered no difficulty in coming to terms with the fantastic features. It's just all the little things, for example, the file system is a bit different to the one on Windows (as you will know if you are a mac user), but the Spotlight search is infinitely better than anything that you get on a PC. If you think this is not terribly exciting, I don't blame you, because I couldn't have got excited about a search tool before, but this just makes finding anything, in any file very, very easy. I've not really had much of a chance to explore Expos� properly as I haven't been multitasking yet, but it seems to work very well. Being a sucker for things that swoosh, glide and that are in glorious 3D, both Keynote is sorely tempting me away from PowerPoint in the future. I'm not sure Pages can offer what I look for as a Word power user, but only time will tell. Even if I only use it for the stunning chart outputs. I wish I'd had it for my dissertation.

Frontrow is really nice, and battery life appears to be very sound. The magnetic power cable works, and has already saved me from two laptop tumbles. I'm sold. If all that isn't enough, I can now play Apeiron until my heart's content.

This is brilliant. Since the hand in I've found new lease of life, albeit a rather drunken one. Last night Jono, Mike and myself headed over to the Union via Towers bar for another night of shenanigans where we were later joined by Swanny. Apparently not very many other people felt that the exam period is a good time to be going out, as at first glance there weren't alot of others about. It then became obvious that this was partly due to the ridiculously long queue running around the top of the piazza slowly moving towards the celebrity guest for the night, Stuart from Neighbours. At least it kept the bars clear.

The only other people out who I knew were Plev, Dizzy Jo, Pal and Tillman, the latter two joined us for much of the merriment and Jono made a new friend from it. Once again there was a considerable wallet drainage, but fun comes at that price. I don't really remember much about the end of the night, except when I woke up this morning there was a very soggy bowl of Nesquick on my desk. A late night never got eaten apparently.

Today is clean up day. I've peeled the layer of clothing off my floor and pushed it into the washing machine for a thorough rinsing. I also have the intention of vacuuming as soon as I've had some lunch. Its the most pleased I've been to be doing the vacuuming, well, ever.

This morning's general malaise allowed me time to watch the season finale of Lost and with the OC tucked out of the way as well, there isn't much TVing left to be done at the moment. Instead I'm going to embark on other projects and start thinking about important things like my 21st birthday and Japan/Oz.

It's good to be back, up and out. There is so much that was missed because of the deluge of work in the past few months, and finally my time has come to get back on the social trail and enjoy university life as it was before the coursework set in.

Last night was a really good experience. It's very rare that you get that number of IDT folks together in one room, even in lectures. We met up for some pre-club drinks at Lloyds and swamped an entire section of the bar getting merry on cocktails. After a while we headed over to Rain where the rest of the night was spent enjoying more cocktails, laughs and banterous related activities.

It was amazing I managed to stay awake the whole time. In the past week I haven't had much sleep to my name, and it was only the overflowing quantities of redbull that kept me going. I was very glad for the the lie in until 12.30 today; the first time I haven't haven't had to be up at 7.45am for the past three weeks.

DDS didn't join us out, but the rest of the crew were present. Rosie & Jim, Lianne, Jon (wasted), Andy, Gemma, Si, the other Si, Winston, Baz, Pal, Paul, Guy, Dickie, Big Chris, Manchester Steven, Plev, Jimbo, Tim etc etc, and Sam who began her 21st birthday at midnight.

Good times, good turnover for the people at Rain.

That's it. Gone. Three years of blood, sweat and more blood (it's really easy to cut yourself doing our course) and it's all under my belt, bar a tiny little presentation next week (which no one is even contemplating yet). I've pretty much wrapped up my degree.

There are a number of things that are worth mentioning from the past few days when it has been all but impossible to write anything here. I'm not going to go into any great depth (I've got to make time for some serious party related activity tonight) but here is a brief overview of the lead up to Degree Deadline.

I've had approximately twelve hours sleep in the past five days. It's not particularly healthy, but that's the way it goes on our course. I've also been told to cheer up more in the past week than ever in the rest of my life. It wasn't that I was depressed or anything, just stressed, really stressed. To make things worse, my Macbook turned up yesterday. Sean had told me I should keep it in the box until I had finished, but I just couldn't resist having a peek, which of course turned into a full-on inspection. I did manage to restrain myself and finally knuckle down to some intense keyboard bashing which finished at 4.30pm just in time for the 5pm hand in.

And the feeling is weird. No more stuff to do. Well, not course stuff at least. There was a fairly steady stream of people moving from the department to JC's for a celebratory few from quarter to four onwards, but it looked like a lot of folks had headed home for some kip, and I don't blame them. I'm going to be straight on the vodbulls and think about catching up on my sleep tomorrow.

There was also the student protest going on yesterday, but I think I'll write more about that when I don't have other things like food and drink on my mind.