So I got my mark for my project design, and it's a B. That will do very nicely, thank you. I've long since put away any thoughts of getting an A: still less an A*. A bare pass will suit me just fine.

I spent last evening suffering from the effects of eating too much, so the work on my technical specification has slowed to a crawl - if not a full stop. Still, I did manage to get an ASP.NET capable Web server (XSP) running on my Linux box at home last night. It's not the one I really planned on using, but it will act as a good backup if I can't get mod-mono working.

So we're hanging in there.

Did I wish everyone a merry Christmas and a happy New Year? If not, I do so now. Nadolig llawen, a blwyddyn newydd dda iawn ichi i gyd.

Still don't have a mark for the design. I suppose tutors have to have a Christmas break as well. It would have been nice to go into the New Year knowing what I had, though.

I've managed to push on a bit, however. Today I completed a Statement of Requirements for the software I'm writing. It isn't brilliant, but it should do the job. There's no mark for it, but I've submitted it to my advisor just in case she feels like making any comment. Heh! I need all the help I can get.

Tomorrow I'll start on a technical specification. This is where the rubber hits the road, really, in software development. It's just a hard, detailed slog; taking the requirements and translating them into a set of rules for the developer to implement. Once this is done, it only remains for me to produce a set of UML diagrams that will model the finished application, and to code it up.

Only!

Of course, after that I have to test it; then I have to install it at work and make it available to my users; then I have to collect the results and analyse them and write it all up and ...

And it all has to be ready by the end of April.

Happy New Year to one and all.

Well, I got my design in at last.

It isn't really adequate as a design for my software, but it is adequate for what the university wants in order for me to get a mark. I hope!

There were sixteen powerpoint slides by the time I'd finished. My advisor wanted more graphics than text so I sweated away with some CASE tools, graphics packages and other utilities to conform to what she asked for. She seemed happy to mark it anyway.

Things are really hectic at work, so motivating myself to do anything on the MSc is very hard at the moment. I'm hoping that over Christmas, once family duties have been performed, I'll be able to spend some quality time with my dissertation.

So, back to work.

The marks for the MSc go like this:

• Specification - 10%
• Design - 10%
• Dissertation - 80%

I've now had a mark for the specification, and it's a B.

My advisor says I only just missed an A, but I'm not bothered. Getting to this point has been a long, hard struggle. I've averaged an A all the way through so far. Now I just want to get it over with, so any kind of pass is OK.

My design has to be in by the end of this week and my advisor seems happy with the way it's going, so we're still on track. We are. Honest we are.