My iMac has been in repair for the past week and has been given a clean bill of health ready for me to sell it. On Friday OS X 10.5 Leopard was released after two and a half years since Tiger arrived. I brought my last iMac shortly after the release of Tiger so it seems fitting that I finally upgrade to an Intel Mac. The Ars Technica review of Leopard is the most in depth I've read and highlights a lot of interesting areas with the new OS. If you want to know many of the under lying technical changes to OS X as well as the more graphic changes then its well worth a read.

There are a lot of new features in Leopard but a few stand out with Time Machine looking to be one of the best. I currently use Super Duper for my daily backup but it only takes a snapshot of my drive rather than backing up file changes. Spaces are also a welcome improvement and after using multiple desktops on Ubuntu I can imagine they will just as useful in OS X. The updated look in Leopard also looks exciting though I wont be convinced about the space theme until using it for a bit. I hope to have a new iMac within the coming weeks and if I can find anything that hasn't already been covered elsewhere on-line I will post it on here!

Its been an interesting year to say the least and a lot has changed. The year started off pretty badly at Beanies where the whole night seemed to end up in arguments and unhappy people. I went back to Uni and had another cracking term including some great parties and nights out. The term peaked with my birthday where I got so wasted and got some wicked photos.

This term of Uni also gave birth to Switchweb which is now making a nice profit thanks to some hard work.

Easter came and in the first week of being home I got dumped by Steph for Shannon. It hurt lots at the time and it still annoys me when I think about it now but fortunately it was for the best.

Its a shame cause they did split the "group" for quite a while until the summer when they split up.
In this time Jonnie had setup his own forum to rival ImAFish which took good advantage of this split, it did annoy me at the time however it didn't have any major effect on the popularity of ImAFish.

I still remember the day after they split up and I was in town with Nick and Shannon when Steph walked past crying, I almost felt sorry for her but after what happened it was sickly entertaining.

Fortunately things moved on and by mid-summer everything was back to how things were before (apart from me being single). We had some good nights out over the summer normally in Liquid but occasionally Flares.

By the end of August everyone seemed to be looking forward to going back to Uni (those that go) however things had taken an unusual turn. I had met Laura years ago as one of Stephs old school friends. We had occasionally chatted on-line however our paths had never really crossed until I split up with Steph.

Late Easter we had started going out for drinks together which was nice as I was feeling quite down at the time though I soon went back to Uni. Throughout the summer we had kept in contact, whether it had been on-line, going out for a drink or bumping into each other in town.

At the beginning of September I was in Yates (on a wed night) chatting to Serena, I mentioned that I had gone to the cinema with Laura the previous night and she said it sounded like Laura was interested in me and she would find out if she was.

Later in Liquid Serena told Laura that I liked her, while it wasn't the most tactful approach thankfully for my pride Laura said she liked me too. Later that night we got together and we have been together ever since.

My main worry at the time was going back to Uni in a couple of weeks time however we discussed it and she didn't think it would be a big issue. I have seen her every weekend since, either in Coventry or at home.

The second year of Uni started really slowly, it took quite a while for the course to get going and for the first 3-4 weeks I didn't actually do anything. In a way it made the term lag a bit and its not been as fun this year like it was last year. The work load has also significantly increased and the last 2 weeks of term were very hectic with coursework and tests.

I have made a lot of new friends at Uni this term and have found I have been going out with different people from last year (apart from Ben and Chris) though its all good.

These past couple of months has also seen Jonnie's Forum go, while it was a shame it did seem slightly pointless having two forums for the same purpose. For a while the ImAFish forum saw an increase in traffic though this has slowed down over xmas, I expect it will pick up once xmas is over.

The rest of ImAFish has stagnated over the last year and 2004 was the first year where we saw no new ImAFish version! I do have some pretty big plans for ImAFish 8 over the coming year including making it into a more personal site. I know what I want ImAFish to be like - its just designing and coding it now which is what is going to take the most time.

It seemed to be the year where all the old relationships ended and new ones begun, started with Jonnie and Kelly, then Shannon and Beanie, on to Me and Steph, Nej and Lisa then Tom and Rachel. By the end of the year some are still single but others have new partners. Well done to Alex and Ami for staying together (ironic?).

The year finished with a party Friday night and I was wasted, start as I mean to go on?.... Maybe.