I found a very interesting industrial sponsorship scheme today, thanks to my contact at Year in Industry. She pointed me towards MBDA Missile Systems, which offer £12000 pa during a gap year, then pay university tuition fees and give you vacation employment, and then employ you for three years post-grad. It's everything I've been looking for for a year out between school and uni, so I've applied. Hopefully I'll hear back from them in the next couple of weeks... In other news, Windows XP installation has decided to become broken. Not only has power management disappeared - it can't turn itself off anymore - but the taskbar has stopped showing me my running applications, and the clipboard is broken. I can't copy or move files without using the command line, and I can't copy and paste text. I feel a lengthy archiving and reinstallation process coming on...