It pains me that I'm doing this here instead of in a notebook like a normal person, but at least once I've gone through the whole process it might be able to help other people afterwards.
Will run this as a project because I presume this means Github will log all the dates and stuff which I think will be helpful. Annoyingly I didn't think of doing this at the start, I've started this repo after having been given the residence visa.
Hopefully I can make this into a useful resource.