10. Theme A from Tetris
Tetris is my favourite puzzle game. It’s fun to play it all the time. One of the upsides is that it has a very nice and catchy tune which plays as all of the blocks fall into place. Sure, it might be an old 8-bit tune, but I love it!

9. Lavender Town from Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow
Another 8-bit tune here. I’m sure, if you ever played the original Pokémon games, that you remember that creepy graveyard town; well, this is the theme music from it, a tune I think is excellently eerie. Although, all the versions on YouTube seem weirdly echoic, which I think is an alteration, but still this is mostly the original tune.

8. Banjo Land from Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
Probably only really here for nostalgic reasons: it’s a big orchestral version of several tunes from the Banjo-Kazooie series! All put together as one lovely medley. Still, it might sound nice to people unfamiliar with them.

7. Stardust Road from Super Mario Galaxy
A lovely little tune which makes you think of the strange, cold emptiness of space. Beautiful and slightly melancholy.

6. Beware the Forest Mushrooms from Super Mario RPG
An immersive little theme from the SNES classic, it’s very fitting that it plays as you wander through a thick forest!

5. E-102 Gamma Theme from Sonic Adventure
Ah, E-102 Gamma, the best character from Sonic Adventure. This song is just the perfect theme for the sad story of this robot!

4. Click Clock Woods from Banjo-Kazooie
A nicely optimistic song played when you visit Click Clock Woods during the spring, an uplifting, catchy song.

3. Sunset Shore from Donkey Kong Country Returns
This song plays in dark levels which only use silhouettes; it really suits it.

2. Final Hours from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Actually, a really depressing piece of music. This tune plays right before the end of the world and you literally hear it everywhere you go, just as a reminder that literally everywhere and everything will be gone if you don’t do something about it. And if you don’t do anything, a particularly depressing cut scene shows you the world ending…

1. Stickerbush Symphony from Donkey Kong Country 2
How could this not be first? Just listen to it, it may be from an old SNES game, but I still think it sounds beautiful and it really captures the feeling of wandering in wilderness.

Note: I just wanted to point out that it’s the 10th of May, one year ago today I wrote my first entry and thought that I’d probably end the blog a few days later! I guess I was wrong.

I remember in the past, whenever I’ve had any exams, there’s always been somebody to point out how boring the job of exam invigilator must be. Quite right too; imagine standing around in a room for two hours in complete silence while students write an essay and you can’t so much as bring in a book to pass the time with. Well, as it turns out, the invigilators actually do have a few sneaky little games that they play in order to make the job a little more fun. Just the other day, in an English Literature seminar of mine, one of the professors at the university was talking about the times he’d been an exam invigilator. Now, before I tell you them, I must warn you that they should be taken with a pinch of salt; he has quite a sense of humour and could have been joking or exaggerating, but I don’t think he was.
    The first game, he said, was called Exam Pac-Man: since there are usually three or more invigilators in any given exam there are enough of them to have their own game of Pac-Man. Between them, presumably before the exam starts, they decide who’s going to be Pac-Man and who’re going to make up that team of dastardly ghosts. Since they don’t have any white pellets for Pac-Man to eat, the desks used by students replace them: the person playing as Pac-Man has to walk past every desk without being caught by a ghost. That sounds like innocent fun doesn’t it? Well, just wait until you hear the second one.
The second game, I can’t actually remember the title of, but we’ll call it The Ugly Baby Game. Basically, the invigilators look out at all of the students and the have to pick the combination of them which would produce the ugliest baby. So, next time you’re in an exam, worried about what you’re writing, if you’ve remembered enough or any other exam related anxieties, be sure to make sure you look nice, because you’re physical appearance is being judged the whole time!
    These’re the only games he mentioned, but I find it quite amusing that they exist. I’d never assumed before that exam invigilators play any games, but, thinking now, it seems pretty obvious that they’d need something to pass the time with.

When I was in Year 11 at school, for PE, we were able to do whichever sport we wanted to. We had to choose two subjects and so every term I did Golf and Gym (Gym being where we were allowed to actually just use the local gym for free!) we were told at the start of the year that we wouldn’t be allowed to do the same ones every term, so there was no point in choosing them, but I guess they were wrong, since I chose the same ones every time and then was allowed to do them. There was actually a trip to a driving range that happened at the end of every term which I always looked forward to, but unfortunately, every single time I was unavailable. Anywho, today I’m going to tell you a sad little story about one of my golf lessons.
    There I was swinging away with my club, knocking the ball no further than it would have gone if I’d only tapped it with my foot, when my teacher, Mr. Holden, approached me.
    “I’ll show you exactly how to swing so that you do can hit it further, watch me,” he hit the ball pretty far. “Now you try.”
    I got into position and prepared to take my swing.
    “Wait a second,” he said, “I think that water bottle in your pocket is probably throwing your balance off, take it out and put it down here.”
    So I took out my Trusty Water Bottle and put it safely on the floor a meter or two behind me. I took my swing and, sure enough, it was a lot better than it had been before.
    “Well done, Adam,” he said.
    I walked out to collect my ball, and once I had it, headed back to where I had been swinging from. Unfortunately, it seemed that some cleaner was walking across the field with a large bag of rubbish and a litter picking claw (the kind I would become familiar with later during my time as an MDSA). I stared helplessly from the distance as my water bottle was grabbed and placed into the bag like a common discarded bottle of coke. There was nothing I could do; it was gone, if only I had collected it before the ball. Alas, that was the end for my trusted companion.

I recently made a video with my good friend David Tubb; it’s about the upcoming series of Red Dwarf and lemons. Here it is, for your enjoyment:

When life gives you lemons, make YouTube videos featuring them hey?

I recently found the file of an old film trailer I had to make in my first year of A Level Media Studies. Most of it was filmed in the wilderness of Corsham. The people acting in it are: Rachel Dinsdale, Sam Dodd, Davey Hamlen, Doug Hamlen, George Moore, Christian Watkins and, of course, me. Enjoy.

My hometown, Corsham, has some really rather interesting features (aside from just generally looking pretty). There’s some vast woodland, an abandoned army base, an old haunted bridge and, as well as all that, it also happens to be in Wiltshire: one of the biggest UFO hotspots of the entire world (perhaps this has something to do with the large numbers of army bases around here?).
    At one particular spot in Corsham, you can see quite some distance into other areas of Wiltshire. One thing you can see, on particularly bright days is one of the mysterious white horses which have been made on many hillsides in England. Here’s a link to a picture of one. These white horses are linked to ancient religions, sky deities and the end of times. Plus, as an added bonus, if you ever visit one, it’s quite likely that you may see a crop circle from that high point (I’ve seen on there).
    As such, it’s quite understandable that some people might be a little startled if, while taking a walk during the night, there are strange bright lights which hover in the air above the point where you can see the horse. The lights appear above the hill with the horse (you won’t be able to see the hill or horse at night though, it’s hard to even see it during the day!) pulsate for a while and then disappear. So you might look at these pulsating balls of light and think in a panic “H.G. Wells told us! We’re darned fools!” and expect that the Earth invasion is looming, or that you’ll soon be whisked off into space by the aliens.                 However, to reach an anti-climax, there is a rational explanation for all of this. Behind that hill is an army training ground, as such, these lights are most likely flares fired during practise manoeuvres. So it seems the strange lights in the sky may not be so strange after all, a disappointment to some I’m sure. I like to believe there’s a rational explanation to all of the fantastical and supernatural things in the world, but that is a bit boring isn’t it?