Tomb Raider:Legend

Been a bit short of cash recently but always keen for a new 360 games. The new release Assasins Creed got me pretty excited but its too expensive, so instead I decided to go for a cheaper adventure game..Tomb Raider.

I used to be a fan of the games when they were released on playstation, but I hadnt played a Tomb Raider in about 9 years. I was fairly impressed, I've only played it for about an hour, but completed the first mission, which is basically Lara Croft (main character in game, featured on the right) searching through an ancient tomb in Bolivia, which turned out to be where her mother had been killed. I though the way you could interact with the enviroment was pretty clever and over the game is pretty well made. If you have any advice or tips on the game (achievements etc), feel free to leave me a comment..

Hello there Mr Doyle, you must be fairly excited after the release of your first published novel 'A Study In Scarlet', can u tell me a little bit about it?

Well to tell you the truth i'm slightly anxious about the matter, hopefully the novel will be a success. Basically 'A Study In Scarlet' is a detective murder mystery where a corpse is found in Brixton, London with 'RACHE' written on the walls in blood, the detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr John. H Watson try to unveil the mystery of this murder.

Sounds like a very interesting story, have you any background of writing novels?

I have had some experience of writing, yes, I published several short stories in magazines such as London Society, but writing the novel was a slightly new experience to me as it was a lot more time consuming overall.

Obviously you are hoping that the novel will be a big success, but how do you think 'A Study In Scarlet' will compare to other newly released novels?

To be honest I think that the book will be successful if the readers have an interest in the murder mystery stories, but only time will tell and I can only hope for the best.

A very modest response, do you have any plans of writing more novels?

Of course, I have been writing for a long time now and I'm hoping that with time, I'll be able to write some great stories, whether it be a novel or a series of short stories, there will be more to come.

Thats very promising news, thankyou very much for your time and I hope to see more of your books in store soon.

With a bit of luck!

Shambala Page 7

After departing the Monastry, I headed on route to the beautiful city of Shambala. All I could see before me was miles and miles of baron land, it was going to be a long journey. After many hours of travelling in solitude and silence, i gazed upon what must have been the mighty gates leading into Shambala. http://andrew5017.blogspot.com/2007/11/shangri-la-is-amazing-buildings-are.html

Little Cream Soda

Also during the October holiday I played the guitar a lot... had been a while since i'd learnt anything new. I was listening to the new White Stripes album Icky Thump and the one song that stood out more than the rest for me was 'Little Cream Soda', quite an easy song to play, but if you've got it on the right settings on your amp, it can sound pretty good, obviously can get the tab from either http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/w/white_stripes/icky_thump_album_album_tab.htm.

SKATE.

The October holiday were pretty good considering it was only a week off, nice break from college, but as expected nothing very eventful happened. However my mates and I got very involved in the new EA release Skate. on Xbox 360. Sessioned! We mucked about playing 'Party Play- Spot Battle' 4 player, in my opinion the three best spots to skate on are 1. 30 stair rail- very long 2 kink hand rail, multiple flip tricks on rail, good for getting multiplier up etc. 2. X games- this is well fun because you can do huge grabs, rotations and flip tricks (Quad Kickflip 900)-lol, however we always found it funny to try Coffin Backflips( Down(left stick)LT,RT,B), often had funny bails. 3. Mega Compound- This is similar to X games as it has a big ramp where again you can do huge grabs etc. Doing 'Spot Battle' when lots of mates were there was always fun, but the game is so much better when you playing career. I really like how you get sponsored by companys like Nike SB and Supra and the video shooting in the game is always pretty cool. However the game is extremely frustrating... One particular Pro Challenge that I recall taking a million attempts at, was 'Nollie 360 flip to grid, then ride the hubba', on this little ledge down a 10 set(approx). I had no idea how to 360 Flip never mind Nollie 360 Flip so I had to spend time learnin the trick then attempting the challenge...........but I really couldnt get the hang of it. We gave up trying to perfect the trick, and just went for the challenge, must have played for about 40 mins attempting it over and over again, then randomly I got the flip perfect, to the grind..boom! (pretty sure it was total luck, but still was glad it got done!). We sessioned the career mode to the bone in the space of two days, some footage still to be recorded, but we got the achievement for doing all the tricks in the game, which is pretty fun to attempt. So basically if your looking for a really good game to occupy some time, Skate is definately a good option, even if you arent fimiliar with skating, you would still enjoy the game. Heres the Flip Trick list if interested...

Music Interest- Favourite Artist

One of the most influential bands to me, has to be Metallica because the powerful riffs by James Hetfield and the motivating solos by Kirk Hammet really inspired me to play the guitar the way i do today.


In my personal opinion, I think that as time has progressed, Metallica have unfortunately gotten worse, The first album "Kill Em All" was released in 1983 by the original Metallica line up, James Hetfield, Dave Mustaine, Lars Ulrich and Cliff Burton. It was a major success and really kickstarted their career. The following two albums "Ride The Lightning" and "Master Of Puppets" were also very succesful and contained probably their most recognised songs.


Unfortunately on September 27 1986 the basist Cliff Burton died whilst on the "Damage Inc" tour. This was a major upset to the band and also all the fans. However very shortly after his death, the band held auditions for the bass position, this was taken up by former basist of Jetstam Jason Newstead.
Also by this point Dave Mustaine had been kicked out the band (planning his comeback band-MEGADETH) and Kirk Hammet had taken the role. The new band line up was impressive, and the album produced in 1988 "....And Justice For All" was a huge commercial succees. The "Black Album" was the next album produced by the new album containing huge single hit Enter Sandman (which in my opinion isn't that good).

The following Albums: "Load", "Reload", "Garage Inc", "S&M" and "St.Anger" were a flop in my opinion, the music had changed and it almost seemed like the band spirit was lost. A slight factor to this happening in my opinion was when the basist Jason Newstead quit the band and Robert Trujillo took over the role, the band style was different and the main thing that got on my nerves, was the for "St.Anger" Kirk Hammet doesn't solo at all, which is what he is renound for.

Overall, I still see them as one of my favourite bands, still enjoy old school thrash metal. Also for about a year I was in a band called "Souls Of The Sinister" with my friends, and Metallic songs were frequently covered by us as we found them overall as a band, very effective to play. We released a demo, with four songs, which was a very enjoyable experience for me and made me want to get more involved in the music industry.

Thats just a bit about my music interests, however i have a wider music taste than just metal......I also enjoy Drum & BASS, which I will post about soon!

RADIO 1

The Beggining
Radio 1 was launched at 7 a.m. in 30th September 1967 as a direct response to the offshore pirate radio stations such as Radio Caroline. This was the beggining of hugely popular British national radio station operated by the BBC, playing some of the best and newest music around and also keeping people up to date with news etc

The Producers
One of the main producers at Radio 1 is Will Kinder, however there are more than one type of producer. For example Andy Parfit who is the radio controller.

The DJ's
On the Radio 1 show, each DJ has a certain set that they get maybe each day, this is a very good idea I think because you can find out when your favourite DJ is playing with your prefered music type. One of the first Radio 1 dj's was Tony Blackburn. My favourite Dj would have to be Fabio and Grooverider from Radio 1xtra, they host the Drum & Bass set on a saturday night from midnight-2 a.m.

Playlists
In Radio1 they have certain playlist catagories a week that each song comes under.
Play List A is 25 to 35 (tend to be the most popular songs)
Play List B is 10 to 20 (usually average songs that people don't min hearing)
Play List C is around 5 (either new songs just out, or songs that aren't very good)

Reporters
My favourite reporter on Radio 1 has got to be Andy Brown, he tends to do random interviews about whats happening on the streets etc.