Functions.php help

Hey, recently installed slickpress here.
https://zygosgames.com/blog/

Here’s the code I’m struggling with:

# Displays a list of categories
function dp_list_categories($exclude='') {
	if (strlen($exclude)>0) $exclude = '&exclude=' . $exclude;
	$categories = get_categories('hide_empty=1'.$exclude);
	$first = true; $count = 0;
	foreach ($categories as $category) {
		$count++; if ($count>6) break;
		if ($category->parent<1) {
			if ($first) { $first = false; $f = ' class="f"'; } else { $f = ''; }
			?><li<?php echo $f; ?>>
			<a href="<?php echo get_category_link($category->cat_ID); ?>"><?php echo $category->name ?><?php echo $raquo; ?></a></li>
			<?php
		}

I want to make it so that the categories shown are predefined. At the moment it’s simply selecting the first couple which are in A-Z order. Unfortunatley this means it’s displaying categories which I don’t want it to, announcement, ds, feature, etc etc.

Can anyone help? I tried replacing it with a php navbar I coded but it didn’t work =S.

Many thanks in advance.