Mark Schulz

Amazing Grace - I accompany Rebecca Ferguson MBE YouTube video by Steve Rosenberg

Rebecca Ferguson sings, I play, Amazing Grace. Thank you Rebecca for this long-distance musical collaboration.

That's fabulous. I wrote a 64-screen game in BASIC on my C16, and remember sketching all the screen designs out a page-per-screen in pencil, filling up my entire bedroom floor. UGCs looked good too, but played too slowly to be much fun. A stepping stone... Still have it on cassette tape.

Always loved the box artwork. Great graphics & sound in all their games too.

Try the 20:20:20 rule. Every 20 minutes, focus on an object 20 meters away, for 20 seconds.

Or follow the Pomodoro method, and simply do it every time the tomato 'tings' 🍅

Sometimes the best #brandlanguage is no brand language.

#marketing #advertising #copywriting #verbalidentity #Chanel #luxury #toneofvoice

A vulnerable assassin and a tech bro target: how I put a modern spin on cult 1970s thriller to make The Jackal Screenwriter Ronan Bennett on his mission to adapt Frederick Forsyth’s novel for the hit TV show starring Eddie Redmayne

A fascinating read for anyone interested in how a top-of-his-game screenwriter (Ronan Bennett) went about reinterpreting an iconic and bestselling novel (The Day of the Jackal).

#screenwriting

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

A fun and highly readable new press ad from UK retailer John Lewis, with a distinctively “middle England” brand voice.

#verbalidentity #marketing #toneofvoice #copywriting #content #brandvoice

Hi Oviya. I am a brand language consultant with 20+ years' experience. My company develops brand voices; defines verbal identities & creates tone of voice guidelines. And runs linguistic audits within organisations, as a way to steer and shape culture.

As a writer and a teacher, I devour writing advice. This 👇is an excellent guide. Read it out loud to really get it. Simple, effective. #writing #AcademicSky

Well, that's a good point, Keith. This advice only works for people who can read their own handwriting (and are struggling to write in the first place).

For anyone else, yes, keyboards, dictation, carving runes – whatever works.

My advice to people who want to be writers is: write. (Don't type.)

Here's something I've literally just written on this subject.

(The light's low, because the world is only just waking up.)

#writing #copywriting #creativity

A statue of Samuel Johnson, sitting in a chair propped up on books.

The statue of Johnson outside his birthplace in Lichfield has him sitting on a chair – held up by books. I can see the sculptor had probably never tried this: it makes far more sense to stack the books horizontally than to stand them vertically, as they're shown here.

I call this our "Samuel Johnson Chair."

(Samuel Johnson – creator of the first real English dictionary – had a chair missing one leg propped up on books in his home in Gough Square. We were quoted hundreds to fix this. I said, “let's be more Samuel Johnson.”)

@drjohnsonshouse.bsky.social

‘Child poverty has got a lot worse’: outgoing charity boss lambasts Tory failures and social media giants Peter Wanless of the NSPCC calls for more preventive action on child poverty, a ban on ‘morally repugnant’ smacking and favours guardrails online rather than bans

I’m entering my last week as Chief Executive at the NSPCC and share some parting thoughts with the Observer today

www.theguardian.com/society/2024...

Never forget that when Seoul, Korea removed the Cheonggyecheon expressway in 2003 and replaced it with a restored stream, 1000 acre park and key transit improvements, not only did it transform the city’s public life & economic success, but the traffic got better.

The traffic got BETTER.

Commando! Great game, but tough.

Don’t get me started on true quotes versus primes.

Hello Jack, do you have a link you could share to the full report by any chance?

Very cool, I like it.

So clever to just swap the room colour as a way of making it seem like a completely new location. Saves a ton of memory. Not quite sure why the sprites are so flickery though?

I had (still have!) a Commodore 64. But there's something about the vivid colours on a Spectrum I always liked. Pity it didn't have sprites though 😀

More adventure games, please 😀

Possibly the best arcade game ever, when played with friends on the full-size machine.

@michaelbierut.bsky.social and the inspiration behind our corporate logo at True & Good:

That's me, @susiedent.bsky.social! Currently enjoying Boswell's Tour of the Hebrides – with our “illustrious friend”.

I had a C64, the tape drive was definitely the same beige colour as the computer (and the disk drive for that matter). Might fire it up today and play Elite.

Very good article 😂@privateeyenews.bsky.social

A reminder from James Boswell not to be pedantically literal (from his “Tour to the Hebrides”):

“Had Dr Johnson said, ‘there are *no* trees’ upon this line, he would have said what is colloquially true; because by no trees, in common speech, we mean few.”

#semantics #copywriting #TOV #brandvoice

I read a suggestion the family in question were real; their surname was “Houlihan” and they lived in Southwark at roughly that time.