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« Product Review: XTremeMac HD Switcher | Main | Front Projection: Decisions, Decisions »

November 26, 2007

Curt C

Both a projector and flat panel in the same room! Wow, now that's an entertainment room! I noticed you were going for 50+ and were worried about foot traffic. Have you considered one of the newer DLP's? They are much less than either the plasma or LCD and some of the newer Samsung's are less than 11 inches thick. I just thought I'd mention it since my eye tends to favor DLP screens over plasma.

Avi Greengart

The LCoS was already just 15" deep, so one of the newer thin DLP rear projection sets didn't make sense - if I couldn't get something that could be mounted on the wall and still protrude just 4" - 5", it wouldn't be enough of an improvement.

The philosophy behind the dual displays is pretty simple: we watch TV with the lights on, we watch movies with the lights off. TV pictures are measured in inches, while movies ought to be measured in feet. :)

atlanta home theater

You mentioned:
"Conspiracy theory, or just plain retail incompetence?"

I agree with you it could go both ways...
On one hand they probably have $8.00 hr kids hooking up all of the equipment in these stores.

On the other hand...it just might be a conspiracy theory to sell 1080p TV's.

The comments to this entry are closed.

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Tripp Lite's ECO -Surge™ Suppressor Wins CustomRetailer Magazine's EXC!TE Award

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Southwark Pride Defend Title – U18 Junior Final Fours Recap

Southwark Pride defended their Under-18 National title with a 49-47 win over Allerton High Force Academy in the Final on Sunday at the National Basketball Performance Centre in Manchester.

Jonathan Komagum picked up MVP for his 10 point, 15 rebound outing, but it was James Mitchell who left his mark – following up his dominant semi-final performance with 14 points and 10 rebounds plus the two game winning free throws in the dying seconds.

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Box score.

Third Place Playoff
Manchester Magic vs Derby Trailblazers

Derby claimed third place with an 81-73 win over Manchester Magic.

Derby’s Callum Singleton went 10 of 19 from the floor for 30 points, whilst Kaiyem Cleary had a 27 point, 11 rebound double double on 11/18 shooting for Manchester.

Leighton Elliott-Sewell had 17 points, 5 rebounds and 6 assists, with Myles Alexander having 14 points, 7 rebounds and 7 assists for Derby.

Arinze Emeka-Anyakwo added 15 points and 11 rebounds for Manchester.

Box score.

Semi Final 1
Manchester Magic vs Allerton High Force Academy

Allerton High Force Academy pulled out a 66-60 win over Manchester Magic to advance to the Under-18 National Championship Final.

Allerton used a balanced attached that saw five played reach double figures, led by Vasja Pandza’s 13 points and 6 assists. Micah Savery-Richards had 12, while Jacques Misambu added 11.

Despite the game featuring multiple lead changes, Allerton led the entire fourth quarter, spurning every Manchester advance, as the Magic couldn’t get it closer than two points.

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Kaiyem Cleary led Manchester with 20 points and 11 rebounds, Wesley Oba had 10 points, with Arinze Emeka-Anyakwo finished with 10 rebounds to go with 9 points.

Box score.

Semi Final 2
Southwark Pride vs Derby Trailblazers

Behind a 28 point, 9 rebound performance off the bench from James Mitchell, defending champions Southwark Pride advanced to the final with a 62-59 win over Derby Trailblazers.

Mitchell went 10 of 15 from the floor, as he helped Pride bounce back from a three point opening period to dominated the second quarter and regain control of the contest.

As Pride led by 7 with with 1:32 to play, Derby launched a furious last gasp comeback attempt, pulling to within 3 after a Charlie Woodyatt three with 37 seconds remaining but that was as close as they would get. Derby’s Sam Coles would knock down a triple with two seconds remaining for the final result.

Gedi Juozapaitis was the only other player in double figures for Pride with 12 points, Mayowa Mohammed had 7 assists with his 8 points off the bench, and Jonathan Komagum grabbed 10 rebounds.

Leighton Elliott-Sewell led Derby with 17 points, Callum Singleton had a 14 point, 15 rebound double double, whilst England U16 Charlie Brown had 10 points, 6 rebounds and 8 assists.

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Hot Rod Forum : Hotrodders Bulletin Board > Tech Help> General Rodding Tech> Some questions about a Ford SHO
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Topic Review (Newest First)
02-21-2004 09:25 AM
wougelafive0 You can sell parts for the SHO easily for sure.. I'm sure most parts would go fast on ebay. Things like belt tensioner pulleys and many other engine parts are abosolete. If the 5 speed tranny is still good, people need that stuff. I'd part the car off or get it fixed.
02-05-2004 01:11 AM
why would anyone want a Ford with a Yamaha engine?
Same reason someone would want a Dodge with a Mitsubishi engine. Them SHO's are quick for a street car. My buddy has a 94 auto, and he raced me in my Strat. My car only puts out 210hp from a 3.0L but is a bit lighter. He beat me the first time, and I got him by a fender the second time. He has recently had his tranny redone because it went south and will probably work me next time we go at it. Chuck is right they do still compete with modern V-6's. Mine is a 2004. It's definately a sleeper.
01-31-2004 04:57 PM
Rhansen How much of a market is there for a SHO parts car/rebuilder? My friends have a towing service and there is a 90ish sho in their impound lot. It had a moderate front hit but the motor trans looked ok and actually the car looked rebuildable. They will prolly just cut the car up and junk it, but if anyone is interested I will check into it for you.
01-31-2004 12:25 PM
wougelafive0 The secondarys open at 3,950 rpm. Better have your wood screw on, because it will blow your doors off. It's a great car if you are a hands on person. I love my 90 MTX SHO, it has 140,000.
Well worth the $2000 I paid.
10-05-2003 01:57 AM
4 Jaw Chuck
Re: 4Jaw,.........

Originally posted by crazy larry
street racing???
I prefer to exercise my fifth amendment right and comment.

Well put Kaylah, one day the car might be a collectors item, to me it means much more, Dad and I went and bought it together. Now if I can only stop police cars from hitting it.

The answer to your question Bubbles of who would buy a Ford with a Yamaha engine is quite simple.

You ever drive a V-Max motorcycle? The SHO is much the same and shares similarily designed intake manifolding, the secondary butterfly opens at around 5000 and you better have it pointed straight cause 7000 happens real fast. Thats the best example I can give of the character of the engine.
10-05-2003 01:19 AM
Kaylah Thanks for the great information, Chuck. I'm going to cut and splice it to a Word file so I can digest it a little more. The guy who had the SHO sold it before I could drive 175 miles to see it. Oh well, for $500, I knew it wouldn't last long because the car has a serious, almost "cult-like" following.

The tips you gave are very detailed and I appreciate that...especially the ones about the miliage service, and how to listend to the valves. That will be a major consideration. Also, I'll keep looking for a good deal on a 94-94 model. I am also guessing that since these engines were a "new breed", they probably don't suffer the head gasket fate of the 3.0 and 3.8 garden variety Fords.

These car have some kind of alluring feature to me. It seems like Ford kinda squeezed in a "modern-day" hot rod right beneath everyone's nose. To me, these cars seem like they are in a class of their own...a sort of Ford that was allowed to be "free" and broke away from the pack. I just think they are some really unique, interesting, and very fast NEW American Steel.

So the "newbie" posts a pretty lame question, eh? A veteran gearhead posts an extremely knowledgeable essay about a modern day hot rod, and the newbie starts his/her career in flames...Better keep an eye on this one too.

Why would anyone want to buy a Cadillac with a Chevy engine? Why would anyone buy a Rambler with a Ford engine? Why would anyone buy a Dodge with a Mitsu engine? Why would anyone buy a boat with a 351-Windsor? Why does a Marine 351-Windsor have different specs than a Land 351-Windsor? Why would anyone buy a Chrysler when instead of a Volkswagon, BMW, Benz, or Audi? Why would anyone buy a Japanese car that was built in Ohio? Is it a Japanese car, or is it American? Why would anyone think of a Corvette as a "hot rod" when its made out of plastic? Why doesn't Canada make their own brand of cars instead of making them for everyone else?

Why is there a 305, 327, 350, and 400 engine, when you can do the same thing with all of them? Couldn't they make just one? Why is a Firebird a Camaro and a Camaro a Firebird? Whatever happened to the 413 and where the heck did it come from anyway? Why did everybody decide to change engine size numbers at the same time? Why did Ford decide to make two entirely different engines with the same cubuc inch displacement...and why was that size 351 CID? Why is a Ford 352 engine a "Big Block" and a Ford 400 engine a "Small Block?" Why did everyone have to have a 400 and 360 CID engine? Were they all secretly made by the same company?

Why is there a Cadillac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac, when they are all Chevy's anyway? Why did Datsun change its name to Nissan? Why did Honda decide to make Lawn mowers while Yamaha was making audio equipment.

Who decided to name the colors? Why is the decimal system better when its based on fingers and toes? Why do adult men get paid millions of dollars to play games like children? Why do enigmas and anomalies sound so much like what they describe? To whom do we thank for coming up with the idea of an enema? Why is it that we need to see things upside down? Why don't whales have gills like fish, and what on earth do they need fur or hair for?

How do we know that numbers continue infinitely? What happens if we run out of words to name numbers.

Why is it that out of 13,000 members, there always has to be one that farts in the space suit?

PS- Nice car Chuck
10-05-2003 12:14 AM
crazy larry

street racing???
10-04-2003 06:31 PM
4 Jaw Chuck Edge is that you?

Good question Buttons.
10-04-2003 05:15 PM
Buttons Why would any-one want a ford with a Yamaha engine, Strange mix
10-04-2003 01:42 PM
4 Jaw Chuck
Re: Some questions about a Ford SHO

The most desirable SHO's are the 94-95 versions, most consider the styling the most attractive and the chassis to have the least amount of bugs to fix. The worst bug is the trans, it's not that it's not strong enough, the problem lies more with the tuning. Ford decided to market this car as a sporty alternative to the Lincoln and tuned it for comfort not sport. The trans "slides" it's shifts under light loads and aggressively upshifts until your locked up in 4 gear at 60 kph. It is responsive to throttle changes and does react very nicely to load but when you couple the sliding shifts with small fluid capacity and realize that the transaxle is surrounded on both sides with red hot cats you can get the picture. The trans cooler factory installed is better suited as a power steering oil cooler not cooling a transmission.

It is commonly recognized that a Transgo kit and updated shift drum (older models had a rivetted two piece drum that cracked the spider if abused) solves 95% of the problems, a nice big cooler and chopping out the cats takes care of the last 5%. There is a list of updated components that should also be installed that basically bullet proofs the trans for any kind of street use up to 300HP or so. Most 94-95 models had these updated components factory installed except for the shift kit. Manual transmissions on the early models were saddled with a small diameter clutch disc better suited to a less powerful engine and is the only weak link in the manual models.

You should also note that the engine needs special attention at 100 miles, valve adjustment and cam belt replacement is required and it has motorcycle like shim over bucket design valvetrain, neglecting this critical service dooms the engine and can require cam replacement to repair. Ford has stopped selling some shims in certain sizes, this can complicate manitaining the engine. I think it goes without saying that if the 100K service was not done on time, find another could be sorry. Warmed up there should be no noise from the valve train and listening to it with a stethoscope through the valve covers should show equal noise from each valve, a very light ticking is all you should hear. If it is not perfect...pass, valve recession and cam damage is not reversible.

Many manual trans models had main bearing problems if they were abused, most people just drop the pan and insert new bearings which seems to solve the problem without an overhaul. The bottom end is very beefy and as long as the journals are clean you can usually get away with this kind of repair. Lugging the engine causes this, the autos almost never have this problem.

Other problems center around the variable assist power steering pump, typical interior switch components failing and cosmetic problems like the climate control switch button covers punching out because the buttons are hollow. 2 cents worth of extra plastic would have prevented the last problem. Basically it's a Taurus with a Ferrari engine and the rest of the car is just not built like an exotic.

The automatic versions had 3.2 litre versions of the Yamaha engine and the manuals were 3.0 litre, do not confuse them with the 3.0 litre Vulcan Ford engine, they have absolutely nothing in common. Yamaha produced an engine according to Ford spec and Ford dropped the ball on the drivetrain side as if they expected Yamaha to not deliver on the HP spec, it's too bad, the engine is a jewel and compares nicely to most newer V6's like the Grand Prix Supercharged and other like sized Japanese models. 220 HP from a 3.2 litre engine is still competive today, remember this is a naturally aspirated engine. Magazine tests from the day note that the extra cc's of the auto version offset the advantage of the manual trans so the manual and auto versions are very similar speed wise in the quarter mile.

The engine compartment looks daunting for repair but most things are accessible if you remove certain key components and have small hands, most newer cars are no different as Madd has noted. The power steering system is variable assist and has a small capacity (1 litre), the pump has to endure the 7000 rpm abuse the engine puts out and wears out quickly if the fluid is not regularly changed and synthetic substituted for regular Dextron. Replacing the pump is a bugger and cost me $260+tax for the rebuilt pump (it took me 8 hours to replace it and flush the system manually), luckily it didn't damage the rack (as far as I can tell) but getting all the metal particles out required me installing a fuel filter in the return line. So far so good, I'm still crossing my fingers. I won't repeat the words I used trying to get out the last mount bolt, it makes my forearms hurt just thinking about it.

Discs all around and ABS complicates the brake system but seems to need little repair except for rotor warpage on the fronts, the 3rd gens had larger front discs and is a popular swap for hipo use. The suspension springs are made of small diameter wire so rust can compromise their integrity, mine have already been replaced once. The fact that each generation only lasted 3 or so years makes finding used parts difficult and annoying especially when some parts look the same but are not dimensionally identical.

All in all I like the car and the styling and comfort, the stereo (Bose) is better than many aftermarket units and is tuned to the interior of the car, it handles well since the weight is low for a car this size and has a nice distribution. The backseat is a joke when you compare it to an Intrepid, same goes for the trunk, my Jetta is about the same size and better shaped. I call it the car you love to hate because for all the mechanical flaws and minor problems with interior components I continue to fix it even though for the money spent so far I could have bought a used Porche, they have similar repair costs and service requirements from my experience. Of course you can't fit three kids in the back of a 911 for a cross country trip and get 30 mpg either.

If you ask me this engine should have been in the Probe and they should have stuck a 302 in this car, many have noted that a Lincoln LSC is a better traditional hotrod and cheaper to maintain while retaining the luxury component. A Probe with this engine might actually had been a contender in the Supercar category, the engine is that sweet.

I was lucky Kaylah, my father bought this car from a Ford dealers wife and he took very good care of it. At 175 K the trans still works fine but is getting to the point where its time to overhaul it, full throttle shifts into second make me cringe, new it would smoke-em into second but not anymore. I don't want to wreck it so I am slowly working out the bugs one by one. You could say that if it wasn't Dad's old car I would have bailed on it long ago, it has sentimental value and that makes me a sucker. Oh well it still draws heads wherever I go and gas station atttendants are always asking me what kind of car it is and want to check the oil. I have been asked if I wanted to sell it more than once and I have found notes on my windshield from other enthusiasts in the know asking for a phone call. The sunroof is awesum and either tilts or retracts fully, everything is power with leather seats and has an attractive gauge package that is nicer than a 5.0 litre. The climate control is superb and easily cools even on 40 C days. I enjoy the car in it's stock form and I am only going to restore and repair/upgrade components as needed, this car deserves to stay stock and I intend to preserve the original look. For some reason not many of these cars made it here to Manitoba, I've only seen one other model of the same vintage. Down south and out East there seem to have been many more purchased, I have never seen one for sale here. My biggest complaint is the Opal Mist color, it seems to make the car disappear to other drivers and I'm constantly getting cut off, the last pinhead hit the back 6 inches of the rear bumper and spun me around when I had the right of way through the light. Good thing he was driving a police car, because somehow it was all my fault? Ya, that one still stings.

I posted a thread earlier on how nice the exhaust sounds now with a big resonator and some performance muffs and no cats, at 5 grand you would swear you were driving a Ferrari. It sounds a little ricey at cruise speed but it is very subtle and not intrusive at all, I kinda like it. That V6 sound is not my favorite but the upper rpm rip makes me smile every time. I have had three serious races with it and only lost one, the first was a 360 ci new Dakota Sport and I sure opened his eyes when I passed him walking away, the second was a new Supercharged GrandPix, the slipping tranny let me down on that one otherwise it would have been very close and this is a much bigger car. The last was a riced up mid 90's Acura Legend, no challenge at all.

Here are some pics I snapped this afternoon, it turned out to be nice and I just washed her yesterday.

Hope you like them.

10-03-2003 04:00 PM
crazy larry ive got a 94 non sho taurus, I have pulled the heads off, i havent pulled the tranny, but it can't be much harder than the fwd tranny was in spookis car..... it been swapped twice. gets quicker and quicker every time.
as far as working on one, you have to get in the mindset of having to deal with all of that electronic crap. (your friend). its a tight fit to work on, but my big self has done it with out to much trouble.... get a code reader, actually a scanner is better, as you can moniter real time functions..... i'd like to put a sho on a tbird or couger tranny and drop that in a 'coupe or a bucket....

and the tranny is the weakest link in the sho drive train, 4Jaw had a good thread on awhile back, where he had found a website that had a bunch of mods listed to do to the tranny to beef it up.....
10-03-2003 12:02 PM
Some questions about a Ford SHO

You know, cars are a very terrible addiction...

I was "window shopping" online as I sometimes know drool over what you'd like to have. Then I came upon this Taurus SHO in distress. The owner described it as clean and running good, listed a few add-ons (flowmasters, new tires), but said the the trans was "no good".

This was a '91 SHO, and I'm thinking it probably still had the 5-speed manual trans. I believe it had somewhere in the vicinity of 145,000 miles. The price was pretty cheap, and the picture of the vehicle looked like it was pretty decent. I was thinking of travelling out to see it.

If I assume the worse, and the trans needs an overhaul, how difficult will it be if it is a manual or automatic. Funny thing is, I don't remember owning or driving too many front-wheelers. I think the only one I had was a Civic, and nothing major ever went South on that except the gas tank...then I sold it. What does one get involved with when owning a hi-po "modern" vehicle with front wheel drive?

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Breaking News
  • Trump budget surprise: Gutting the CFPB

    The impact of President Donald Trump’s 2018 federal budget proposal would certainly be felt in the housing industry via the 13% cut to HUD's budget, but that’s hardly the only impactful move that the budget proposal holds. Buried on the second-to-last page of Trump’s budget is a move that is sure to please Trump’s fellow Republicans and many in the housing industry as well – gutting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

FHFA-OIG: FHFA should sue over force-placed insurance practices

Excessively priced insurance cost GSEs $158 million in 2012

Scales of justice

{Update 1: Post updated with a statement from Congresswoman Maxine Waters}

Over the last few years, financial regulators from all over the country have questioned the cost of force-placed (or lender-placed) insurance policies. Now, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of the Inspector General is suggesting that the FHFA sue its servicers and lender-placed insurance providers because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have suffered “considerable financial harm” in the LPI market.

LPI exists because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac require their borrowers to maintain hazard insurance for their homes. “The insurance safeguards the value of the homes in the event of a fire or other covered incident, thereby preserving the Enterprises’ interests in them,” the FHFA-OIG said in a report.

The GSEs’ mortgage servicers are responsible for ensuring that borrowers maintain hazard insurance on their properties. “To do so, the servicers outsource this task to specialty insurance companies that track the status of borrowers’ insurance policies,” the FHFA said.” When a provider identifies a lapse in hazard insurance, it initiates new coverage known as lender-placed insurance.”

But if a borrower’s home is foreclosed on, the GSE that owns or guarantees the borrower’s mortgage is responsible for the cost of the borrower’s unpaid LPI premiums.  “In 2012, the Enterprises paid approximately $360 million in LPI premiums,” the FHFA said.

The FHFA report states that several state financial regulators found that the LPI rates in their states were excessive. The excessive costs were driven up by “profit-sharing arrangements under which servicers were paid to steer business to LPI providers. Such arrangements often took the form of commission structures and reinsurance deals.”

As part of the FHFA-OIG’s report, it determined that two companies and their subsidiaries provide 90% of the nation’s LPI coverage. Those two companies are Assurant (AIZ) and QBE Holdings.

In 2012 and 2013, the states of New York, Florida and California accused Assurant and QBE of charging excessive LPI rates and began to enter into consent orders to settle the claims.

In 2013, the two companies agreed to pay $24 million to the state of New York and provide restitution to the affected borrowers. In Florida and California, the companies were forced to lower their rates after the states found that the LPI rates did not comply with state law.

Additionally, borrowers began filing class-action lawsuits against the LPI providers over the excessive rates.

From the OIG report:

For example, Wells Fargo and QBE settled with a class of Florida borrowers for $19 million in May 2013. They agreed to reimburse or credit affected borrowers 25% of any LPI premium they assessed.

In September 2013, JPMorgan Chase and Assurant settled with a nationwide class of borrowers for $300 million. The defendants agreed to reimburse or credit affected borrowers 12.5% of any LPI premium they assessed.

Finally, in February 2014, Citibank and a class of borrowers agreed to a $95 million settlement in which Citibank would also refund 12.5% of the LPI premiums it billed to borrowers.

The FHFA-OIG estimates that those additional fees cost the GSEs $158 million in 2012 alone.

The FHFA itself issued directives in November 2013 to attempt to mitigate those excessive costs when the FHFA directed Fannie and Freddie to restrict the fees and commissions paid by insurers to servicers LPI.

Subsequently, the FHFA-OIG investigated the impact of the LPI costs and has now recommended that the FHFA “assess the merits of litigation by the Enterprises against their servicers and LPI providers to remedy potential damages caused by past abuses in the LPI market and, then, take appropriate action in this regard.”

The OIG reports states that the GSEs have suffered damages from the excessive rates and believes that litigation could result in financial restitution for the GSEs.

“We believe that the Enterprises may be able to benefit from LPI-related litigation,” the OIG report states. “As noted above, several state insurance regulators have documented abusive practices by some servicers and LPI providers. Consequently, these state regulators required LPI providers to substantially lower their premiums.

“Further, in some cases, regulators and LPI providers have mutually agreed to provide restitution to affected borrowers, implying that the borrowers were financially harmed by potentially collusive industry practices. As large consumers of LPI, the Enterprises have likely sustained similar financial harm as a result of these practices.”

Using previous lawsuits and actions from New York, Florida and California as a guide, the OIG believes that similar litigation “could result in financial recoveries for the Enterprises.”

The OIG’s report noted that the FHFA’s general counsel has not yet considered lawsuits over the LPI rates. “An official from that office said that it had not yet done so, citing competing priorities, such as finalizing pending legal claims,” the OIG report stated. “The official said, however, that FHFA’s Office of General Counsel would consider undertaking such an assessment.”

The OIG stated that it believes that “FHFA—as the Enterprises’ conservator—has a responsibility to conduct such an assessment because the failure to do so could result in potentially forgoing significant financial recoveries.”

The OIG's recommendation of litigation was hailed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California), ranking member of the Financial Services Committee. In a statement, Waters said that she "applauded" the OIG for investigating the issue.

"I now encourage the FHFA to follow-up on the IG’s recommendation to assess the appropriateness of litigation against servicers and insurers over practices related to force-placed insurance," Waters said. "Given the enormity of these overpayments, the FHFA should take steps to hold any and all wrongdoers accountable.”

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Boogie Nights

It was early in the morning and everything was in sync. The vibe Zakaos always longs for started to take shape as soon as the DJ played that one song, that one disco-bell reverie with the pulsing bass line. Even two older black gentlemen had noticed how intense he and Steffani were getting on the dance floor. Zakaos wanted to pull away but couldn't, even though he's more friend than lover, even though she's more friend than crush.

Then the music stopped.
"Awwww, man," Zakaos said, dropping his shoulders.
"What?" Steffani asked.
"They cut the vocal, man."
"What vocal?"

The two older gentlemen looked on. Zakaos's voice was clear as he sang her the answer, his roundish brown face pushed up close toward hers, framed in straight red hair.

" 'Just can't get enough!' "
Just then, the music returned. Right on beat. Zakaos's and Steffani's mouths dropped open. The two onlookers had to laugh, too. It was early in the morning in a club in Miami, where Zakaos, Steffani and some of their friends were visiting, and everything was in sync; the work of a DJ, creating sonic architecture in interstices of time, spilling over into his life. Even when he's not the guy behind the turntables, as on this night in Miami last week, DJ Zakaos never misses a beat.

Upcoming Events

Zakaos is a popular club DJ in Houston, and he keeps getting more popular. He has been living here, or in the general East Texas vicinity, almost his entire life. At 25, Zakaos (who, like most residents of dance culture, goes by only his pseudonym, which just happens to be a phonetic variation of his birth middle name, Zaccheus) can count seven of those years as time spent working professionally as a DJ. His daytime job is as a record buyer at Atomic Records on Westheimer, where he has been working for about two and half years. While Zakaos's boss says he wants to open a store in Austin, he's not sure he wants to pass up on Zakaos's popularity here. If Fusion does open another Atomic in town, he might want his celebrity employee to be a focal part of it. But Zakaos likes Austin. He played there last weekend as part of the city's South by Southwest music festival -- an annual industry bash that brings about 800 aspiring rock stars and countless industry heads/gofers/ reporters, dressed in black and wearing yellow sunglasses, into Sixth Street for schmooze and booze -- and he likes that the city has a lake smack dab in the middle of it and greenery and some clublife. Three things of which Houston is deficient in two.

What H-town does have is a club scene that keeps getting bigger. And as part of this growth, Fusion wants Zakaos to have a bigger profile. Making tapes, mixes of dance songs DJs compile and which most use to supplement gig income, and landing a regular club gig are two ways to do this. But although Atomic has gotten bigger and more accessible to foot traffic, it still doesn't include any of Zakaos's tapes, mainly because Zakaos hasn't gotten around to making any yet and because, simply, Zakaos doesn't want the attention. He makes tapes, but only for friends.

In fact, the first thing Zakaos thought of when he got out of bed last Saturday at one in the afternoon, after walking in the door at two in the morning the night before and after sitting in a car for what felt like 24 hours on the way back from Miami was mixing a tape. Actually it was Steffani he thought about (as he usually does constantly) first thing that morning because he wanted to remind his friend, in music, never to forget their transcendental dance floor experience in Miami those couple nights ago, but it was mixing a tape that made him rise and shine. The song with the vocal "I just can't get enough" would definitely be in his mix.

One tape and seven dubbed versions later, Zakaos was ready to give Steffani her gift, even though she couldn't get away from work and homework for the weekend and he probably wouldn't see her until he got back. He had his tapes made, though, and if he and Audio 3 were to make it to Austin for the first set, Audio 3's at ten (followed by Zakaos's at 11), both at Twist, they'd have to get on the road by six. Austin is a two-and-a-half-hour drive on cop-free Highway 71, and ten means ten.

So if the first thing Zakaos thought of when he got out of bed last Saturday was mixing a tape for Steffani, the second thing he thought about was getting hold of Audio 3, who was driving. He needed directions.

Zakaos's house is on Hiram Clarke, right outside the Loop, where he lives with his mother, stepdad, sister and nephew. They all have their personal spaces, but Zakaos's is damn small. His bedroom walls are cramped with an unimaginable number of 12-inch records. Even the two shelves under his Technics 1200 turntables and Rane "Mojo" TTM 52 mixer are filled with records. Vinyl and cardboard platters cover nearly every part of the room except the bed, which is covered significantly just the same. An American Indian blanket, exploding in calculated, angular cultural motifs of yellows, blues, reds and greens, stretches almost the entire length of the single frame. Zakaos got the blanket when he and his family lived in Harlingen, about an hour from the Mexican border, during his preteen years. The blanket, actually more security than nostalgia, now travels with him as an adult.

When Zakaos moved into this house, his mother's, with his blanket, the first thing she did was buy her son maroon blinds to match. Something about bedding and love goes back to the family's days in Atascocita-Humble, a neighborhood where a black family of six was indeed unusual. Raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, Zakaos and his brother and sisters had learned to live among colorlessness. The only scintilla of color in Zakaos and his little brother Les's bedroom was a pair of matching Felix the Cat bedsheets, which mom had bought on a whim. Dad usually never approved. But the occasional splurge was always warranted. Especially around this house.

Zakaos's father had grown up in Houston, the first of 14 siblings, in a two-bedroom house. He graduated valedictorian of Yates High School, where he also met Zakaos's mother, and moved on to college in Arkansas, where he studied architecture. Walking through downtown Little Rock with dad was always a treat for young Zakaos, who was born there. Zakaos's father would always point to some grand, free-standing structure and say, "I designed that," which always filled the child with wonder and pride. Feelings that would last only so long.

By the time Zakaos and his family had moved to Navasota, Texas, and almost as soon as dad had begun his own insurance business, family life changed. Harsh words and bad attitudes announced his father's presence in nearly every room. The move back to Houston for his father to take a job in the booming oil industry intensified the tension. Living in one of the poshest neighborhoods in town hardly helped.

Zakaos's dad would arrive home after four or five weeks on the road only to find what he would consider a messy house. Slapping or berating Zakaos's mother or his sister, the oldest sibling, Tashon, became regular duty. Sometimes, as a nine year-old-boy, Zakaos would pull his head out from under his pillow, dry his eyes and run downstairs to intercept any damage being done to his mother and, as he looks back on it now, his second mother, Tashon. Sometimes, for Zakaos, a slap from his father was the most attention he got from him.

As Zakaos recalls those days, he wrongly thinks sometimes the discipline was necessary, even deserved. Since color was like gold in the house, Zakaos often stole toys from his friends. His mother would find G.I. Joes and Legos hidden under the young boy's bed. When she'd find him playing and ask where the toys had come from, Zakaos would lie. Really, he had been pilfering dolls and race cars from friends but he had also been taking tens and twenties from her purse to buy the brightly colored construction bits on his own. Nevertheless, he would say, "They're a friend's." Mom never had the heart to tell dad.

After his parents divorced when he was 14 and after Zakaos had learned to make sense of the illogic that surrounded him as a child, color grew in importance in his life. He soon began wearing tie-dye and brightly colored clothing. He began painting on small canvases in strong reds, greens, yellows and oranges. He began experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs. He began covering his bedroom walls with sheets of splatter art. He began hanging out with colorful people. He began sleeping beneath a rainbow of a blanket. And he began listening to colorful music. The brightest: dance.

The Life
"What time you gettin' here?"
Zakaos had Audio 3 on the phone, laundry -- two weeks' worth -- tumbling toward perfection in the garage and the game plan for his set rumbling around in his head.

"Is your house past the airport exit?" his friend asked from the cell phone in his red Pathfinder.

Even for someone who spends his life in urban settings -- raves, clubs, record stores -- metropolitan life holds only so much appeal for Zakaos. He's probably one of a few people who makes his living as a night dweller but who actually enjoys gazing out his bedroom window on sunny afternoons and seeing a blue sky and the tops of trees gazing back. If you look close enough at downtown Houston trees, he'll say, you'll see they're gray, ashen. Trees out here, or in someplace like Austin, they're perfectly brown. Bark like skin.

By the time Audio 3 arrived, Zakaos had finished laundry, had decorated -- as he normally does -- his seven cassettes (in bright leaf patterns, curlicues, peace signs, flowers, his name) and had stacked 60 records in his carrying crate. From drum-and-bass, his specialty, to acid house to ambient to neodisco to jungle. All, to the untrained ear, what one would call "techno." Austin awaited.

Neither Zakaos nor Audio 3 ever works from a set list. Most DJs don't. Zakaos has favorite songs, the kind that when the house starts dying down or when people coincidentally start vacating the dance floor, he'll pull out to drag the dancers back under his spell. But he never depends on one sound or one song too often. Great dee-jaying is give and take. And it is certainly experiential music.

The DJ's primary function is to serve as cultural shaman. By either freezing music for the moment or extending it indefinitely, the DJ controls the flow of life on the dance floor as a scientist would a microscopic megalopolis in a petri dish. This DJ music, these carefully measured techno pulses and airy melodies, is not "listening" music. It was never meant for radio, and it will never sell to anyone outside of dance culture's underground world. Similar to jazz improvisation, dance music is the experience. Hearing a DJ remove the bass from a song for a minute and watching the subsequent fallout on the dance floor -- where instead of jumping up and down with their arms in spirals, the dancers slow to a sway -- only to hear the DJ put the bass back in and watch the body-shakers erupt in a collective frenzy cannot be captured on CD. Those who try to relate to or harness it that way are blind to the music's essence.

Zakaos knows this. He has learned how to play a crowd. When he started dee-jaying he wanted to impose his favorite music on the people instead of playing what they seemed ready for mixed with music he personally enjoyed. He understands the balance now, though it's not always exact. Challenging dancers with new material as well as calling up old favorites separates the effective DJs from the masturbators in the rather snaky world of rave/dance. Since the history of dance culture or rave -- an unhealthy word nowadays -- has involved drug use, run-ins with the police are common. So it's not unusual or bad business policy for rival rave producers to call the cops -- or worse, the fire department -- on each other's parties. Trying to find work in such a shape-shifting world makes a weekly, regular-paying club gig and the structure it offers appealing, especially for someone like Zakaos. He thinks a steady club gig would help. A weekly show might happen for him at Lava Lounge, another new Houston club, opening up on Milam.

Zakaos spent a lot of years in clubs, but mostly on the other side of the turntables. Houston had such a great scene, he'll tell you, but things happened, man. Bad things. Yuppies. A word that, when spoken, always creates a smile on Zakaos's face, usually outlined in a dark beard -- no mustache, just an Abraham Lincoln-style jowl-wrap. When Zakaos first stepped inside a dance club, that first time back before facial hair, when he lived in Atascocita-Humble and his friends there took him to a place called FX in Fame City, where if you at least looked like you were 18 you could get in to under-21 night, Zakaos literally began hopping in place with excitement. He had heard all the stories from all his buddies who typically went to a club called Studio Circus and about how it felt dancing in a mass of people, but Zakaos had never actually felt the scene himself, felt what it was like standing, eventually dancing, inside some hazy cavern with red, blue, yellow, green, purple lights flashing in his eyes with melodies punching his ears and the bass kicking him in the chest. After that first time he was hooked.

Up until about the time he was 17, Zakaos had thought he had always wanted to be a dancer. A professional. Maybe work local theaters or something, or start a traveling troupe. That he would find something else to do with the music, another way to be a part of it, became real after meeting and talking with a DJ he had heard at Club AM, Mikey Pratt. It was Pratt who told Zakaos to buy a sampler. "You need a mixer, man," he told him. A mixer? All Zakaos had in his house was two boom boxes stacked on top of each other, a Hitachi record player and a set of blown speakers he had found while walking past his house one day and had rewired. A long way from the days when Zakaos would hold his portable cassette tape recorder up to his radio, but still pretty grim working conditions. His friend Adam had a sampler, an Atus -- a company that, after a Radio Shack buyout, is now obsolete -- and eventually sold it to Zakaos for $60. A $140 savings.

Zakaos hooked the mixer up to his CD player/tape deck and began practicing his cuts, splicing songs together by overlapping their bpm's, or beats per minute. (To calculate bpm's, tap your foot to a song's beat for 15 seconds then multiply that number by four.) Stretching out songs, like Shaman's "Move Any Mountain," the first dance record Zakaos ever loved reworking, or mixing songs of the same bpm's was all Zakaos could do up until the time he could afford another turntable, a crappy Gemini he got for about $300. Since most turntables have a dial that lets you control the speed of rotation, splicing together any Mozart with any De La Soul becomes entirely possible once you get two turntables and a mixer working in concert.

But for all his equipment and practicing, Zakaos still thought of himself as a "closet DJ." He had stories to tell, as all musicians do, but he wasn't ready to explain them to hundreds of people at once. He was content sitting and listening to Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye and all the blues and R&B he grew up on with his family in Navasota and later Atascocita, and thinking about the tales each song told. Not their narratives, but what each song meant to each listener. One blare of Louis Armstrong's horn or one quiver of Aretha Franklin's voice meant so many things to so many different people that the "stories," the personalized narratives in each listener's heart, seemed to flow outward in one big American quilt for Zakaos. He thought, if I put a riff of Jimi Hendrix in a dance mix, what would those notes say to people who have heard of Hendrix? In a word, everything. A billion stories, a billion memories in a couple of arpeggios on a Fender Stratocaster.

Zakaos's spirituality extends beyond the Witnesses nowadays. He believes in reincarnation. He'll say he believes Hendrix could be merely a reincarnation of Mozart who could be merely a reincarnation of King David. Where we grow up and where we live as adults affects how we make our musics. And Zakaos believes a type of regionalism affects dance music and DJ styles just as it does any other genre. But while the Chicago Tribe may be saying the same thing as the Detroit Tribe who may be saying the same thing as the Houston Tribe, one thing is definite: Everybody is telling stories.

And telling stories to every person within earshot was something dance couldn't do for Zakaos. It was at around the time of these revelations, at around his 19th birthday, that Zakaos knew he wanted to be a DJ.

Hanging out at Mega Zone Records, where Zakaos bought most of his 12-inchers, was his first step toward a break. Most DJ-culture record stores house high-amplitude speakers and functional turntable systems, where local pros can get up and spin as customers comb the aisles, and Mega Zone's store manager usually spent Saturdays up in the booth when he wasn't selling or ordering records. DJ Andrei would eventually grow tired of seeing Zakaos and a friend watch him spin every other day, so he let Zakaos get behind the turntables for a little while one time. After he saw Zakaos could cut pretty well, he invited him to a rave at the Commerce Street warehouse called Unity. That was Zakaos's first mass dance gathering, like FX's crowd times four. But not his first DJ job.

Andrei's Matrix Crew party at the Main and Naylor building in the warehouse district in 1991 was Zakaos's first time actually working as a DJ. Of course, like everything else, it didn't come easy.

"Dude," Zakaos asked Andrei at the party, "you gonna let me spin or what?"
"Mmmm, it's cool with me, but go ask Chris."
Zakaos approached Chris, also part of Matrix Crew's rave production team.
"Chris," Zakaos said, "you gonna let me spin or what?"
"Mmmm, it's cool with me. Go ask Drei."

Back and forth the back-and-forth went until about four in the morning when only about 20 of the 500 people were still dancing. Then Zakaos got on the turntables.

"Keep the pitch down, man," Andrei told Zakaos before he went on. "Not a lot o' fast shit."

Zakaos's mouth: "Okay, Drei." (Zakaos's head: "Whatever, Drei.")
The pitch was fast. Zakaos could see the crowd was small, smaller than it had been at the height of the party, but he was dee-jaying, he was cutting records and he was working in front of an audience. And he had butterflies. Pterodactyl-size, like back when he was in boys choir as a young teen and had to sing a solo part in front of hundreds of people dressed in formal wear and wearing corsages. Though Zakaos had stuttered as a child, he had always managed to sing all right. The boys choir show went well; Zakaos sang his part, and a theater full of complete strangers clapped their hands together in approval. The applause after his first DJ performance at Main and Naylor cinched it. Zakaos had found his niche.

Chuck E. Cheese's. Victoria's Secret. Kroger. Marshall's. TCBY. All those part-time jobs Zakaos held seemed to matter now. They had all brought him to this place in the DJ booth, and they made him realize how lucky he had been. How lucky he had been to find something he loved truly and wanted to live his life through. If he hadn't known those dead-end jobs, if he hadn't dropped out of Stratford High after his sophomore year because a classmate, someone he actually considered a friend, accused him of stealing a Walkman, if he hadn't thought about the rest of his young life all those hours alone in his room spaced out on acid, Zakaos probably wouldn't have developed such strong feelings for music. In a way, music was his lifeboat. And it's something he thinks he'll keep clinging to.

By the time Zakaos and Audio 3 arrived in Austin, the sun had already set, and a cool nightfall had moved in. The club they were playing at was situated catercorner to all the obvious hoopla on Sixth Street. Packed with horse carriages, street performers, passersby and cops, the main drag of Austin looked more Fraternity Row than Bourbon Street. Lots of healthy-looking white people and lots of beer drinking. Getting nasty drunk or tripping are things Zakaos hasn't done in years. He was kind of glad Twist wasn't on Sixth Street, was kind of out of the way, so to speak.

But it's easy to see why Zakaos would be attracted to this town, and why he would want to live here. It has everything that Houston could ever have, except for a particular person.

Zakaos's thoughts usually travel elliptical patterns. They either stretch way out to a complete passion for music or they stretch way out to a complete passion for the people in his life. When he's dee-jaying, you can see one side of the ellipsis at its furthest point. At Twist last week, Zakaos stood behind a six-feet-long table on which two turntables and a mixer sat waist-level beneath his hands. He spun two 12-inchers and, as he cued one to his left and let one rotate freely to his right and go through the speakers, he slid the cross-fader from its position in the middle to the left in sync with the bass tone. BOOM BOOM BOOM. Right on cue, he moved the fader back to its spot in the middle before the melody kicked back in. That someone could be thinking of anything other than the music or the bass and treble knobs or pitch level or the cross-fader appears unbelievable in this work.

But as Zakaos dee-jays, his thoughts also stretch to the other side of his elliptical way of thinking. When he's standing at the tables and flexing knobs and dialing keys, he's also thinking of a particular person dancing in front of him. Steffani tries to see as many of Zakaos's shows as she can. She, a trained dancer, as tall as Zakaos at five-feet-seven and lean, met Zakaos back during his club-hopping days, and they've been friends ever since. She listens to his stories and thoughts and tells him how she feels, and he reciprocates. Zakaos had fallen fast. That red hair, that electric-blue Mandarin-collared blouse she always wears, that love of life, that color. No chance. He now dreams one day of getting her involved in dance culture as a DJ herself. Then, instead of just dancing and cheering him on at parties, she can work alongside him. Steffani and Zakaos can produce records together. Steffani and Zakaos can argue over music together. Steffani and Zakaos can eat late vegetarian lunches together. But for now, when she's at his performances, when she's urging him on from the dance floor, she's his sole muse. And he sees her all the time. He saw her last weekend. Even though he was in Austin. Even though she was in Houston.

Zakaos knows where he wants to be.

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Well L96 Upgrade

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At HPC, our misdiagnosis attorneys are experienced in all aspects of medical negligence relating to diagnosis, and we can help you determine whether or not misdiagnosis has occurred and if so, we can provided a thorough analysis of your potential claim anywhere in Arizona. Misdiagnosis is not always medical malpractice, but it might be. It is important to protect your rights and find out. Some commonly encountered misdiagnosis cases include:

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Joe Oliver: Pipeline Misinformation Affects BC Businesses

Posted: Updated:

VANCOUVER - Oil, gas and other natural resource companies must help "shoulder the burden" of addressing British Columbians' concerns around controversial projects like pipelines, says the federal minister responsible for natural resources.

Joe Oliver pressed a room of business people in Vancouver on Wednesday to recognize their companies must play a key role in convincing the public their projects are advantageous not just to them, but to everyone.

He said future development of resources relies on public confidence, so business must make its case using messaging that is believable.

"We've got to appeal on an emotive level," he told the Business Council of B.C. luncheon. "We have to communicate that we care, that we're doing something about it, and that the benefits to British Columbians from development are going to be extremely important, right across the province and for individual homes."

"We can't do it alone."

Oliver's remarks came just ahead of an announcement by the province that it has crafted its own plan for developing a response to on-land oil spills.

Both discussions come amidst ongoing public protests and condemnation from aboriginal groups about the proposed construction of Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to a northwestern B.C. port, and the expansion of a Kinder Morgan pipeline through Vancouver. They argue the environmental risks of a spill outweigh any economic benefits.

The negative public perception has spread beyond provincial and national borders. A blog posting on the U.K.-based The Guardian website calls the transformation of Canada from holding liberal, outward-looking values to "a thuggish petro-state," one of the "biggest political shocks of the past decade."

Last month, an Enbridge vice-president also acknowledged the company can do better — and is embarking on a campaign — to improve perception of Northern Gateway in Vancouver and its surrounding urban area.

"This is a democracy and everyone has a right to express their views in the public square," Oliver told reporters when later asked if the vocal outcry from environmental advocates is holding Ottawa back from its economic objectives.

"I would be happier if the views expressed were factually based, and sometimes they're not. And so it's important for us to get the facts out."

He cited one scientific study to dispel the notion that diluted bitumen flowing through a pipeline is more corrosive than crude oil.

He also listed several previously announced initiatives being undertaken to ensure environmental protection is world class, including increasing the number of annual oil and gas pipeline inspections by 50 per cent and doubling the number of annual audits.

He told his audience Canadians expect nothing less than that environmental protection be built into their practices, noting that is an on-going effort as technology evolves.

He said the government is also investing millions in the training of First Nations people with skills to work in natural resources jobs, which it hopes will help bring aboriginals on board with such projects.

The minister did not make mention in his speech of any role the B.C. provincial government might play. The province has issued five pre-conditions that must be met before politicians will consider supporting new pipelines.

Shortly after Oliver's talk, B.C. Environment Minister Terry Lake responded to the comments while outlining the province's own plans for potential on-land oil spills.

Lake challenged the federal minister's claim that public perception is the problem, rather than environmental standards. There are gaps in the system related to response time should a disaster occur, he said.

"It's a continuous improvement program that we're on," he said. "You'll never get to the perfect place, but we continue to strive. And as people set the bar higher, we're going to try to continue to meet it and review and improve as we go."

Brenda Kenny, president and CEO of the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, joined Lake at his news conference. She agreed the industry can do more to curry public favour.

"We need to be more transparent," she said. "Is (the industry) perfect? No. And our goal is zero incidents."

She invited members of the public to ask the industry the hardest questions they could think of, to stay informed and to look at the facts.

"Try to ask questions that are going to matter to your families," she added.

Response to oil spills in the ocean falls to the federal government, while incidents that might occur on land are the responsibility of the province.

To that end, Lake laid out for the first time Wednesday his government's strategy for pipeline safety.

The policy paper with details is being released just weeks before the government attends the joint-review panel hearing in Prince Rupert.

Lake and B.C. Energy Minister Rich Coleman will hold consultations with the oil and gas industry beginning in January on the issue. He said they will discuss topics like minimum response times, requirements for equipment and personnel training, wildlife response, temporary- and final-waste management, cleanup expectations and impact assessment.

Lake said the government will also reach out to First Nations, local governments and environmentalists through a web-based consultation process. That process will wrap up Feb. 15, and the government will then hold a prevention-and-response symposium by March's end in Vancouver.

Enbridge vice-president Janet Holder said in a statement the company will review the province's paper in detail. She listed several specific measures it's taking to ensure the $6 billion pipeline will be the "best-built" in North America, and said the company will have its own full response plan for any potential incident.

Lake said the provincial government will also press the federal government to develop world-leading response plans for spills along the coast.

"This isn't about pushing any pipeline through," he said. "This is about the movement of hazardous goods through British Columbia.

"So if you've got oil being moved on tanker cars, rail cars, they could have an accident and we need to have a proper response to ensure that cleanup is through and complete and timely."

He also said the province is contemplating implementing a "polluter-pay" system that would shift the costs of spills from taxpayers to the industry.

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Shocking Video To Warn Pupils Of The Dangers Of Texting And Driving

08/10/2009 11:27 | Updated 22 May 2015

A shocking video has been created for pupils warning of the dangers of texting while driving.

Gwent Police are hoping it will be shown in schools around Wales and hopefully across the UK.

The film stars young actors from Wales and shows a teenage girl causing a fatal crash after using a mobile phone to send a text message.

It's graphic - watch it here and you'll see what I mean. It will certainly make you think twice about using your phone when driving.

Texting while driving slows reaction time by 35 of drivers aged between 18 and 24 text while driving.

Of course, it might help if the penalties were more severe. Drivers currently face a £60 fine and three penalty points on their licence for using hand-held mobile phones.

Do you think this video will have an effect on young drivers' behaviour?

It will probably give me nightmares. But then, I always found the public service videos we were shown at school terrifying. They were mostly about electricity pylons and sub-stations, as I remember.

I've even got my very own warning videos running in my head every time I think I haven't secured my baby's car seat properly or think I've left the gas on.

Are young people these days as easily scared into good behaviour? I wonder...

Source: ParentDishUS

Source: BBC

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Justin Fletcher: We Meet Mr Tumble!

24/06/2011 14:09 | Updated 22 May 2015
Justin Fletcher: We meet Mr Tumble!BBC
Justin Fletcher: the man who dresses variously as a baby in a pram, old women, and of course, the irrepressible Mr Tumble. So how else to greet this luminary of children's entertaining than with a rousing chorus of: 'Hello, hello, how are you?'

Fortunately Justin's good humour filters through into real life, and my foghorning down the phone at him does not seem to mar our interview.

"We open live shows with that and you'll hear 15,000 people joining in," he tells me, (translated: I've heard it all before.)

My audience with Justin is granted to chat about his new project, voicing 'Olly The Little White Van' who rip roars his way onto CITV from June 26th.

Justin is as affable and excitable in real life as he is on the TV. His passion and enthusiasm is palpable, his drive and professionalism steely. He successfully manages to keep my questions well and truly on track - answering everything put to him fully, yet without giving too much of himself away.

I sense Justin has a work on/off switch, and he has clear boundaries between the two. I wondered though, how a now 41-year-old man from Reading ends up becoming probably the most well loved and well known kids' entertainer in the country? Or, what kind of chat do you have with your careers teacher that ends up with you becoming Mr Tumble?

"I was always really interested in kids' TV when I was at drama school," Justin explains, "And in the third year I got to go and see Phillip Schofield and Gordon the Gopher – I thought I could have a go at that kind of entertaining, and I got my sister to make me a show-reel. She was a newsreader at Meridian, and I just came up with a couple of characters, did a piece to camera and she put it together for me."

Justin landed work just weeks later, firstly for CITV's Fun Song Factory, then later with the BBC, touring as Mr Jolly in Playdays, and then on Tikkabilla, where he was working when the idea for Something Special came along.

"Something Special was initially a pilot with very little money behind it," he says, "I was told it was going to help children with learning difficulties and that I would need to learn Makaton sign language. I went on a crash court – I had a week and a half to learn 400 signs – and the programme just exploded overnight."

But learning 400 signs in a week is surely nothing for the man who never seems to be off the box – as I reel off the list I have of all his TV credits, voice-overs and characters, he laughs and agrees he does work a lot:

"I do work too much! I am planning next year to have a few days off. But yes, I work very hard and love what I do, and the feedback I get drives me and keeps me going. Often people use this kind of work as a stepping-stone to daytime TV or whatever, but I love it."

Justin reminds me that he is trained as an actor, and that drama or adult comedy is something he would like to explore in the future:

"I have been approached by couple of production companies to do various bits and pieces, and would love to explore that, but things are so busy at the moment. I would love to do adult comedy though. Actually, Peter Kay and Simon Pegg contacted me recently - they have little children – and Peter Kay sent me a lovely email about Gigglebiz. So yes, some adult comedy would be great fun!"

I wonder if Justin realises the cult following some of this programmes have, how Gigglebiz has been described as 'Little Britain for children', and how students miss lectures to watch the shows.

"Pre-school Little Britain! Yes! And Gigglebiz does have a huge student following. You know you are making an impact when someone shouts out one of your catchphrases to you! I went to a campus a little while ago and lots of the kids were wearing T-shirts with my characters on. And at the Bestival festival there were loads of older teenagers dressed up, too."

So where do all these characters come from? "I watched people's mannerisms." he says, "I base characters on people, tweak them a bit, make other little notes about them. I always carry a hard disk recorder and if I hear an interesting voice I put a demo down. Really helps, especially as I have done a couple of hundred characters in 15 years. I need to keep all the mannerisms and vocals different. I find that a challenge. So I write everything down too. I am doing seven or eight voices in Olly, and there are 26 characters in Gigglebiz, so I need to keep track."

I wonder if anything ever fazes Justin – if he ever gets embarrassed?

"Not at the moment! In the live shows you run out on stage in front of thousands of kids and they just love it – there's no room for embarrassment. I was always taught the three Cs of children's entertaining – clarity, contact, commitment. If the kids believe in you, and you engage them, then you're there."

But SURELY there must be some jobs that are just plain weird – after all, not many men go off to work each day and find themselves donning a bonnet and sitting in a pram, or gurning to camera for an eight hour shift?

"Well, there was one funny job – not odd, because I loved doing it, but when I was voicing Shaun the Sheep the casting was very funny. All those baas. Trying to get a message across in sheep baas! Oh I did many years of training for that! A lot of working on the farms. Actually, I didn't, I just went in all guns firing, did a high energy performance with a bit of prep and played around with some voices. Like I do for all my characters."

Being Justin Fletcher must be something of a bind though – distinctive even out of costume, surely he can't get a minute's peace? Are people always fostering their offspring onto him at parties and chasing him down the street for autographs?

"Er, yes. And I get a couple of hundred emails a week asking me to lots of parties, and to open school fetes and things. Lots of charity requests. They are very important."

Amongst his charitable endeavors, Justin is a patron of the Make a Wish Foundation, and it was partly for his charity work that he was made an MBE in the 2008 birthday honours.

It's just all so lovely and squeaky clean that I can't help but ask him, as we round off our interview, is it HARD being 'Justin Fletcher from Children's Television' and constantly having to preserve that squeaky clean image? Does it rule out kicking back at the weekend and getting rip-roaringly drunk down the local? Justin is very careful not to entertain my frivolous questions with an in-depth answer, preferring to neatly swerve the issues with a swift:

"I think it comes down to common sense!"

But, he continues, "I do get good good feedback. If I'm in the supermarket I'll happily sing and do autographs and pictures. You get children see you and bump into something because they are transfixed. Last week little girl shouted "I never thought you were part of our world!"

You're def part of our world, Justin! check out a clip of Justin's new show, Olly the Little White Van.

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The Height Of Fashion: Will You Be Wearing Midi Heels?

11/07/2013 20:18 | Updated 22 May 2015

You've spent years adjusting to life on stilettos but guess what? What goes up must come down and it's time to invest in some midi heels. Georgia Axtell-Powell reports

If anybody had told me a year ago that midi heels were set to be the footwear of choice for SS13, I'd have laughed in their face before squirming at the thought of an unflattering kitten heel.

miu miu

For years heels have been getting increasingly taller and more painful; by the end of 2012 the fashion world was practically tottering around on ten inch stilts (I'm blaming you Lady Gaga)... that is until now.

Inevitably, what goes up must come down, and so the in-your-face skyscraper heel is out and the demure midi is in.

Designers such as Miu Miu has moved things closer to earth with its OTM block midi heels, while Valentino didn't compromise on elegance when designing a range of pointed-toe midi heels.

Even Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo, who are well-known for their bigger-the-better approach when it comes to heel height, have produced a number of midi heels. Naturally the high street has followed suit and this new easygoing sole companion is set to make happy feet across the land.

Celebrity poster girls who have already adopted the midi include Alexa Chung, Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey, but the pioneer of this new height?

alexa chung

Kate Middleton, who is rarely seen out of her L.K. Bennett numbers. Shoe designer Kat Maconie explains why this shoe appeals to busy women saying they make sense for people who are "always on the go".

But the joy of the midi goes beyond comfort. Personally, I like the fact they're more sympathetic to the shorter men. If, like me, you are over 5"6', a pair of 1' – 2.5' heels will leave you feeling less like the BFG and more ladylike.

Stylist Heather Shears recommends teaming a chunkier midi heel with a monochrome pencil dress and a slick of black eyeliner for a sixties inspired look.

She adds "Wear skinny jeans with a sharp point-toe midi heel to give the illusion of height and an extended leg line without the pain of a serious high heel."

But is the humble midi heel really a match for the fierce stiletto? After years of being inspired by Carrie Bradshaw in her heels higher than the New York skyline, are we ready to end our obsession with the super-skyscraper?

Well, with all the reality stars being papped unable to walk in their flashy yet trashy mega-heels, a more graceful shoe, as seen on real fashion icons, is a welcome change.

So will you be wearing the effortlessly glam yet practical midi heel? Go on, your feet will thank you for it.

LOVE THIS WRITER? Follow her on Twitter @GAxtellPowell

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Andrea Leadsom Apologises To Theresa May For Times Motherhood Claims After She Denied Making Them

Rowback comes after Leadsom said she was 'disgusted' by claims.

11/07/2016 10:03 | Updated 11 July 2016
Chris Radburn/PA Wire
Leadsom had said she was 'disgusted' by claims she had said being a mother gave her an edge over Theresa May in the race to be PM

Andrea Leadsom has become embroiled in a media row after apologising for remarks about  motherhood making her a better candidate for prime minister - an allegation she had previously derided as “the worst gutter journalism I’ve ever seen”.

The ex-Conservative leadership hopeful had accused Times journalist Rachel Sylvester of fabricating claims she said having children gave her an edge over rival Theresa May.

Sylvester stuck by her story, first publishing a transcript and audio of the controversial interview, before taking to the airwaves to defend Friday’s Times front page.

The Times
The Times front page that Leadsom said she was 'disgusted' by

But today it was revealed Leadsom had apologised by text to May, who is unable to have children with her husband of 35 years.

“I’ve already said to Theresa how very sorry I am for any hurt I have caused and how that article said completely the opposite of what I said and believe,” Leadsom told the Daily Telegraph.

The rowback prompted questions as to why the South Northamptonshire MP had launched such a fierce attack on The Times for printing “the exact opposite of what I said”, only to concede to apologising to May days later.

Piers Morgan and author Nick Cohen both called on Leadsom to extend a public apology to Sylvester.

Leadsom’s original outburst had prompted huge scorn from her Conservative colleagues

 Tory MP Alan Duncan branded the comments “vile”, while small business minister Anna Soubry said they were proof Leadsom “is not PM material”.

“She should do us all a favour, including herself, and step aside,” Soubry added.

Former communities secretary Eric Pickles also commented the gaffe had revealed she was an “amateur who has already failed”.

Some of Leadom’s supporters defended her in the aftermath, former MP Louise Mensch claiming she had only apologised for “[the] Times misrepresenting her”.

Nadine Dorries also accused journalists of having followed instruction to “get Andrea”.

She added that Leadsom had “talked about being a mum”, adding: “It gives her a holistic perspective. She should talk about it more.”

To counter the claims Leadsom had been unfairly smeared, The Times released a transcript of the original interview that revealed Sylvester asked the MP about her repeated use of the phrase “as a mum” during debates on the EU.

Without asking her to draw a contrast with her rival, Leadsom proceeded to discuss how May “possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people. But I have children”.

The full transcript released by The Times reads...

RS: What is the main difference between you and Theresa May?

AL: In terms of the country I think I absolutely understand how the economy works and can really focus on turning it around. In terms of personal qualities I see myself as one an optimist and two a huge member of a huge family and that’s important, my kids are a huge part of my life, my sisters my two brothers who are half brothers my mum and step dad’s sons who are very close, huge part of a family so very grounded and normal, enormously optimistic.

RS: Does your family inform your politics?

AL: Oh, totally

RS: During the euro debates, you said several times ‘as a mum’ . Do you feel like a mum in politics?

AL: Yes

RS: Why and how?

AL: So, really carefully, because I am sure, I don’t really know Theresa very well but I am sure she will be really sad she doesn’t have children so I don’t want this to be ‘Andrea has children, Theresa hasn’t’, because I think that would be really horrible but, genuinely, I feel being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake. She possibly has nieces, nephews, lots of people. But I have children who are going to have children who will directly be a part of what happens next. So it really keeps you focussed on what are you really saying, because what it means is you don’t want a downturn but never mind, ten years hence it will all be fine, my children will be starting their lives in that next ten years so I have a real stake in the next year, the next two.

Speaking ahead of May’s leadership launch on Monday, her aides said the home secretary was “grateful” for Leadsom’s text apologising and replied with her thanks.

They added that May has maintained she knew no offence was intended to be caused.

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