Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

I’m here in Palo Alto for a couple days and last night a few friends and I sat down and watched the classic LDS film “Mouths of Babes” by T.C. “Tom” Christensen. The 1980 film features Mormon primary kids, aged between 3 and 8 responding to gospel themed questions. Their responses are hilarious and, at times, heart warming.

As we were laughing, someone wondered out loud what had become of the Mouths of Babes kids. Where are they now? What do they look like? What do they do? What did they think of the movie (do they even remember it?)

And that got me thinking it’s time for 6-degrees of separation networking! Do you know someone who was in that movie? Who knows someone who might know? Who knows Tom Christensen or anyone who worked on the movie (see list below)? Since the film came out 27 years ago that means the kids are now about 30-35 years old. The movie was filmed in the San Jose area and in Layton, Utah.

If you have related information, please contact me here. For convenience, I set up a quick Mouths of Babes website to track the information as I receive it. So far we have information on four of the twenty-one kids.

Oh, and we’re not the only ones interested in this. Tom the director, in the film commentary, also expressed a desire to locate the kids.

Movie Fact: Tom’s sister’s (Becky’s) son Thomas (”I hope they call me on a mission” improv boy) is the same kid on “Son of Babes” who talks about hyperspace and lizards

Movie Fact: Son of Babes is the non-denominational version and is on the same DVD

What we know:

“The Visual Transit Authority” is the production company run by T. C. Christensen,

His videos, including these, are distributed through Thomson Productions (1-800-226-0155).

I’m told the Utah Film Commission can provide us with Tom’s contact information.

Production Assistants
Katy Folkman
Joe Folkman
Brad Miller

Sound
Chuck Royer
Steve Christensen

Additional Photography
Steve Parmley

Produced and Directed by
Tom Christensen

I like to travel and I’ve been fortunate to have visited a few places. I just wrote a small web program to map out world travels on a google map.

Here is a map of Ryan Byrd’s Travels

While talking to a friend one day, I came to realize that as beds become more comfortable, and as lives become more chaotic, it is sometimes necessary to give oneself a pep talk in the morning to get going.

So over the last week, ten minutes at a time, I threw together the site, Morning Pep Talk.com. I think it came together rather nicely.

Let me know how you like it.

While at BYU, I took a Family History class. I diligently hunted down the records for four generations of my ancestors only to find out, in the end, that an aunt of mine had already compiled the information. Clearly, I could have used my efforts more effectively. Well, there is an answer to this problem in sight!

A group of local technologists and engineers (of which group I am a part) has banded together to produce a new offering, Open Willow.com with the goal of a collaborative merging of Family History research the world over. Our vision is to empower genealogical researchers by leveraging and combining work done by individuals in an open wiki-like environment.

Want to be a part of the project? Email me

p.s. Am I the only one who thinks is was crazy to change the name from “genealogy” to “family history?” I’m told the idea was for greater focus on families, but I secretly think it was because people have trouble spelling and pronouncing the word “genealogy.”

p.p.s. So, you want to do some family history work? Where do you go? Here are some Family History links:

• linux open source Gramps project
• the exhaustive Cyndi’s List
• the MyFamilyInc network, which gives BYU students and faculty free access to their sites:
  • Ancestry.com
  • Family History.com
  • My Family.com
  • Genealogy.com
  • RootsWeb.com
• The LDS Church’s Family Search site

Some of you know I’m pursuing an MBA from the University of Utah. I just finished up a class (IS 6420 — Database Theory/Design) from Dr. Paul Hu

For the final project, we were charged with designing and implementing a useful database application. My lab partner and I envisioned a universal database structure and decided to create a personal media management app to use that technology. For the class, it was coded in MS Access/Oracle. I just finished a PHP/MySQL version (warning: it’s very alpha) — here’s the link, enjoy: onlineMediaManager