You may have heard of their 2002 movie, Jonah, and not thought much else about them. They've been putting kid/family friendly videos together for 13 years and they are finally getting a shot on Saturday mornings.

“The Saturday morning block will begin on September 9 on NBC, beginning at 10:00 a.m. EST followed by a 3-2-1 Penguins! or LarryBoy Adventures show at 11:00 a.m. Telemundo will carry the same blocks in Spanish beginning on September 9 at 8:00 a.m., while the i Network will air the blocks beginning on Friday, September 15 at 3:00 p.m. EST.

Big Idea has an amazing opportunity to bring "Sunday Morning Values, Saturday Morning Fun" to television and reach a huge audience which may have never heard of Bob, Larry, Silly-Songs or The Pirates who Don't do Anything. Along with the ever-adorable VeggieTales crew, 3-2-1 Penguins! and the LarryBoy Adventures 2-D series will also be featured in the Saturday morning and Friday afternoon time-block.“

Yes, they are all vegetables but they are funny, silly, and great looking 3-D cartoons - every bit as good as Pixar. Plus, the lessons that they intertwine with the stories and silly songs just keeps everyone laughing and having a good time.

These shows have been a staple in our family ever since our son Lee, now almost 9, was a year old. I remember we were in Mardel and letting him run around the kids toy section. They had this video playing up on a TV screen and it was about this little boy who was in a a toy store with his Dad and he wanted something like a train set. His Dad told him it was pretty expensive and that he couldn't get the train set but he could get a new ball instead. The boy was a little sad but them perked up and was thankful for being able to get his new ball and spend some time with Dad. There was cute little tune and everything. That video was called Madame Blueberry and taught kids why God wants us to be thankful for what we have - Being greedy makes you grumpy but a thankful heart is a happy heart.

We just love them. For adults, if you watch them with your kids, they have some story lines that we can all relate to and are just too funny.

You and your kids will be blessed by these little shows.

If you're a developer you've heard something along these lines:  When people get a new hammer they start to see everything as a nail.  Basically we try to apply our new found knowledge even when its not really needed or appropriate.  I've done it and I'm sure you've done it too.  Hrm..that new design pattern I read about can be used here I'm sure.  I don't know how yet; but I know it will work!

Funny stuff.  David Hayden has a good blog post on Over-Architecting that touches on some similar points.  I like how he references YagNi because whenever I see that I always chuckle.  It's true most of the time and yet it's still funny.  He has a lot of good points but this one I liked the best:

“Only if absolutely necessary and based on in-your-face requirements do you add classes and behaviors to loosely couple your layers and partitions. Do you really need a factory, service locator, registry, etc. that returns an interface or can you couple directly to the class? Is there a requirement sitting in front of you now that justifies it? How long would it take you in ReSharper to extract the Interface, find usages, and replace the class with an interface if the need actually arises in the future? What is the chance of that need actually arising?“

I need to continue to practice this along with TDD so I'm only building what needs to be built according to the requirements.  Period.

Giddy Up!