After a brief hiatus, we are pleased – nay ecstatic – to bring back the Big Nerd of the Month. For our regular blog readers, this latest winner is a name you frequently see within these revered web pages. He is a Nerd amongst Nerds. His coding chops are undisputed (can we say Clash of the Coders winner?). His hacking reigns supreme. His creativity is unmatched. In fact, he is the brains (and voice) behind our recent Cocoa Got Blocks music video masterpiece.

Without further adieu we are very proud to announce Steve Sparks as the June Big Nerd of the Month in this the year of the Nerd 2013.

BNR Blog: We always like to retrace the path our Nerds took to make it to Big Nerd Ranch. It’s always interesting and makes us realize how grateful we are that the path stopped here. What’s your story?

SS: I had worked for a number of years in a startup while Big Nerd Ranch was growing, and then left in 2009. Having known Emily and Aaron, I had been wanting to be a Big Nerd for a while, but the opportunity hadn’t presented itself. One day Aaron found himself with a project that required a fairly wide breadth of skills, from hardware hacking to web services. He hired me for that role. After that project ended, I’ve been on iOS projects, mostly. I’m really enjoying the sweet spot between the constraints of mobile and the performance that these devices have nowadays.

BNR Blog: Stealing a recent question posed by frequent Big Nerd Blogger MarkD, what is your superpower?

SS: Geez, that’s a tough one. Curiosity? Optimism? Perfect pitch? I really think it’s the coffee. A good cup of coffee is worth Aquaman’s ocean telepathy anyday.

BNR Blog: We recently debuted your music video masterpiece – Cocoa Got Blocks. Just how in the world did you come up with that idea?

SS: Oh, I’ve been a fan of the original since back in the day. I sing it about things all the time. “I like this booth and I cannot lie” while going to lunch with the guys the other day. “I like my car and I cannot lie.” And then “I hate pthreads and I cannot lie” just didn’t have that je ne sais quoi, y’know?

BNR Blog: As part of the team that won the epic coding competition, Clash of the Coders, you got to pick a pretty unique prize. What was it?

SS: I got Modernist Cuisine. It’s one-third crazy takes on standard recipes with a smattering of exotic stuff (like cooking with liquid nitrogen), two-thirds food porn. The images and quality of print are outstanding.

BNR Blog: What delectable dishes have you made? And when can I come over for dinner?

SS: I’ve had a sous vide unit for a while (built one based on the Make: article) but he’s really pushed me to use it for more than just beef. I’ve gained confidence with fish, and started really killing the chicken.  Now I want to do some stuff that’s too hot for the old unit, so I just built a new one that’s reliable up to 100C for continuous duty.

As for coming over for dinner, y’know, we could arrange that. No doubt all the kids would love the tire swing while we savored the good stuff. You’d bring the wine, of course.

BNR Blog: I saw a recent Facebook post about Diamond Dallas Page and his DDPYoga. (Friendly reader, you do follow “Big Nerd Ranch” on Facebook, yes?)

Would you recommend DDPYoga?

SS: Oh, most definitely. It’s been really awesome for me. As a computer nerd I’ve spent twenty years constantly hunched over. Once I had kids, holding them just destroyed what was left of my shoulders. By doing the DDPYoga workouts, I’ve really improved my posture and flexibility and brought back a LOT of the shoulder capability. It’s given me a lot of strength too, allowing me to squat for fifteen minutes while they filmed the opening shot of the video. 🙂 The standing desks at Big Nerd Ranch and my own treadmill desk have been helpful in this regard too. No more hunching!

BNR Blog: We define being a Nerd as being passionate about something, usually something interesting and unique. What are your Nerdy hobbies?

SS: Mostly my big hobby is learning. I love understanding a topic through-and-through. On that note, I’ve gotten nerdy about barbecue, coffee, fermented foods (beer/wine/cheese/pickles), music production, electronics (specifically discrete logic on one side, and tube amplification on the other) and wrecking my wife’s viewing of a fiction movie by pointing out the Joseph Campbell references.

BNR Blog: How does it feel to accept the mantle of BNOTM from the BNOTM (millenium) Chris Stewart?

SS: Chris is the King, of course. I accepted the CotC mantle from him too. I’ve spent this year working on a project with him, getting to know him, and he’s brilliant. (Just like all the other Nerds, heh.) It’s pretty fitting that he held the award for the most consecutive months. Of course, when they announced the winner, he and I were in a scrum meeting, so we didn’t find out til later.

BNR Blog: What piece of flair are you adding to the trophy?

SS: The trophy has a cowboy as the centerpiece, so I’m going to paint the cowboy to look like my Cocoa Got Blocks character, complete with a mouse necklace made from dental floss and a grain of rice.

BNR Blog: And finally, it’s the season for college graduates to be freed upon the employment world. What advice would you give today’s college graduates?

SS:

• You get a job by earnestly wanting to help your employer in the ways he needs help.

• You keep a job by consistently helping your employer above and beyond what he asks.

• You lose a job if you do it so well your employer can’t function without you. So share what you know freely, and your value will just increase.

• You don’t really need an employer anyway, you CAN do it yourself.

• “Set your sights firmly on a course and the universe will marshal its forces to support you.” Don’t know who said that, but it’s a favorite quote and bang-on true.

• Most importantly, you could be doing your job, or you could be starving on the side of the road in Africa, hobbled, with no chance for redemption. Given those two options, even the worst office job is AWESOME and the coworkers are really not such bad people.

BNR Blog: Congratulations Steve! You are truly a Renaissance Nerd and we’re grateful to work with you.

If you missed it, watch Steve’s_ Cocoa Got Blocks_ here!

Big Nerd Ranch’s Cocoa Got Blocks from Big Nerd Ranch on Vimeo.

The post Big Nerd of the Month: Steve Sparks appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Jan David Hanrath, co-founder of “One More Thing,”” a popular blog serving the Dutch Apple community, spent a week at Big Nerd Ranch Europe bootcamp to become an iOS developer. He blogged daily about his experience, which we’ve translated from its original Dutch.

If you’re interested in attending a bootcamp at Big Nerd Ranch Europe, check out the class schedule here. New courses are added all the time, and include Android, Beginning iOS, Advanced iOS, OpenGL and HTML5.

Part 1: Friday

After a week of intensive private preparation in Italy, the training is going to happen in the next seven days. Eight hours of training a day by Big Nerd Ranch coach Bolot Kerimbaev should make me an iOS developer at the end of the week.

With some basic and well-aged programming experience in Visual Basic and ASP and, more recently, a bit of playing around with PHP, I dive into the world of Objective-C, Xcode and Cocoa (Touch) by following the Beginning iOS course, which consists of two days Objective-C and 5 days iOS. Conference Hotel Villa Heidebad in the ‘Veluwe’ forest should create an environment without the distraction of mobile phones because it is in the middle of a black spot of all mobile networks.

Luckily, Wi-Fi is available, so I can share my experience on One More Thing by blogging about it on a daily basis. Friday night at dinner, I met my 13 fellow students from six different countries. From The Netherlands and Lithuania to England and Abu Dhabi. In addition to writing about the training, I will try to dive into their backgrounds and app plans.

In seven days we will know whether I have made it and whether Rens – the developer of our own One More Thing app – has some competition… Stay tuned!

Part 2: Saturday

Day 1 of the Objective-C part at Big Nerd Ranch is over. After a brief introduction on how your code uses the computer’s memory we dive straight into Objective-C. Instances, objects, inheritance, common foundation classes, they all come by at a fast pace.

The training is called ‘Beginning’ Objective-C/iOS, but some basic programming experience is an absolute requirement. My week of private preparation pays off immediately. My only concern is that in one day of training half of my preparation has been used up, which is promising for the rest of the week! Fortunately, you can pretty well build upon stuff if you understand some basic concepts.

Instructor Bolot takes the time for anyone who needs extra attention and ensures that everybody stays connected. An excellent lunch, followed by an anti-lunch-walk through the forests of Epe helps us to stay alert for the afternoon part of the training.

My fellow nerds, all men ranging in age from 25 to 56, are self-employed or work for large companies like Philips, PWC and Booz Allen Hamilton. Most have experience with one or more programming languages and develop on a daily basis. For most of them the first day goes by quite easily.

Bolot demonstrates the Objective-C sign.

As an architect (indeed, bricks instead of bits) in real life, I probably won’t be developing on a daily basis, but knowledge of the principles of app development provides opportunities and will bring me onto new paths and ideas. It will also make it easier for me to communicate with app developers and who knows what that will mean for the One More Thing app.

Part 3: Monday

An important visitor today in Epe. Aaron Hillegass, founder of Big Nerd Ranch and author of books on Objective C, Cocoa and iOS, makes a brief visit to Villa Heidebad over lunch to see how we are doing and to personally check whether the location lives up to his expectations.

It’s not something he does for all his overseas classes, but Big Nerd Ranch Europe is so young that he has not seen it with his own eyes. Due to the increasing popularity of iOS and Mac, Big Nerd Ranch grows rapidly. Besides Europe, Aaron is setting up training facilities in Sydney and Mexico City. The ultimate goal is to offer training and consulting at locations worldwide with a travel distance of maximum four hours.

Before Aaron started Big Nerd Ranch, he worked as a trainer at NeXT. He was involved in OpenStep, the operating system developed for Sun after NeXT had stopped making their own hardware. When NeXT was purchased by the ailing Apple, Aaron moved with Steve Jobs, Scott Forstall, Craig Federighi and a lot of other colleagues to Cupertino.

Working at Apple wasn’t that challenging for Aaron, so he jumped into a gap that Apple itself left: to start Big Nerd Ranch and provide training for Apple users and businesses. In the difficult years of Apple it paid the bills, but with the increasing popularity of Mac OS X (based on the NeXT operating system) it went gradually better. But since the launch of iPhone and the iPhone SDK, Big Nerd Ranch is on a roller coaster that seems unstoppable.

Aaron takes a bite of apple.

After eating a famous Dutch ‘kroket’, Aaron rushes to the airport and we go on with the training under the expert guidance of Bolot. After two days of Objective-C, we move on to our first experiments with the iOS SDK: magically adding a UITabBar to the screen by using code.

Did I mention that it feels quite magical when you see your first app appear on the screen of your own iPhone?

Part 4: Wednesday

After all the product introductions by Apple (iPad mini and 4th generation iPad) on Tuesday and, as a consequence, an afternoon and evening distraction because I had to present the OMT LIVE talk show from The Hague, it’s time for my fifth day of training in the expert hands of Big Nerd Ranch.

My 13 fellow students and I progress steadily on the Beginning iOS course. After a weekend completely dedicated to Objective-C, the language of Mac OS X and iOS, we dive into the iOS software development kit that builds upon Objective-C.

After we learned how the interface is connected with the code (outlets), a number of built-in methods for using the maps functionality in your own app and methods that use various sensors in the iPhone, we started with an application that became increasingly complex along the way. We started with a simple white table with black text (UITableView), added methods to retrieve, add, delete and sort rows, added a screen (UIViewController) to edit the values in the list and added a camera function to add photos to the information. Finally we integrated Core Data, so the information would be stored permanently in a SQLite database on the iPhone.

The story above is an extremely brief summary of the information provided by instructor Bolot. Fortunately it is also bundled in the first 350 pages of the iOS Programming textbook.

Lunch and dinner are welcome and tasty interruptions. The portions are small but refined. Just right when you sit still all day and burn only a few calories.

’Roodbaars’ for lunch.

One of the students was Laurence Gooch, 30 years old, from England. He had just graduated from the artificial intelligence and computer science program at the University of Edinburgh and follows the Big Nerd Ranch training because he will develop an iOS app for Recycled Renewables, a parts supplier in wind turbine components. They search for a better way to do their inventory management and iOS should provide the solution.

Objective-C is new to him, but with his background, the object-oriented principles of programming are fully grasped. He has prepared for this week with the free iTunesU classes from Stanford University and the Objective-C programming book by Aaron Hillegass that I also used.

After lunch, we start moving objects around the screen (core animation), we draw a line with one and then with more fingers (multi-touch and core graphics) and miraculously at the end of the day we are ahead of schedule. That means more time for storyboards and web services tomorrow.

Part 5: Friday

This is the last update with my experiences as an iOS developer in development, following the Beginning iOS training of Big Nerd Ranch in Epe, The Netherlands. It has been a very intensive week. Six-and-a-half days from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the expert hands of trainer Bolot Kerimbaev.

After making multilingual apps, reading XML and JSON feeds from web servers and setting up local caching to avoid extensive mobile data usage, iCloud integration is also discussed. Summarized in one sentence, it might not look like much, but with all the information processed in the previous days, my head is now really full.

After this week of training and one week of individual preparation, the big question is whether I can make my own apps. After explaining the principles of Objective-C, the training guides you through a lot of frameworks and classes – the building blocks for your apps – and shows you how to use them. I understand the principles and how they work, but to find out when to use which method will still prove to be a challenge, but that has to do with my limited programming experience and not with the training. It is essential to know your way around the extensive documentation by Apple and for the rest it, of course, practice makes perfect.

For me, this means I will reserve a few hours every week to start on a project of my own, backed up by the extensive documentation of Big Nerd Ranch and Apple. It is certainly nice to know that I can contact Bolot after the training when I get stuck.

The time I invested this week was time well spent!

The Nerds of Beginning iOS training.

If my experiences have made you curious, then you should know that Big Nerd Ranch has its own office and trainers in Amsterdam. If you have questions, please contact Marcel Speller, the driving force behind Big Nerd Ranch Europe.

The post Dutch technology blogger embeds with Big Nerd Ranch Europe appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Did you know that Microsoft sold more than 40 million Windows 8 licenses in just one month? Now that’s a big market in need of well-designed apps, and we pride ourselves on being at the intersection of useful and Nerdy know how.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to adapt your iOS developer skills to this new (and big deal) platform, check out this two-day seminar (Dec. 13 and 14) taught by Big Nerd Ranch in partnership with Microsoft. You’ll learn directly from our iOS experts (including our Chief Learning Nerd Aaron Hillegass) who are now building Windows apps.

There are three options: attend in person, watch the live webcast or view on demand videos. More information and registration details can be found here.

Sessions will follow a low-key, interactive format where iOS terms and concepts will be mapped to Windows alternates. You will also get hands-on time to apply what you’ve learned.

Check out the Top 10 Things iOS Developers should know about Windows 8 in Aaron’s recent talk at Microsoft Build and Eric Jeffers’ coverage of the same topic.

The post iOS developers: Free resource for learning to develop Windows Store apps appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Come for the knowledge, stay for the prize.

Anyone headed to CocoaConf / Raleigh next week (Nov. 29-Dec. 1)? Keep an eye out for us at one of the sessions we’re leading (see below) or at the Friday evening keynote with Aaron Hillegass.

Come say hi, learn a bit and chat news at the Ranch. Plus, if you send us your Picture With a Nerd we’ll send you a prize!

It’s not too late to purchase your CocoaConf ticket. They’re on sale until Nov. 25.

Aaron Hillegass keynotes Friday’s evening gathering following dinner.

Jonathan Blocksom will host two sessions, iOS Concurrency: NSOperationQueue and GCD and OpenGL ES, GLKit, SceneKit and more: Making Sense of Mac and iOS 3D Graphics.

And MarkD will be doing three sessions, The Squishier Side to Software Engineering, The Humble Header, and, of course, Performance Tuning. MarkD will also be joining CocoaHeads/Raleigh on Thursday at 7:00, doing a quick history of CocoaHeads and talking about Objective-C Literals.

BONUS POINTS – snap a picture with any of the Nerds and post it to us via Twitter (@bignerdranch #CocoaConfNerd) or post on our Facebook wall (Big Nerd Ranch) and we’ll send you an extra special grand prize.

The post Learn from Big Nerd Ranch at CocoaConf Raleigh appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Many of you may have heard that Big Nerd Ranch and Highgroove Studios have merged to become a bigger, badder Big Nerd Ranch. Highgroove Studios’ Charles Brian Quinn, aka CBQ, will serve as CEO, overseeing strategy and day-to-day operations. Aaron Hillegass will be the combined company’s Chief Learning Officer, dedicating more time to his passion for writing, teaching and mentoring Nerds.

The complementary skills of the two companies have come together for one really strong organization.

Now, our students and consulting clients will benefit from end-to-end mobile solutions at one Ranch. We develop mobile apps and build web services that run on the cloud and teach others how to do it too. It’s an exciting time to be part of this growing industry and this growing company is 80 Nerds strong.

Aaron wrote an article for Bloomberg Businessweek, “A Big Nerd Trades His Corner Office for a Cubicle” to explain why he did it.

Enjoy the article below.

A Big Nerd Trades His Corner Office for a Cubicle

Originally written for Bloomberg Businessweek by Aaron Hillegass

After months of planning, I demoted myself today from chief executive to a role where no one will report to me. I’m giving up my corner office and moving next to a young engineer who just graduated from college. My demotion will probably come as a surprise to the 54 people who worked for me: I have merged my company with another company, and its CEO is their new boss.

I couldn’t be happier, and it’s not about the money. In fact, I didn’t get a payout.

Before you roll your eyes, travel back in time with me to understand my motivation. At 20, I had my first job as a computer programmer implementing signal processing algorithms for a military contractor. It turned out that I was a very good programmer: creative, systematic, determined. This was odd to me, because I knew that my true calling was teaching. In 2001, after working at NeXT and Apple for three years, I started Big Nerd Ranch, a software development training and consulting firm in Atlanta.

Until today, I presided, Yoda-like, over a 54-employee hive of experts on mobile application development for smartphones and other devices from Apple, Google, and Microsoft A significant slice of the Fortune 100, including AT&T and Procter & Gamble, hire us to write apps for them or to train their engineers how to write apps. Getting us here meant behaving like a good parent. I had to be consistent, act with integrity, and know when to say no.

Being the boss was a satisfying gig, but in the past year I found myself envying the jobs that I was giving to other people. I wanted to get back to coding, teaching, and writing. A lot has been written about the “flow experience,” where one loses himself in his work. The job of an engineer is loaded with flow experiences and small victories. The job of a CEO is mostly interruptions and putting out fires. There is no flow, and it takes months for your efforts to become victories. In short, I had a conspicuously great job, but I didn’t like going to work anymore.

I approached three big consulting companies about selling out to them. I would stay on as a teacher and programmer, and someone further up the org chart would take on the tedious tasks. As a side effect, I would become very wealthy. The conversations I had, however, were disappointing. Some dork with an MBA would tell me how he would fold my people into the larger organization, they would travel constantly, and spend a lot on dry cleaning. Most of the programming would actually be done in India or Romania.

I didn’t want to betray my employees and customers like that. I gave up on being purchased and started looking for someone with the skills and vision to take over for me. I found CBQ.

“Found” isn’t quite the right word. I had known Charles Brian Quinn for several years. He is a programmer with a passion for business and strategy. He’s only 31, but I respect the way he conducts himself and runs his company. I couldn’t hire him because he was already the owner and CEO of Highgroove Studios, a 24-employee firm that develops Web services for large companies.

So I proposed merging the two companies and making him CEO. He saw the beauty of my idea: We would be able to offer our clients one-stop shopping for mobile apps, exponentially increasing our value to them.

To understand the elegance of the merger, you need to know something about mobile development. For nearly all mobile applications, there are two pieces: the client and the Web service. The client is the app that runs on your mobile device; it can be written for iOS, Android, Windows 8, or HTML5. Big Nerd Ranch is an expert at writing clients. The Web service is a process that runs in the cloud. A mobile client talking to a Web service in the cloud is the cornerstone of what pundits call “the Post-PC Era.”

CBQ’s first question: “But what will you do?” I’ve created the company that I want to work for, so I’m not quitting. I’m going back to coding, teaching, mentoring, and writing (I made time for four books along the way). As chief learning officer (I suspect that I’ll be known as “the oldest nerd” around the office), I’m responsible for ensuring that every engineer in the company is an expert and that every chief technology officer in the world respects our combined expertise.

We transferred the assets of both companies to a new entity of which we are the only shareholders. We funded our companies without ever bringing in outside investors, and we aim to keep it that way to maintain control. Thus, we’ve crafted a set of agreements that lay out how we’ll work together. I am the majority shareholder of the new entity, and CBQ has an option to buy enough of my shares at a later date to become the majority shareholder. There are a dozen things, like issuing new shares or doing distributions, that require approval from both of us.

The most interesting part of the deal is what it doesn’t include. There is no guarantee of employment or a golden parachute for me. There are no clauses that punish CBQ for poor performance. I think CBQ will be a great leader, but I also expect him to make a few bad decisions and suffer through a few bad years. As long as the value of my stock is tied to the value of his, I think I’ll do fine in the long run. Thus, the terms in the agreement are nearly all “I get the same deal as you” clauses.

Our story is part of a trend that should scare venture capitalists: Smart entrepreneurs can build very competitive companies today with zero outside investment. The venture capital market is feeling the results of this trend right now. A lot of money is chasing a small amount of equity in promising companies. Why were the owners of Instagram able to ask Facebook for $1 billion? Because they didn’t really need the money.

I hope my experience is instructive to fellow entrepreneurs. And I hope my new boss enjoys manning the corner office.

The post Big Nerd Ranch and Highgroove Studios join to create a new, even nerdier, Big Nerd Ranch appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Owen Matthews is back from the West Bank where he taught an iOS class with Mercy Corps. And I have his notes from class! He really captured his feelings about an eye opening week. You may remember his earlier post.

10/1 9:30pm

After three days of class, the students have warmed up to each other and the classroom environment. We’ve had a lot more interaction with asking questions and offering opinions. At first I found that the Palestinian developers were fairly deferential and reluctant to speak up, so at times it was difficult for me to assess the comfort level in the classroom or to gauge if I was going at the proper speed. Now that they’re sharing more freely, it’s a lot easier to keep the class interesting and relevant for everybody.

There is quite an array of experience levels in the room. A few are quite seasoned developers, and the topics I’m covering are largely review, though they have found new nuggets in the course materials, and there has been the occasional chapter that they haven’t seen at all. I’ve created some extra challenges for these guys so that they can remain engaged. There are also a few developers who are have either not seen much of iOS at all, or who have developed apps by teaching themselves from online resources. What they’ve created is impressive, but they definitely have a lot to gain by studying the fundamentals with the depth that we cover them.

Most of the students are in the middle—reasonably knowledgeable about iOS, at least one app under their belts, but with holes in their knowledge and perhaps lacking some of the deeper understanding of how the APIs work. All of the students are intelligent, motivated and fun to work with.

10/2 8:00pm

I’ve had the chance to get out of the hotel the past couple nights, in both occasions to meet local tech industry people, a number of them trying to build businesses, and all of them eager to bring more recognition and investment (and hence technology jobs) to Palestine. It’s become apparent that there are some pretty big obstacles here, many unique to Palestine. The population itself is cut off to a large degree: most cannot travel to Israel, which is a dominant force in technology in the Middle East. Israelis are forbidden from traveling to Palestine as well. Palestinians are even cut off from each other: residents of Gaza and those of the West Bank cannot travel between the two territories. Bringing business in, fostering communication and building businesses internally when it’s difficult to bring people together—these are serious impediments to progress.

Government (both Palestinian and Israeli) poses another problem. Taxes and regulations make investment difficult; bringing venture capital in has been an uphill battle because of this situation. (The first significant VC investment in a Palestinian startup was only just announced. Hopefully more will follow—there is no shortage of interest from Palestinian startups.) Educational resources are also too scarce, and people have stressed to me that it’s hard to find and keep good professors and produce students with superior problem-solving skills.

The international development organization Mercy Corps is trying to bridge some of these gaps and build a stronger tech community. They’re doing great work and are having an impact with their Arab Developer Network Initiative. My training is a small part of this larger effort to provide technology training to young professionals. (Most of my students are in their early-to-mid 20s.)

There will need to be other changes too. Even a small change in the perception of the rest of the world would help immensely. There is quite a lot of activity in technology here, and plenty of software developers. Much of the current work here seems to be outsourcing for companies abroad, and there seems to be capacity for more. Entrepreneurs begin there and then set out to build their own businesses. With the right changes Palestine could become a much bigger force in software development.

10/4 8:00pm

It’s hard to believe that tomorrow will wrap up my week of teaching. The students and I have come far in few days. Each student has made personal progress and learned techniques, tools, new APIs, best practices and strategies for iOS development. A number of them presented iOS projects that predate my class, and that they took justified pride in. I entertained a lot of great questions and tried to stump my students every day. (Sometimes I succeeded, other times they came right back at me with a great answer and their own question to try to stump me. At times they succeeded. Good teachers will admit to being stumped by their students—otherwise they themselves don’t grow, which is antithetical to education.) I was working all week to keep the more advanced students engaged, so I have a few more interesting demos now than I had before this class. I also taught a handful of the advanced iOS topics as well, which whetted my appetite for the whole advanced iOS course.

Yesterday I played soccer with one of my students and a whole bunch of his colleagues at the company where he works. It was nice to get out and have some exercise, and of course to interact with the locals in another context. Soccer is soccer pretty much anywhere. The players invited me onto their field without hesitation and I integrated right into the play. I should’ve scored a goal near the end after a beautiful pass forward to me. It went just above the bar. Which is why I pretty much always play defense.

I’m finishing up with 2 1/2 hours of class tomorrow morning, following which my students go to Mosque for Friday prayers, and I pack up. One of my students lives in Bethlehem, and she has graciously offered to drive me there and show me around for the afternoon. In the evening I’m joining a group that’s hiking down into the Jordan valley. After that I plan to spend two nights in Jerusalem, followed by a couple more West Bank cities. All of them, of course, are literally orders of magnitude older than any American city. Yowza.

The post Notes from a Road Nerd appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

A “secret Superman†who expertly juggles three major projects while teaching onsite classes across the country. Who is that masked man you ask? Our own October Big Nerd of the Month, Chris Stewart.

This is actually the second appearance Chris has made on the Big Nerd Blog. Remember the epic Clash of the Coders? He and Bill Phillips made up Team Franklin, which earned the inaugural honors as the most bad-ass coders at the Ranch. And that’s really sayin’ something.

BNR Blog: Congratulations Chris! With a year-and-a-half tenure at the Ranch, you are practically considered an old timer. How’d you meet Aaron and come by gainful employment?

Chris: I first heard about Big Nerd Ranch and Aaron when I started learning to develop iPhone apps and bought one of Aaron’s books. When I was working on my master’s degree, Aaron gave a talk at my school. I went and asked him about a job afterwards and the rest is history.

BNR Blog: What is your favorite thing about working here?

Chris: The culture of learning. We are always learning new technology and really immersing ourselves in the things that we do.

BNR Blog: I have a minor obsession with bad movies. I understand that your favorite movies are Shaun of the Dead and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Two delightfully campy flicks leading me to a pair of important questions.

First, slow or fast zombies in your movie lore? (And of course, the internet has a full wiki debate on that matter. Brains!)

Chris: Definitely slow zombies. When I watch zombie movies, I like to imagine that there’s a way I would survive in that situation. You’ve got no chance with the fast zombies.

BNR Blog: Second, would you support a remake of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure?

Chris: YES. As long as it’s got the original Bill and Ted, I’m on board.

BNR Blog: I’m curious; as a bilingual developer – fluent in iOS and Android – what are your favorite tech gadgets?

Chris: Obviously, as an employee at Big Nerd Ranch, I love my Macbook Pro and iPhone. On the Android side, I will say that the original Motorola Xoom has held up like a champ since it was released more than a year ago. It’s been great for Android development (plus it’s gotten very quick Android version updates).

BNR Blog: Final question! Will you dress up for Halloween?

Chris: Yes. I haven’t nailed down a costume yet. I’ll be out of town teaching that week, so I’ll have to make sure costumes are acceptable for an instructor.

Chris actually left one question up to me to answer – always a dangerous proposition. What word or phrase best describes him? To answer it, I went back and reviewed the write-in explanations of why Chris earned Big Nerd of the Month. The answer was obvious.

I’m going to go with “Bad-Ass Coder, Secret Superman aka the Quiet Rock Star.â€

I like it. It juuuuust starts to describe how much we appreciate our October Big Nerd of the Month.

The post Interview with Chris Stewart, October 2012 Big Nerd of the Month appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Our own Owen Matthews has left on a jet plane to teach an iOS class to Palestinian developers in the West Bank with one of our favorite non-profits, MercyCorps. Their mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities.

Owen will send us notes from the road, which we will share with you!

Sept. 26 at 7:40 p.m.

The sunset looks beautiful from the windows of Atlanta’s brand-new International Terminal F. All of the lights around the airport are on—taxiways, runways, aircraft, ground vehicles. Airports feel like completely different places to me at night. I’m plugged into a power post and sitting a chair fashioned from what seems to be recycled rubber. (It’s remarkably comfortable.) I’m taking a break from reviewing the iOS materials I’ll be teaching starting Saturday.

I have never been east of Germany. Israel/Palestine is going to be unlike any other travel I’ve done. That makes me excited. Having seen so much about that whole region of the world on the news and read about it in books and newspapers, I’m surprised at how little I truly know about what to expect. I do know that being there is always different than experiencing things secondhand.

Teaching is always a challenge, and teaching across cultures will add to the difficulty. It’s also rewarding, and I expect the cross-cultural nature will also bring me greater rewards. My primary goal is to make sure I squeeze every drop of opportunity out of this trip that I can—for the benefit of the Palestinian developers, for MercyCorps, and for my own.

Sept. 28.

I’m rested up and mostly time-adjusted; the flight was actually long enough that somehow my days wrapped around completely and I caught up with myself after going through the trans-oceanic warp tunnel. I’m sitting in a very luxurious apartment on a main street in Jerusalem, courtesy of a friend of a friend, doing more preparation for tomorrow’s teaching. Here are a few photos from my trip:

The gentleman in front of me, just outside the frame to the left, was studying when he wasn’t sleeping. (Note: no seat directly in front of me—exit row—meant comfortable legs.)

Ben Gurion International. Never seen airport architecture quite like this. My ramp led from the arrivals down to customs. The other ramp must’ve headed from checkin to departures.

Up next

Owen starts teaching in Ramallah Saturday (Sept. 29). We’ll update the Big Nerd Blog with his observations. If you have questions for him, post them here and we’ll get the answer!

The post Notes from a Road Nerd: Israel appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

In a room full of unsurprised Nerds, we unveiled the September Big Nerd of the Month this week. I say unsurprised because the vote was overwhelming – nay crushing – and Stacy Henry earned the honor.

As director of finance and HR, Stacy was responsible for the big move to our new Galactic Headquarters, expertly juggling all the logistics that go with building, equipping, furnishing, moving and maintaining of an office teeming with rowdy Nerds. Oh, and we all still got paid through the process.

That alone, without ever referencing her smile or sense of humor, was reason enough.

Please read to the end of the interview for a new regular feature of our Big Nerd of the Month announcements – “who added the flair?”

BNR Blog: Congratulations Stacy! It’s exciting to see the ladies represent this month!

Tell me a little about you and Big Nerd Ranch. How long have you been here? How did you meet Aaron?

Stacy: Almost two years. I responded to an ad for a part-time accounting job and met Aaron during the interview. Bill Phillips was singing in the shower during my interview, which was very entertaining and a bit odd.

BNR Blog: I understand you’re a Twihard. That leads me to a very important question; Team Edward or Team Jacob?

Stacy: Duh – Edward … wait, is this a trick question?

BNR Blog: What is your favorite sci fi series?

Stacy: Sci fi, hmm, is that short for something?

BNR Blog: What do you admire most about the Big Nerd of the Month who came before you, Step?

Stacy: Step is a great part of the Nerd herd. He gets a tremendous amount of work done and is always kind and willing to help others. He is a patient instructor and treats everyone with respect.

BNR Blog: What life advice would you give someone graduating high school?

Stacy: “When you’re feeling sad, just stop being sad and be awesome instead,†Barney Stinson.

BNR Blog: What word or phrase best describes you?

Stacy: Goddess of the universe, but not everyone’s on board with that yet.

BNR Blog: What’s your favorite part of working at Big Nerd Ranch?

Stacy: The Nerds of course. This is the first job I’ve ever had that I actually love coming to work. We’ve got a great group of people and it’s a fun place to be.

BNR Blog: What are your early thoughts on Stacy flair for the trophy?

Stacy: This is tough as there is now such rich history attached to the trophy. I’m torn between something that represents my role at Big Nerd Ranch and a miniature Edward.

BNR Blog: Thank you Stacy, and congratulations again!

Now for the promised new feature, can you look at the trophy Stacy is holding in this photo and tell me (in the comments) which piece of flair Step added? Big Nerd Ranch swag for the first, correct answer!

And, if you’d like more awesome in your day, check out this list of Barney Stinson quotes.

Until we meet again all hail the Goddess of the Universe! Come on friends, let’s make it stick!

The post Interview with Stacy Henry, September 2012 Big Nerd of the Month appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.

Most of you probably know that we recently moved into a fancy-schmancy new building. We like to call it our Galactic Headquarters. All jokes aside, the plans filed with the City of Atlanta are actually for Big Nerd Ranch Galactic Headquarters!

While everyone admires the transformation of a decrepit eyesore dragging a neighborhood down, only Nerds can truly appreciate the thought and intention that went into designing a state of the art building…just…for…developers.

Aaron recently explained some of the design elements he incorporated into the Galactic Headquarters to make it an ideal space for Nerds.

Sound

Our office is a transformed Iron Works, with high ceilings and lots of open spaces. Careful planning helps manage the acoustics that come with that double whammy!

Right angles and parallel walls encourage sound resonance – and some frequencies ring louder and longer than others. Fewer right angles (and the parallel walls that make them) equals better sound. We have very few. It’s a decorating challenge to center a desk, but we appreciate the sound benefits.

If you’re interested in learning more, check out Room Modes.

Our workspaces were designed in three “nests” that open to a wall coated with foam. That foam absorbs the sound energy.

Light

Windows have been strategically shaped and placed high to reduce screen fatigue. A wall alongside long, vertical windows immediately diffuses strong late afternoon and evening light.

Solar light tubes, or Solatubes as they’re commercially called, provide natural light at all daylight hours.

Collaboration

Special white board paint lines the working nests to help brainstorming, taking notes, thinking out loud and funny LOL notes. The paint required a special “category 5” ultra-smooth finish to the walls.

The conference rooms are named after the Gibb Brothers, complete with vintage vinyl. In fact, I’ve spotted some rockin’ old-school Gibbs lunchboxes too.

Creature Comforts

Shower space for the sporty Nerds who bike or run. We also have a bike storage room, which will be fully equipped with tools and a pump soon!

Yeah, it’s an awesome office. We love it. And we’re ALREADY bursting at the seams, and working on plans for phase 2.

I am lobbying for a green screen. I get evil villain giddy thinking about it.

This blog was a special request. If you have a topic you’d like to see us cover, post it to Facebook or Tweet it to us @bignerdranch! We’ll consider it.

The post Behind the scenes of our Galactic Headquarters appeared first on Big Nerd Ranch.