Historic Banning Mills – Black Frog Guitars

Day 4 at the Ranch – Zip Line Day!

Yo big nerds! Today was the last full day of training at the Big Nerd Ranch. We only have a half day tomorrow before starting the long drive home and consequently this will probably be my last post on the topic.

For anyone considering training for iOS, advanced iOS, Python, Ruby on Rails, OpenGL, or Android I cannot recommend this place enough! The week has truly been amazing! You would think after all of the hours clocked behind this computer listening to instruction on advanced iOS topics I would be tired but I am still full of energy and excitement from the week.

The people here have been great. I have tried to meet and talk to as many fellow classmates and instructors as possible and the discussions have been fantastic. We have a surgeon, folks from the two biggest computer companies in the world, independents and entrepreneurs, companies big and small, etc. They hail from all over the world and have converged upon these small cabins in the middle of nowhere Georgia to share stories and learn from the masters in iOS development.

Today’s topics included mapping a live video capture stream onto an OpenGL texture map, many demos from our classmates and teachers, UIScrollBar magic, and deeper looks at Grand Central Dispatch and the NSOperationQueue. We had another late night session tonight as well on Computer Vision. My list of “cool” app ideas and enhancements to my current apps has been growing all week. If only I could figure out a way to skip sleeping!

If you have read my previous posts this week you may remember my fascination in those zip lines here at our class location – Historic Banning Mills. This afternoon we took a break from studying and several of us got to do this! I have to admit for the last hour leading up to the departure I was feeling pretty uneasy and anxious as I didn’t know what to expect. My nerves were getting the best of me. Somehow I ended up being the last in our group to go down the first wire but WOW what a RUSH! The wind and the height and the speed!!! For our very first run we “flew” over the Snake Creek in the gorge far below. I didn’t see it too well because I was clinging to the straps for my life but about part way thru I realized THIS IS REALLY FUN!!!

Next up we did a series of sky bridges that I actually found a bit more stressful than the high speed run. We climbed from tree to tree across bridges of less and less material. What the heck? DId they run out of wood boards? Did they use them all up building those massive towers? 🙂 Nope just part of the challenge. Many times we were only walking on single cables but I have to admit it really was fun! I even jumped up and down in the middle of one of them!

Anyway, thanks to the folks at the Big Nerd Ranch, the folks at Banning Mills and the Screaming Eagle Zip Line Tour for a truly memorable and incredible week! I really hope I can come back for another class in the future – maybe OpenGL or some more advanced Mac development stuff…

Time to go pack up my stuff so we can leave tomorrow…

Day 1 at the ranch

Day 1 –

So day one of our training is wrapping up. Yeah there are a bunch of us still in the lab at 9:30pm after starting at 9am. This is the very first time they have offered the advanced iOS class and consequently we have discovered several small problems with the materials but that is to be expected. To compensate, we have not one but three excellent instructors here with us and I have to say despite the exhaustion of the long day I am learning a lot.

We took a short break around 3:30 to hike around outside. The weather is such that I almost didn’t need a jacket which totally ROCKS since it is January. The weather here really makes me want to move south. In terms of ground covered, I didn’t really cover any new territory than what I saw by myself last night but it was great to get outside, enjoy the beautiful surroundings, and rest my mind. Every time I go outside I am staring up at those zip-line cables. I have yet to see anyone on them but man are they impressive. Some of the stands are WAY up in the air and some are literally just a few boards wrapping a huge tree with no ladder or stairs. It looks like it would be fun and terrifying.

What about the food? Anytime I travel anywhere I always panic about food since I have the gourmet palette of a 12 year old. The folks that run the Banning Mills facility have been awesome for accommodating my crazy cheese-free, simple, diet. Right off the bat, they had a salad prepared for me without cheese! Woo-hoo! The main course last night was some sort of stuffed chicken and mine came without the cheese sauce! Again I was impressed but really didn’t care for it since it had the stuffing. Today’s food however has been great starting with a very good breakfast with fresh fruit and bacon. Lunch was chicken legs and corn on the cob both which were very good. Dinner was something new (for me) called Souvlaki. It was a pork loin with greek seasoning on skewers. It was actually pretty good! Dessert was apple crisp which I decided to try since I am being adventurous and it was good too! All said, I am eating well and I am really thankful they have honored my strange requests.

So what did we cover today? We started with Storyboards and in particular custom segues. This gave me a chance to experiment with some Core Animation effects I had never seen yet. We then moved into the core image framework and filtering. The variety of options available in this API is impressive especially since it is new with iOS 5! We did a nice lab with face detection. We also applied various filters (like sepia) to any photo picked from the photo library. I finished the lab early so was able to experiment with some other filter effects. Note that filters can also be chained together which can give you a lot of power.

We continued with more Core Animation and then wrapped up with Core Motion and using the 3rd party Core Plot framework. Both labs involved a lot of typing and debugging but ended up with sample apps that were quite awesome. Yes that was a LOT of stuff to cover in one day but every part of it was cool and revealed something new that I hadn’t seen.

The lessons and labs are interspersed with some great productivity tips. For example control->command->up and down arrow are shortcuts for flipping between your header and implementation files. Simple tip, but I have probably used it 50 times since it came up this morning. It is one of those conveniences that is etched in my mind now.

Though we have seen a few issues with the lab manual, they are kind of a blessing in disguise. The best way to get deep knowledge of anything is to challenge yourself and wrestle with a problem. These minor issues, when they have occurred, have caused us to dig deeper. Looking forward to another great day tomorrow!

Hello from the Big Nerd Ranch

Howdy partner!

It was a long day of driving but we are here! We left around 9 am and drove straight from Cincinnati to the south-west side of Atlanta only stopping for gas and a short lunch at Fazolis.

The last several miles were just 2 lane roads which seemed to take forever but we had a nice marathon session of audiobooks and NSBrief podcasts to listen to.

After driving deeper into the middle of nowhere we ended up at the red dot on the iPhone GPS – Historic Bannning Mills. When we got here, we weren’t sure we were in the right place. There were a bunch of cabins in the woods and zip-line tree stands all over the place. It looked like a fun place – really not what you’d expect from typical training – though we are not expecting typical training – this is an Advanced iOS bootcamp after all!

At the bottom of a hill was the main lodge building which I’ve got to say is really cool inside. I love lodge-style architecture and this one has the essential heavy exposed wood beams, large stone fireplace, cool spiral wood and wrought iron stair case, and the quintessential nice assortment of stuffed animals. Some nice soft bluegrass music is playing here as I type this.

My cabin is pretty nice too! I don’t like cold so I was very pleased to see that I have my own gas fireplace. Actually it looks more like an old wood burning stove but it can generate heat! The corner of the room has a big whirlpool tub which I really doubt I will have time to use but it makes the room look nice. The balcony in back has a great view of the stream in the valley below complete with the nice subtle roar of the small waterfalls. If it was warmer, I would leave the door open!

Before dinner I took about 15 minutes to quickly explore the nearby trails. From the map, it looks like there are trails everywhere. I love hiking and exploring so this is really cool! There are ruins of old buildings and an old dam.

All kidding aside, this looks like a great place to focus and learn isolated from the hustle of the nearby city. I doubt I am going to have any time for ziplining or much time to hike though I will try to get out for a few minutes if we have breaks!

The syllabus looks broad and intense. It covers a lot of things that I am really looking forward to hearing more about. Class begins tomorrow at 9am sharp!