OpenGL instructor Jay Martin Anderson has done computer graphics for over 45 years, and has developed graphics applications for Hewlett-Packard and the former Tymlabs Corporation.

Having taught computer graphics at the university level for over thirty years, Jay has published a CD-ROM on computer cartography as well as a suite of teaching aids in computational geometry. He has taught in both the United States and Europe, and has been a Fulbright professor on three occasions (Brno, Vienna, Innsbruck).

Jay has lectured widely in the United States and Europe, especially on visualization with QuickTime movies. He is an Apple Distinguished Educator (class of 2001), and professor (emeritus) of computer science at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster PA, USA.

Chris fearlessly, and with a zen-like calm, leads our web team. If Chris’s ping-pong skills don’t impress you, perhaps you will be wowed by his ability to open, apply, and close a tube of lip balm with just one hand. Maybe that’s the exercise secret behind his impressive ability to down large quantities of sushi without any effect on his metabolism. He also consumes a steady diet of programming know-how through books, blogs, and MDN. Chris is a big fan of dive bars and bookstores, but when he’s home he could run “The Big Lebowski” on endless loop. He’s also highly caffeinated, which could explain why his software engineering skills are so consistent.

Python Instructor David Beazley is the author of the Python Essential Reference and the developer of several open-source software development tools, including SWIG (a popular tool for integrating C/C++ programs with other programming languages including Python, Perl, Tcl, Ruby, PHP, and Java) and PLY (A Python version of the lex/yacc parsing tools).

Dave has been programming Python since 1996 and helped pioneer the use of Python with scientific computing software while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory. From 1998-2005, he was an assistant professor in the department of computer science at the University of Chicago where he taught courses in operating systems, networks, and compilers.

Dave has been active in the Python community for more than ten years, having given several conference presentations and tutorials on Python-related topics at both the Python conference and the O'Reilly Open Source Software Conference. Dave is currently a freelance software developer and musician living in Chicago.

Jonathan heads up our Washington, DC office, where he teaches classes to government customers and contractors alike. A native of Reston, VA, he’s been programming since third grade. Since then, Jonathan has mastered mobile software development, enjoys 3D graphics and computer vision, and has been programming in OpenGL since it was just little bitty gl. Before joining the Ranch, he worked for the likes of Silicon Graphics, SAIC, NFR, and Google. He also founded GollyGee Software, Inc., a small children's software developer that created the award-winning children's 3D modeler GollyGee Blocks.

A fun fact about Jonathan? If he could have a drink with anyone - living or dead - he’d choose Hedy Lamarr. Because she was a gorgeous actress in the 30s and 40s? Of course not. Because she developed radio frequency hopping techniques that serve as the basis for many wireless network communication systems today and she was a gorgeous actress.

Laura’s expertise in software engineering came from a combination of self-teaching, official collegiate studies and passion. She was always around computers as a kid, so she started out gaming and eventually began coding and web designing. And while she did have childhood dream of being a paleontologist, being a software engineer now brings her great satisfaction.

She also likes Muay Thai kickboxing and Jiujitsu, although she’s really a pacifist at heart.

Laura can freak people out at parties by vibrating her eyes back and forth rapidly, but she’s much less intimidating when she’s singing one of the ‘80s songs that are constantly stuck in her head, eating Good N Plenty candies, or watching “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Steel Magnolias.”

Step Christopher has travelled the world. First in a submarine, doing the job that inspired the character of Homer Simson. Nuclear Reactors never looked so fun! Next in the air, fixing lasers and teaching people not to shoot their eyes out. Embedded QNX and DOS were among his first outings as a self-taught programmer. Now as a trainer for Big Nerd Ranch, where his compassion and patience come in handy as he helps pack mountains of knowledge into week-long courses. He started his career at the lowest levels of hardware and mechanics, and slowly worked his way up the software stack. He's decided he likes it much better at a reasonable leaky abstraction level. A sometime writer, engineer, tester, and customer service pro - but always a creator - he and his wife tackle problems and try to make the world a better place.

Juan Pablo came to the States from Santiago, Chile to attend grad school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After earning his Ph.D. in chemistry (yes, chemistry), he became a professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Thankfully, his work required him to write data acquisition analysis programs, and his love for programming was born. After spending several years in academics, Juan Pablo decided to make a career out of computers. He joined the Big Nerd Ranch in late 2005 as a Cocoa and Django programmer.

Juan Pablo cut his teeth programming in C for PC's running DOS and then moved on to write data analysis applications in C++ for Windows. When OS X was released he was immediately compelled to return to the Mac and he hasn't looked back since. These days, he is delighted to write Objective-C and Python code in such a cooperative platform.

Like many of our Nerds, Joe originally set out to become a game developer. So he started writing software on the Mac platform as a teenager and went on to learn a variety of programming skills and cultural histories. Then he came to meet with us. After the interview, Joe hopped a plane home, where he sat in front of two game developers who spent the flight griping about how little fun the game industry was. (Thank you, whoever you were.) Gaming’s loss was our gain. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Joe landed in Atlanta as an official Nerd - and eleven hours later landed his first consulting project for the Big Nerd Ranch. Speedy? Yes. Perhaps it has something to do with his love of track and field, and all his years competing. Or maybe it’s just the spandex.

Advanced Mac OS X Instructor Mark Dalrymple, author of Advanced Mac OS X Programming, has been a Macintosh programmer since 1985 and a professional unix programmer since 1990.

Mark has experience on the client side and server side, being a veteran of several startups, and larger technology operations like AOL and Google. On the back-end, he has been the technical lead for AOLserver, a high-performance web server handling tends of thousands of hits per second on many different unix platforms (Linux, HP, SGI, Digital Alpha, Solaris). On the client-side, he has worked with native Mac toolkits, helped in the construction of cross-platform toolkits, and currently has code running on millions of Macintosh desktops world-wide.

In addition to being the principal author of both "Advanced Mac OS X Programming", Mark is principal author of "Learn Objective-C on the Macintosh", and has been the technical reviewer for many Cocoa and iPhone titles with Apress. He is also the co-founder of CocoaHeads, the international Mac programmer's group, with chapters in 26 countries on five continents.

Objective-C and PHP/PostgreSQL Instructor Mark Fenoglio has over 12 years of experience in database and web-based application development in technologies ranging from SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and 4th Dimension to ASP, PHP, Ajax, Cocoa, and Objective-C. He was hired by the Big Nerd Ranch in September 2005 after asking too many annoying questions at the Cocoa Bootcamp that March.

To support his PHP development efforts, Mark has crafted his own PHP application framework. The framework features a PostgreSQL-friendly ORM and predicate library, a lightweight template-based rendering engine, and an innovative workflow approach to application design.

When not slaving away at his computer, Mark puts his Masters Degree in Geophysics from Stanford University to good use by pounding away at rock walls in quarries, searching for elusive treasures for his mineral collection. (Consequently, he never mocks anyone else's hobbies.)

Objective-C Instructor Matthias Fricke has more than 15 years experience in the IT sector. In the early 90s he worked for the German NeXT Distributor DART Software and co-founded later the WebObjects consulting company NetMatic Internet/Intranet Solutions.

Matthias spent more than 8 years in the US and worked in the last years at Apple as the Worldwide Training Delivery Manager. He moved back to Germany in 2007 and is now working for Assense Software Solutions in Hamburg. Since the end of 2007 he also teaches for Apple (EMEA) as a T3 (Train the Trainer) Instructor and prepares trainers to become Apple Certified Trainers for the Apple Certified IT classes.

Brian’s been developing software since the heyday of MS-DOS and QBasic. Over the last decade, he’s developed applications on and off the Web, for projects ranging from the tiniest shell script to massive content-driven web sites such as CNN.com.

With experience spanning many languages and platforms, Brian brings a well-seasoned blend of expertise to the classroom. His infatuation with Ruby was ignited with the release of Ruby on Rails, and he has since come to cherish the language as a model implementation of many powerful object-oriented and functional programming design patterns. Of course, with the release of OS X, Brian changed his tune, adopting the Mac platform as his choice for both work and play. Speaking of play, if you asked Brian who he’d like to share a drink with - anyone, living or dead - he’d say Hunter S. Thompson. As long as they didn’t have to share the same glass, as well.

OpenGL co-instructor Carsten Haubold studies Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt with a focus on computer graphics.

Being an active member in the OpenGL community since 2000, Carsten started with writing small game applications and is now one of the two developers working on and taking care of the famous NeHe OpenGL tutorials. Answering questions in the NeHe message boards every day, Carsten is familiar with a broad variety of issues graphics programmers might encounter

Carsten is also technical editor of the Book Beginning OpenGL Game Programming 2nd Edition which is the first book on OpenGL 3.0 published in April 2009. He has implemented NURBS modeling tools for K-3D during the Google Summer of Code 2008 program.

Jeff designs beautifully, with an eye toward well-thought-out functionality. He also delivers on a goal of improving people’s lives through smart technology with every project. From his past experience of overhauling the customer interface of a charter airline, to creating cutting-edge print/ technology products, Jeff is undeniably a man of the moment. That said, he has a soft spot for the classics in life. You know, like ketchup. Or Curious George. Or the good old days of “Jeopardy,” when Alex Trebek sported a glorious mustache.

If he could share a drink with anyone, it would be a pre-prohibition Old Fashioned with Ernest Hemingway. The pair would doubtless have plenty to talk about, as Jeff has a passion for outdoor activities, although arguably more active than the ones Hemingway engaged in. Any given weekend, you can find him caving, climbing, surfing, hiking or biking.

Aaron founded the Ranch in 2001, just one highlight in a glowing career that began in childhood. He began programming at the ripe old age of 10 in the basement of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. At 19, he started doing it professionally, in the Advanced Signal Processing Lab at the Mitre Corporation. There he wrote the data structures library for Tower Eiffel, before leaving to work on Wall Street to help create mortgage-backed securities (a device that would, fifteen years later, bring our entire economy to its knees).

But Aaron is no stranger to having such a huge impact. He wrote the book widely regarded to be the bible of Mac development: "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X." It is now in its fourth edition and has been translated into French, German, Korean, Japanese and Chinese.

In November 2012, Aaron, who had been CEO, decided to merge the Ranch with Highgroove Studios, a web service firm headed by our current CEO, Charles Brian Quinn. He has now returned his focus to doing what he loves—coding, teaching, mentoring and writing—while the Ranch he created is run by someone equally as visionary.

Aaron’s list of impressive accomplishments goes on and on: he’s a triathlete, a co-author, an accomplished and widely sought-after public speaker, he’s developed popular software, created apps for Fortune 500 companies, he could eat a gallon of flan, and he can touch his tongue to his nose.

All this and so much more is why MacTech consistently names Aaron one of the top 25 most influential people in the Mac community.

As a child, Eric thought being a tollbooth operator was the coolest profession to aspire to. Fortunately, he majored in Computer Hardware Engineering instead. He made the right choice, as his passion for programming is easily appreciated when you hear him describe it as “building something tangible out of pure ideas and imagination.“

But while his love for computers is undeniable, he also loves nature and getting dirty in it, be it through hiking, biking, swimming or camping. In addition, he’s a fan of the movie “In Bruges,” ice cream and any food that’s extremely spicy.

The most important trait he inherited from his parents was patience, although it took too long. It’s also important to note that he can kinda sorta raise one eyebrow.

Did you know 20/20 vision is a requirement for cosmonauts? As a kid, Bolot had no idea. Once he found out, he abandoned his childhood dream, packed up, and moved from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Atlanta. Why? To study Computer Science at Georgia Tech, of course! Study he did - receiving both his B.S. and M.S. Degrees - while also teaching Taido Karate. Bolot has been developing web applications for over 14 years using Smalltalk, ColdFusion, Java, and even his own web server.

After graduating from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Computer Science, Christian did what all new grads do: got a job sort-of related to his field of study. But he was smart about it - he starting working at an Apple retail store, where he made all sorts of connections (and probably got a nice employee discount) and shifted his focus from game development to iOS app development. Lo and behold, Christian’s stint at the Apple store introduced him to the folks at Big Nerd Ranch, and in no time at all, he became a bona fide Nerd, building apps, teaching courses and tackling the Android and Open GL programming.

Legendary product engineer and World's Toughest Programmer Mike Lee (@bmf) has worked on apps for Alaska Airlines, Delicious Monster, Tapulous, United Lemur, Apple, and Nextive, producing such hits as Delicious Library, Tap Tap Revenge, Obama '08, and Apple's Mobile Store.

His goal is to save Madagascar, his blog is at mur.mu.rs, and he has the world's largest collection of plush prosimians. In his spare time he races cars, flies airplanes, plays guitar, drinks single-malt scotch, and surfs.

Mike is currently the Mayor of Appsterdam, the World Capital of App Development.

Andy is a skilled software engineer with experience in computer graphics, computer networks, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics. He’s adept at many different languages and frameworks, but has a special fondness for Ruby.

Ever the altruist, Andy regularly shares and contributes code back to the open source community. He developed a geographic information system API to allow developers to easily integrate with a variety of applications (including Google Earth) by programming to one interface.

He’s also shared his knowledge in other noteworthy ways. He wrote a couple papers published by the esteemed Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and even worked at NASA for a brief stint building software tools for mechanical engineers. (Unfortunately, they didn't let him go into space.)

In his down time, Andy enjoys Ultimate Frisbee, frequently "laying out" to the detriment of his body, and National Public Radio. He’s even been a winner on "Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me," so yes, that is Carl Kasell on his answering machine.

The year: 1981. Steve starts out as a young BASIC programmer with his TRS-80 Coco 1. He goes on to graduate from the University of Alabama at Birmingham with a B.S. in Computer Science, and takes on a variety of corporate IT roles in the telecomm, energy, healthcare, and financial services industries. Fast-forward to 2006. Steve gets his first Mac. Instantly, he’s smitten - with OS X as well as Apple. So, he leaves the corporate IT management world to rediscover his passion for writing software as an independent developer.

We’re happy to report Steve successfully rekindled his passion and found his way to the Big Nerd Ranch. When Steve’s not at the Ranch, he Nerds out at home with his wife, who also happens to be a software engineer. (No word yet on who’s the better hacker.) During Steve’s non-Nerd moments, he can be heard mangling metal tunes on his electric guitar.

Owen started programming in BASIC on an Atari 2600 and an Apple IIe and has been hooked ever since. After three years as a software engineer, he embraced his love for education, spending two years teaching math in West Africa with the Peace Corps, and then eight years as an educational technologist and computer science teacher at The Lovett School in Atlanta. Now, Owen combines his love of code with his love of teaching as an instructor at the Ranch.

Owen also happens to be quite a singer, performing with the Atlanta Symphony Chorus for over ten years — a gig that’s taken him to Carnegie Hall and won him a Grammy (shared with 300 co-musicians, but still, it’s a Grammy). Soccer is his drug of choice, he’s an avid cook, and wants to teach his dog programming so he can join Owen at the Ranch every day.

Sean’s main objective is to create software and products that are valuable to people and companies. We’d say he’s conquered that in spades. In his career, he’s designed and developed programs and systems that aid everyone from hospital pharmacists to eye surgeons to fitness buffs. He’s so busy and accomplished, we’re not sure we buy it when he insists his best stupid human trick is staring off into space, or that his exercise of choice is napping. We’re more easily convinced by his likes (lasagne, Heinz ketchup), his dislikes (celebrities, baseball) and his fancies (to drink a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster).

His dream vacation would be to a snowy, mountainous area without many people. Maybe while he’s there he can take a break and admire the gloaming, since that’s his favorite word. And come to think of it, that would require staring off into space.

Chris, who tackles both iOS and Android programming with ease, has been a leader of the US Army Golden Knights parachute team, where he once held a national record in competition. As if that weren’t impressive enough, he can also juggle, brew beer and ride a Harley. (Though not all at the same time.) He enjoys cycling, but wouldn’t mind relaxing from the exercise in front of a Monty Python flick while eating pull and peel Twizzlers. His dream vacation would include sitting on the beach in the south of France drinking fine wine, but he’s no snob—his favorite condiment is beer.

iOS instructor Norberto Ortigoza graduated from National Autonomous University of Mexico with a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a M.S. in Computer Science. He also studied Software architecture and Process improvement at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon.

Norberto started programming 20 years ago using Silicon Graphics, Sun and Cray computers. He started using NextStep and OpenStep since 1995 when he was system administrator at the Applied Mathematics and Systems Research Institute at UNAM. His first programming language was Smalltalk and after that, he has programmed mainly in C, Objective-C, Java, C#, Python, Ruby, F-Script and recently Clojure. He has also learned, used and taught WebObjects, PSP/TSP, Scrum, Extreme Programming, Crystal, and done software testing and software architecture in companies throughout Mexico.

Norberto is the co-founder of the CocoaHeads user group in Mexico City. He also founded Raku, a consulting company that has been creating mobile applications for US and Mexican companies.

When not coding, reading, speaking, or teaching, Norberto is training for the next marathon or mountain climbing. He can be followed on Twitter @hiphoox

With his Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech tucked in his back pocket, Bill will - and can - tackle just about any problem tossed his way. He’s graphed gantry control hardware logs. Ripped apart and reassembled electronic document databases. Mapped, aligned, and analyzed oil and gas pipeline inspections. Needless to say, he stays pretty busy at the Ranch--although he did take time off from developing to co-write our Android course materials as well as our latest book, Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide.

Bill’s languages of choice are Python, C, C# and Java, and he’s also handy with iOS audio development. He has a fondness for wiener dogs, book reading and his newfound diversion of piano playing. And as if that all weren’t enough, in his spare time he makes, modifies or destroys the following: music, food, vacuum tube amplifiers, and electric guitar stomp boxes.

Brandy has had an interest in advertising and marketing from a young age. As a child, she would sit through an entire commercial break and judge the ads, and then wander away during the actual show. She started working in ad agencies at age 18, and then really took her skills to the streets after graduating Magna Cum Laude from Georgia State University with a BFA in Graphic Design. Since then she’s spent time at ad agencies, design firms and corporations, all while honing her traditional and interactive design skills.

But she’s not all about work. She’s also into all kinds of stitching, like embroidery and quilting, though she tends to add a countercultural nerdy spin to much of what she creates. Also, for some reason she knows the lyrics to most Top 40 songs from the past 50 years. And she’s not as harmless as she looks: clay pigeons everywhere are scared stiff of her crack shot with a 12-gauge.

Adam graduated from Georgia Tech with a B.S. in Computer Science and has been writing software professionally ever since. Adam’s passion is creating great desktop application user experiences, in particular on the Mac using Cocoa and Objective-C. Adam is also pretty keen on game development. While he has two games in the App Store, his real baby is pyprocgame - a pinball software development framework written in Python for use on real live pinball machines. As you may be able to tell from his photo, Adam also loves pinball. What you can’t tell from his photo is that he also loves candy corn. So if you ever need to bribe Adam to do something for you, ply him with pinball and candy corn.

Charles (aka CBQ) merged his amazing Highgroove Studios into the Ranch to round out our capabilities and exponentially increase our usefulness. With his experience and mastery of back end web services, he helps us effortlessly develop, deploy and scale web applications to help companies grow. Charles graduated with high honors from Georgia Tech and has been a proven leader ever since, having served as a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and government agencies the world over.

While there’s no question he’s an expert at Ruby on Rails, CBQ is also into things on wheels. He’s an avid cyclist, be it mountain, road, cross or motor. All this activity helps him burn enough calories to comfortably be a foodie. He’s also into coffee, more specifically pouring latte art in barista throw-downs. (Yes, there really is such a thing.) Other interests include watching films of questionable artistic measure, like certain sci fi flicks or “You’ve Got Mail” and belting out A-ha’s “Take On Me” when he thinks no one is listening.

Daniel hails from a telephony background as a technical consultant, a field always in search of better tools and improved solutions. His quest for smarter, faster and better kept him searching, growing and learning, eventually landing him here with us. (Naturally.)

He studied Applied Psychology at Georgia Tech where he researched psycholinguistics, the mental processes that occur while people speak. Which means that when he's listening to clients and fellow developers, he literally knows what's going on in their heads. Try not to let that creep you out.

Daniel’s consulting work took him all over the country, from healthcare research companies to financial institutions and software development firms. But that’s still not enough. He’s been bitten by a voracious travel bug and has been to three continents and counting. He's also a kickball team captain, the team leader for Habitat for Humanity Global Village, and an admitted beer snob.

Scott has been around the globe and around the block when it comes to programming—and a lot of other things. His computer skills go back to learning Smalltalk-80 at the University of Washington, where he gained an appreciation for the benefits of environment-oriented programming. Since then, he’s earned a Master’s in Computer Science from UC Berkeley, was an engineer at Sun Microsystems and has held several training and engineering positions with NeXT Computer and Apple.

Scott keeps active by hiking, swimming, skiing and playing every musical instrument with strings. (Some better than others.) A true hippie at heart, his life soundtrack features classic rock’s most iconic artists, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to Crosby, Stills & Nash. He also travels widely and tends to favor inclines, whether it’s glaciers, the volcanic beauty of Haleakala National Park in Hawaii or the mountains of the northwestern United States. And wherever he goes in the world, he indulges in the local food. His mission is to savor the common elements that bring all humans on this planet together. (Or, as he puts it, he’s eating his way to world peace.)

iOS instructor Fernando Rodríguez was educated between Europe and the Americas (Spain, Switzerland, Chile, Brazil and El Salvador) and is fluent in Spanish, English, Portuguese and French. Being such a natural polyglot, it’s not surprising he’s fluent in so many programming languages, too.

His current obsessions are Cocoa Touch, Objective-C and the iOS ecosystem. However, in previous incarnations he was a Python/Django hacker, Smalltalker, and much to his regret, C++ monkey. As the wheel of samsara relentlessly turns, this humble nerd expects someday to reach Nerdvana and end up as a Lisp hacker.

Fernando is an active member of the Spanish speaking iOS community, speaking at conferences and participating in local interest groups. He also co-founded a software and consulting company in Madrid that has published retail software in the US, Brazil, and Spain.

When not coding or teaching Objective-C and Cocoa, Fernando practices his other true passion: cooking.

Advanced iOS instructor Jonathan Saggau started intensely programming iPhone apps before the official SDK was even released. After hacking up a networked version of the video game Pong during a weekend long iPhone event he has not looked back. He is a co-founder of Enharmonic inc, a growing iOS and Mac OS X software contracting shop.

Jonathan is being increasingly recognized for his expertise architecting and coding high-performance iPhone applications. He has written on software development for Apress and IBM DeveloperWorks and been a speaker at a number of developer events, including three 360|idev conferences, both instances of iPhone/iPad Devcon, and iPhone Challenge Europe in Amsterdam. This fall he will travel to Bangalore, India to speak at Mobile Developer Summit India.

When he's not working on his car, flying airplanes or playing marimba, he writes a popular document reader for iOS called gogoDocs and he works with clients such as Random House, Fileblaze, topsOrtho, Vertitron, and the Big Nerd Ranch to develop outstanding products, services and processes. He holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Music Composition, blogs at jonathansaggau.com and can be followed on Twitter @jonmarimba.

Advanced Mac OS X instructor Jeremy W. Sherman graduated from New College of Florida in 2008 with a B.A. in Math/Computer Science and a thesis, lovingly crafted in LaTeX, titled "Compiling Imperative and Functional Languages."

Jeremy has been playing with programming and command lines since he got his hands on QBasic running under MS-DOS on an 8088. His first experience with a Unix system came while programming in LPC for an LPMud. He has been using Macs since Mac OS 9, made the jump to Mac OS X as soon as possible, and has had Terminal.app open since.

Alex Silverman graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Applied Physics. He started developing for iOS when the first SDK launched in March 2008. Since then, Alex has released over a dozen apps in the App Store in a variety of categories including games, education, and corporate branding. Several of his apps have made it to the front page of the App Store, and collectively they have been downloaded over 300,000 times.

But that’s not the most interesting thing about Alex. Before coming to the Ranch, he taught high school physics. His school didn’t have the money to buy an expensive hardware-based polling solution to use in class, so Alex came up with a better idea: Build an affordable app that students could run on the iOS and Android devices they already had. Which he did. It’s called eClicker and it’s available in the app store.

Chris grabbed all of our attention by becoming our inaugural Clash of the Coders champion, an honor he’d been preparing for ever since checking out the world’s largest HTML book from his high school library. Before his reign at the Ranch, he wrote code in the corporate world after completing his Masters at Georgia Tech. In addition to brandishing some mean engineering skills, Chris is our resident Frisbee ace. He fuels all that energy with gummy bears and nearly anything smothered in Ranch dressing or barbecue sauce. He dreams of washing all of that “goodness” down by someday partaking in a gin and tonic with “Top Gear” co-host James May.

Rod is a published author, a patent holder, a noted speaker and a problem solver. Among other impressive skills he brings to the Ranch, he can recall an encyclopedic level of details on a variety of topics, and determine the make and model of a car just by looking at its headlights at night. Despite all he brings to the table, we’re happy we’ve never gone camping with him, as his favorite campfire song is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

He’d love to have a coffee and a long chat with the late theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. Barring that, just taking a sailboat trip around the Caribbean would suffice.

Brian has a way of making things look easy. Just take a look at his photo - cool as a cucumber. Maybe that’s because he started sticking his nose in all sorts of programming books at the tender age of ten. Now, he brings all those years of expertise to both our consulting clients and our students.

While he admits to a profound love of all things Apple (which was cemented after a five-year stint working as an Apple Specialist) his engineering talents now span across both iOS and Android platforms. When Brian’s not working at the Ranch, he can be found rock climbing, bike riding, or working on his own personal projects.

We’re grateful that TJ landed at the Ranch, because if his hyper-flexible shoulders are any indication of his overall flexibility, he could probably do almost anything, anywhere. Fortunately for us, he’s with us, showing off his estimable tech skills and steadfast work ethic. He’s a highly skilled video and audio editor, comfortable with Pro Tools, OS X and streaming media formats. He’s also created an iOS music theory app and developed and taught an intro to Objective-C curriculum.

TJ has diverse tastes: he’s a fan of basketball, soy sauce and Aladdin. He loves the work of rapper Aceyalone, but he distrusts that villainous Carson Daly.

His dream vacation would be to go Nigeria to visit family, and then to Japan to recover from visiting family.

iPhone Instructor Alexander von Below has been a Macintosh enthusiast since 1985, and has been writing software for Macs about as long.

After graduating in Computer Science from RWTH Aachen, Germany, and more than ten years in the corporate software industry (e.g. Roxio), he became a freelancer in 2003. His experience ranges from Cocoa to device drivers, PCI cards, IOKit and the very core of OS X. Among his focus areas are Apple’s Developer Tools, including remote and two-machine debugging and utilizing the performance optimization tools.

Ever since Michael (aka Mikey) learned how to boss computers around with QuickBASIC (a good 20 years ago), he was hooked. Oddly enough, he decided to get a Bachelor's in Neuroscience from Emory University, work as an EMT-I, and then take up residency behind Apple’s Genius Bar before getting back to his first love. But as they say, better late than never.

These days, Mikey’s programming with C, C++, PHP and Objective-C. He also organizes the Atlanta Chapter of CocoaHeads, a worldwide group devoted to discussion of Apple's Cocoa Framework for programming on Mac and iOS devices. With all that on his plate, it’s no wonder Mikey keeps his day going with near-lethal doses of caffeine and a fridge stocked with his favorite condiments: ketchup, grated parmesan, Bac-O’s, and unicorn tears.