gerard ramos’ ramblings

I was looking forward to a chill weekend of sailing and ended up soaking wet and freezing cold on a beach in Moss Landing, CA. We set sail for Moss Landing on Saturday around 2pm and arrived around 6pm. It rained and was very foggy throughout the trip, so we motored the whole way. We had to navigate using only our GPS devices near the end. We thought the difficult part of the trip was behind us when we set out on Sunday heading to Santa Cruz. When we turned the corner heading out to sea from the harbor, we could see the big swells but decided to head out anyway. We got out to the channel marker when we decided to turn back. Wind gusts were around 35-40 knots (46mph) and swells probably 15-20feet. We were handling the conditions fine until the engine died. Due to the high winds and waves, and lack of preparation for engine failure, our sails were not ready to be hoisted. While trying to raise the sails, more problems kept happening with the lines tangling. We we tossed an anchor - it didn’t hold. We were sitting ducks. Luckily we were washed onto the beach rather than the rocks nearby. When we were hitting the beach, the boat was about to flip, so 3 of us said fuck it and jumped out. It didn’t flip and no one was injured. The boat took on alot of water, has a busted rudder, and maybe some holes in the bottom from the salvage company dragging it across the beach. I lost my laptop, hat, shades, iphone and a bunch of other shit. :( I learned quite a few lessons from this trip and can’t wait to get out there again!

SPECIAL THANKS to everyone who helped out and offered to help and for the amazing hospitality from all the folks at the Elkhorn Yacht Club!

News Coverage:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27635104/
http://www.kcba.com/Global/story.asp?S=9319302

My Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gerardramos/sets/72157608804889822/

UPDATE:
News Footage: http://www.ksbw.com/video/17944414/index.html

That was my first thought when I rolled into the office this morning and fired up the app. Figured it was just a glitch, then when Chad got in, he had the same issue. An hour or so went by and it still wasn’t working so we started to investigate. Turns out, today was a big day for muxtape.com. They released an update with a new codebase that basically wiped out all 3rd party apps, but was a much needed update for the future growth of muxtape.com.

The project all started after some after work beers. We wanted to build an air app to get our hands dirty before taking on some real flex work, so we started messing around with muxtape and flex builder to see if we could get a song to play through an air app. About two hours later we had the basics working. Chad did the heavy scripting while I worked on the interface and a couple weeks later we released a public download of the app. Before we released, Chad pinged Justin and he gave us the go ahead.

We released the app only allowing users to playback the tapes. muxur basically hit any muxtape url, parsed the page and allowed you to play the music outside of the browser through the air app. It was dead simple and worked like a champ.

muxur is officially down for the count, but watch out for what comes next … there may be a tidal wave of sorts coming to a desktop near you ;)

memorial day weekend was full of sailing followed by a sunday night out on the city and a wicked hangover come monday. i woke up late in the afternoon on my day off and wanted to do something with the rest of the day. i called my friend Corey who was in town from nola. we decided a trip to the park was in order .. but we never quite made it. when we finally got close to golden gate park, we realized we had zero park going gear .. no frisbee, kite, food, beer, etc .. so corey, steph and I switched gears .. and our new mission was to find a frisbee and head back to the park. we knew walgreens would have one, but after driving around for 10 minutes not finding one, decided to hit haight street .. corey hadn’t walked down the street and one of the many stores on haight must have a frisbee right? wrong .. we walked forever, followed a couple shop workers direction and couldn’t find one. so we drove to the ocean instead. still frisbee and kiteless, we decided to head over to crissy field and hoped that we would find a walgreens on the way. we did! but they only had $2.99 kites that didn’t look like they would fly too well, so we opted for a frisbee. The beach was windy .. throwing the frisbee didn’t work at all. So, we just hung out and enjoyed each others company and the amazing views of the bay. good times all around ..

A friend and I are building an Air app called muxur that should release in the next couple weeks. dm me your email address via twitter @gerardramos if you want to checkout an early release..