Brainstorming Ideas for Tech Startups/Programming Projects

I'll update this as I get ideas. Most of my ideas are either stupid or taken, one of these days I'll come up with a good one. Leave me a comment if you want to add an idea to this list, and I'll gladly take your idea.

-real estate portal, youtube like service that provides video tours of houses
-digg.com for porn
-user submitted reviews of profiles on dating sites, like dontdatehimgirl, except for both sexes
-iTunes or Adium plugin to display currently playing LastFM song on Adium

MEOWARCHY: Demon Cats

This actually has some personal significance and is not just some random video, it's pretty funny too. probably the best cat video I've seen.

Thoughts on balance, time, self control, ego, happiness, and death

Random thoughts about balance, time, self control, ego, happiness, and death:

1. I have this thing called asperger's syndrome. It's one of the things that I go to therapy for. One of the characteristics of people with aspergers is that they tend to get obsessed easily with certain things. For this reason, my therapist keeps pushing the importance of maintaining balance in my life. For instance, I got completely obsessed in 2001-2003 with becoming a great programmer. I was reading 2 huge books a week, staying up all hours of the night hacking away. I got really good, really fast, but in the end there was a price to be paid for this single minded obsession - other areas of my life began to suffer. I didn't pay attention to my body and got fat. My relationship with my then-girlfriend suffered and we wound up breaking up eventually.

Another example of this: Last year me and Effect became obsessed with sarging. We would go out and sarge the clubs a minimum of about 4 times a week, usually more. This went on for about six months. What happened? There were immediate benefits - I became more confident in social situations than I ever have in my life, in fact I consider this period of intense sarging the thing that helped me get over my social anxiety disorder. These days, I seem to be a lot more relaxed, confident, and comfortable around other people. I had a fun time and met a few girls too. What was the price? My job suffered, I wasn't able to focus as much as I should have because I was up all night at the bars, my finances were suffering because of neglect. There is also the random, free floating anxiety that pervades your mood due to the fact that you know your life is out of control.

Up until a month or so ago, I gave a fair amount of lip service to my therapist regarding the idea of balance - but in the back of my mind I would always think, 'yeah, but a single minded obsession is the way that great things are done in this world, like I bet people like Albert Einstein were obsessed or else they never would have achieved what they did'. And then, I don't know why it took thinking about guitar playing to hammer this point home, but I realized that my therapist was right and that, my inability to maintain balance was one of the big reasons behind my not being able to get to where I wanted to be by this point in my life in career, finances, guitar playing, exercise, etc.

This is the thought that really brought the importance of balance home: there have been times in my life when I practiced guitar 8 hours a day, I would improve at an impressive rate and friends would comment on how much better I've gotten in a short amount of time. Inevitably I would wind up focusing so much on getting better at guitar playing that other things in my life suffer - school, work, finances, my body, relationships, etc. And then an emergency in school or something would force me to spend less time practicing guitar. Sooner or later, my guitar playing takes a back burner while I put out these fires that happen while I spent so much time playing guitar. My practice time decreases and then I am only practicing once in a while. Over the course of time - what happened? My skills deteriorated, and I have improved less over the course of an extended period of time, than I would have if I would have only maintained a respectable and steady practice schedule of 2 hours a day. In the end the single minded obsession did not pay off.

Now I think, these people who have achieved great things that I admire so much - Einstein, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, whoever - I used to think 'I bet these guys have a razor sharp focus on what it is that they are passionate about', but now I think, 'yeah but I think they also have some way of maintaining some type of balance or they wouldn't have been able to maintain balance so long that they were able to manifest these types of results'.

2. The idea of balance is closely tied to self control. I was reading some blog entries on resilient's blog that had to do with the fact that the mark of a man is that he is in complete control of himself, and is able to focus his attention on things that he should be doing in order to realize his goals. For a while there, I was really rocking and rolling - I was doing good at work, taking care of my financial situation, doing my personal programming projects after work, on track to be totally cut by summer, in regular contact with my family, doing a lot of home renovations, and practicing guitar again on a regular basis and improving steadily. These are the types of activities that will get me where I want to be in the 7 areas of my life that are most important to me: career, finances, relationships, physical and psychological health, guitar, and home.

And then I got sidetracked - I got sick for a week with a virus (that I got from kissing my gf, or staying up all night with my gf) - then I spent about a month doing nothing but hanging out with my girl, neglecting my various projects, doing only the bare minimum at work. For a while I didn't care because I was enjoying all the free hooch. But inevitably my attention turns again to all of the emergency situations and things that are starting to get fucked up in my life. I am starting to focus on myself again, but for a while there I was less of a man. Even though I was getting laid and had this girl who wants to be my gf, inside I knew that I was less of a man because I lacked self control.

3. I once asked my gf, 'It seems like society's definition of happiness is very closely tied to the concept of romantic love - can a person ever be truly happy without finding love?' She said, 'yes it is possible, but not for me'.

When I look back on the past 4 weeks, and think back on all my past relationships in general, I would have to conclude that the concepts of romantic love and relationships, and personal happiness, are mutually exclusive. When I was in the midst of our first couple of weeks of sleeping over every night and having sex all the time - was I truly happy? The answer would have to be no. The only thing that improved about my life was that I was getting laid and, at least temporarily, did not have to worry about how I was going to get laid or my irrational fear of dying alone. Everything else suffered because I was so caught up in this new relationship. I even posted a few blog entries on here about how I was insecure about this new relationship.

4. Which brings me to where I'm at right now. As I told my therapist last week, I have to get myself together and find a way to balance all the various projects and responsibilities I have going on in my life, with spending time with this new person who seems to want to do it all day long. It's weird. I think I was at the point there where I was extremely focused, and could not be distracted from my goals. Not by self doubt, not by friends who just want to have a good time, not by my responsibilities to my family. I knew how to turn my attention to what I knew to be important to me and everything else be damned. So fate throws me a curve ball of this girl, because he knows the only thing that could distract me from the number one priority in my life, which is my own survival and self improvement, was sex, lots of sex. I have to get it together again, I have done so much in 2007, it would be a shame to ruin a really good year.

One time I asked gf, 'do you think I have it in me to be a great man?', she said, 'yes'. Then I asked her, 'if that's the case, then why haven't I already?'. She told me that everyone has to find their own way and sometimes your destiny unfolds according to its own schedule. Then she asked me why I am so obsessed with 'Getting Things Done', time, maintaining focus, the concept of balance. I told her because there is not enough time to do all the things I want to do in life, because I feel like I've wasted too much time already. She is someone who understands the ephemerality of life, due to her own experiences, I think this is one of the things about me that she empathizes with. I'm lucky that she is not someone who will not whine about me not spending time with her, as she is a really busy person, and with grad school and her triathalon training, arguably has more on her plate than I have. I know she would not appreciate a guy who cannot take care of himself or has no drive or ambition.

I know you very well now let me tell you that I caught you, my dear, my dear ...

Oh yeah I forgot to mention, my girl is on the pill and we're now having sex without a condom. She just surprised me one day when I was driving her to the pharmacy to pick up her allergy medicine. We were at the drive thru and she said, 'oh yeah I'm also picking up the pill'. This makes me slightly nervous, I didn't ask her to go on the pill. It did bug me that I had to wear a rubber, but I was only complaining about it. I didn't mean for her to go on the pill. It just seems a lot more serious now that she's doing this, the sex is way better though. Another example of how this situation is gradually spiralling out of control, and I don't take any measures to stop it because I'm a bonehead and I'm enjoying myself too much.

I also forgot to mention I did about 10 approaches last week at 720. Me and JCB told ourselves we would hang in the set at least 5 minutes, even if we have nothing to say we will just stand there. No numbers or anything. Tough night. It was entertaining in some respects though. The place is really loud so after a while I would just say the stupidest shit cos they couldn't hear me anyways. JCB asked me to distract an UG so he could hit on her hot friend. Some other weird shit happened that night, we didn't get to see chicks fighting or anything. JCB is in a really bad state lately, it sounds like he has a few prospects waiting in the wings from the last time I talked to him, so maybe he'll snap out of it. Anyway, the trick to 720 is you have to get there early - and you have to make all your moves before 11 because at that time it is so loud and crowded you can't really sarge.

291 approaches

Astronaut Jones: The Creature From Porpula

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You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do as You're Told)

3 weeks later and I'm still with my new girlfriend. It is sort of official now, too. She basically told me the other day that I can't date anyone else without telling her first. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I feel like I've sort of been forced into this position. Was there a way I could have responded to her subtle coercion so that I wouldn't have had to agree to basically not date anyone without telling her first? Afterwards, I looked this up on the various seduction sites but I couldn't find a good response. Most of the seduction knowledge on the internet tends to dry up once you enter the area of ltr's. I probably would tell her anyways if I was planning on sleeping with someone else, it's only fair, you'd have to be a serious asshole to expose her to disease like this. I wasn't going to tell her no, also, I'm having too much fun.

Ironic that I'm simultaneously having a shitload of fun and also am more stressed out than I have been in a long time. A couple of weeks ago I got really sick and I'm only now starting to feel 100 percent better again. I had a consistent fever, headaches, sore throat. Turns out I caught a viral infection - probably from the new girl. The inside of my mouth became all swollen and sore. I couldn't brush my teeth or eat anything other than vitamin water and yogurt without excrutiating pain for almost two weeks. I would often come home on the days I wasn't hanging with my girl, and fall asleep immediately and not wake up until the next morning.

The sex is good. Very good. I feel like Ron Jeremy. I think it's time for me to snap out of this daze I've been in though. All I've been thinking of is sex and hanging out with my new girl. My work is still alright, it's not spectacular though, and I'm just getting adjusted again after calling in sick for a week. My finance research has been neglected. I lost my iPod somewhere - maybe her house, maybe my mom's house - and my gym card. I've been sick anyways, and combined with my lost gym card, I haven't worked out very much in two weeks. Guitar practice has gone to hell - again. I hate that more than anything. My personal projects have also gone to shit.

Time to get my crap together. I can't keep sleeping over at her house every night. Nothing gets done, I have to work on my life. I really hate feeling out of balance like this, I also don't think my girl would want to date some dude who can't even handle his own shit. The past couple of days have been productive. Tomorrow I promised JCB I'd hit the clubs with him, the gf and her friends may meet up with us, which should be interesting. Saturday I've decided to try to combine girlfriend time with being productive, and have her come over and help me hang some bookshelves and do some homework together.

Tyler Durden on ejecting early & state control

Revelations for me, probably other guys thought of this..

To my mind, this is really important ****.

OK I'm lying in bed with insomnia, and I'm realizing something.


I hope this makes sense cause I'm not thinking straight, but it seems to make sense right now in my head..

QUESTION: Have you ever ran a sarge, gotten a good initial reaction, and ejected before it could go bad? Why do we do this? Are we so wanting to stay in the good mood that we established by getting a decent initial reaction from the chick, that we'd sacrifice a possible lay just to take the SURE THING that we'll stay in a good mood? Are we really like that? ANSWER: I think that psychologically, we all cope by building a self-image for ourselves.

Teenagers will turn goth, or prep, or find cliques, or get really into a pro sports team, or get really into a certain type of music, or get involved with drugs.

We did this stuff because we struggled to find our own IDENTITY.

As we get older, we find our own identity and its typically more sophisticated than when we were younger, but its still how we GET BY psychologically (so I suppose its no better, but just further developed.. still, it gives us the illusion of superiority, which is really good enough anyway, but I'm digressing)

NOBODY likes to think of themselves as "bad with women", because we NEED to feel desirable as a FUNDAMENTAL part of our self-identity.

To feel undesirable sexually would imply MANY MANY BAD THINGS about ourselves, including bad genetics, bad personality, bad social intelligence, and many BAD BAD THINGS.

This is why when you tell guys about ***, they freak out and get all pissy. Because to imply that they would need HELP with their desirability is to imply MANY bad things about them.

That's why guys who you can be cool to talk about practically ANYTHING with (perfectly cool guys when it comes to ANY other topic than ***) can't take it when you say "hey man check out ***"

***NOW KEY HERE is that the main problem with STATE CONTROL is that when we approach a woman, our fear is MASSIVELY ILLOGICAL.

In fact, fear is built to prevent us from being HURT. But IRONICALLY our FEAR of approaching women actually HURTS US, while ACTUALLY approaching HELPS US.

But yet, we feel fear.

THE REASON THAT WE FEEL FEAR IS THAT IT IS OUR WAY OF PSYCHOLOGICALLY PREVENTING OURSELVES FROM HAVING A SELF-IMAGE CRASH.

Our ego can't stand the punishment.

We have a self-image that we've developed, and it sure doesn't include being a guy who women SNUB.


Same reason that guys on here who don't really sarge but still have been on *** for a while and have good knowledge will get all pissy at the guys who really sarge. They've developed a SELF IMAGE that they are good with women, which they FOSTER and NURTURE through this internet chat board by spreading good KNOWLEDGE, despite their own lack of EXPERIENCE. So when guys question them or post something that contrasts their theoretical knowledge, they get all pissed off and grumpy and whiny, because what they are reading is DISTURBING the internet-based system that makes them feel good with women, and therefore about themselves.

**But back to the main point, IMO a big key to state-control is RECOGNITION of fact that our fear is based on the threat to our SELF IMAGE (or ego).

Then, in RECOGNITION of this phenomenon, we have to RE-ASSESS our self-image NOT to include our desirability to women.

Why?

Because we realize that practically NO guys, even GOODLOOKING, are actually able to pickup random women on a consistent basis, in the way that we're learning to do here.

And in recognition of this REALITY about the world, we can ACCEPT that practically NOBODY is good with women, and FREE OURSELVES to do mass approaches and learn the skillset.

We have to see things AS THEY ARE, and therefore FREE OURSELVES of the threat to our self-image, since we understand that there is no CORRELATION between our self-image and any particular sarge.

In fact, our self-image should even become BRUISED when we chicken-out from approaches, because *THAT* is the real thing to be ashamed of, given that there is so little correlation between our desirability and our actual ability to pickup new random women, given the current social context of women being empowered. Having fear implies that we are STUPID, because we aren't able to make the LINK between REALITY and how it doesn't ACTUALLY correspond to our self-image in the way that we seem to NEED to delude ourselves into thinking it does (in desperate attempt to preserve our emotional well-being).

And in this RE-ASSESSMENT of our self-image, we can realize that fear of playing pickup is INSTANTLY dealt with..

We can even apply this to MANY areas of our lives, and at least make the EFFORT to recognize the MANY areas that we DELUDE ourselves, and to try to gain SELF-KNOWLEDGE that will bring us closer to equilibrium in our environments and the world that we've been thrown into.

The more that we acknowledge where we've deluded ourselves for the sole sake of preserving a FALSE self-image, the more we can IMPROVE ourselves in the REAL WORLD, and not just IN OUR HEADS.

Why do this? Because on a subconscious level we KNOW that we're lying to ourselves, and it comes through in the form of DEPRESSION.

So by aspiring and genuinely attempting to RECOGNIZE this and to gain SELF KNOWLEDGE, we begin to PURGE ourselves of this BULL****, and begin to EMIT AN AURA that people will want to be around.

Notice how some people just rub you the wrong way, but you can't explain why? Notice there are some guys that EVERYONE just wants to be around?

THESE GUYS are the ones who have come closer to this equilibrium with the REAL WORLD and the one that they perceive in THEIR MINDS.

And these kind of guys have potential to be AMAZING PUAs, because they have ultimate state-control.

They are ultimately comfortable with THEMSELVES, and it comes through with women.

So yeah, all that stuff.


-TD

P.S. SIDENOTE:

This is just like in CLUBS.

Go into a club, and its so DISORIENTING. Music, people, dance, drinks.

But go into that SAME club during the daytime, and then right as they turn on the music and lights, and it looks STUPID. It's just the ILLUSION that ****s us up.

So when you're in a club, try to be like Neo in "The Matrix", and see the club as nothing more than a ROOM with annoyingly loud music and annoying lights and people acting stupid and silly. Then the intimidation factor of clubs GOES AWAY.

Tyler Durden