What happens when the best and brightest PUAs (Pick Up Artist), a large group of eager to learn rAFC (recovering Average Frustrated Chumps) and an evolutionary psychologist all get together in one venue?

A helluva lot of sex jokes. That much is certain.

And So It Starts

This is the first annual Texas PUA summit hosted by the local Austin lair founders and members: Adjourned, Pylon, Gamer, and Smart. The summit is a two-day event focused on everything related to social dynamics, seduction, escalation, body language, kino, all the way to the psychology of sex and mating preferences. If you were unable to attend this wonderful event but still wish to experience the wonderful content discussed,  the event was recorded and professionally made DVD’s will be available to order. A link to that product will be provided at the end of this post.

We saw quite a stellar turnout here in Austin with cities like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas/Ft. Worth, even New Orleans, Louisiana, all well represented.

A Smart Welcome

Today was the first day of the PUA Summit and to kick start things Smart gave an official welcome, followed by a brief talk from Adjourned and Pylon on their topic of “Going pro”.

Extra special thanks to Adjourned for pulling this event together!! You rock and will be receiving a very special gift on day 2!

A Newcomer Has Taken The Stage

Shortly after, TheBraeden took the stage. I’ve never personally heard of TheBraeden before this event, however his talk was very compelling. He spoke with much enthusiasm and fervor and definitely managed to captivate the audience quite well. Most of his talk was about fundamentals of social dynamics which he covered pretty well. Keep an eye out for Braeden – he’s definitely an up and comer in the world of pick up.

A Not-So-Beautiful Letdown

Next up was Mojo – the Dallas lair leader. Smart introduced him as a successful business owner, pick up artist (who is now engaged), and lair leader. Given my particular passion for business, social dynamics and leadership I was particularly excited for his talk. However, and I say this with no malice or ill intent, his speech was quite boring, uninspiring, and had practically zero focus. Several times I found myself wondering what he was even talking about… and I know I’m not the only one. He had a few pieces of wisdom that were imparted but I’m fairly certain they fell on deaf ears or were unheard through the struggle of staying awake. I mean no offense to him as a person, but he was definitely unprepared and displayed little to no charisma during his speech.

The Stage has GoneSavage

After that was an Austin local, GoneSavage. He was very well introduced by El Topo as a driving force for innovation in the community, and for good reason. Savage started his talk with a seemingly simple idea: Seduction is Escalation. He quickly dispelled the myth that in order to seduce a girl, you have to be a social person. Which I agree with – Being social is not the same thing as being seductive.  Savage definitely has a style of his own and listening to him speak you can obviously see the man has passion for what he does. He loves seduction, he loves women and he loves sex. The really unique thing about Savage is how he breaks things down and repackages succinctly for people to understand the game. His final note is one that resonates deeply with me so I’ll share it: The field is king. This is saying theory crafting is just that: theory. Taking your ideas into the field is where you learn whether something works or not so GET OUT THERE AND DO IT!

[Intermission]

Annnnddddd we’re back.

The Top

Kicking things off after the intermission was El Topo. He started off his talks by offering value in addition to his speech tonight; he provided his YouTube channel that is loaded up with videos focusing on body language, kino and other facets of social dynamics. His talk fit very well next to Savages talk and Topo kept the whole room laughing while simultaneously providing huge value. Topo is most famous for his personalization of game for whomever he is working with and it showed through this evening. I have to say here that I really respect El Topo for the sheer wealth of information he gives. His speech tonight covered mostly body language and transitioning from sexual tension using your body as an expressive machine to talk the language of sex. Hope that cough gets better Topo.

Why Women Have Sex

As if that wasn’t enough value! Day 1 attendees of the summit had the pleasure of listening to Dr. David Buss give a talk on The Evolution of Desire and the Psychology of Sex. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dr. Buss, he is the author of several published books, has taught at Harvard, University of Michigan and currently at the University of Texas Austin. He is well known for his evolutionary psychology research on human sex differences in mate selection. Many of the concepts Mystery talked about evolved from Dr. Buss’ work. He gives an incredibly engaging talk with a wonderful insight into the evolution of the mating process of humans.

Wrapping Up

That about wraps up day 1 of the 2010 Texas PUA Summit. Thank you to all the speakers, event coordinators, and attendees for making this event happen!

I am definitely excited for day 2 of the summit; and with speakers like Merchant, Gamer, Bull Run, Knight Rose, Crazy Cloud and AFC Adam who wouldn’t be?

Here is the link to the DVD information that I promised.

• Procrastinating my workout. I don’t know why though. I love how I feel during a workout. I love the concentration I get, my thoughts stop wandering and I’m focused on one thing and letting out all of my stress in the process of this active meditation. I’m improving my body, my mind and afterwards I want to go climb a mountain. After I pushed myself best my procrastinating thoughts and did it – I felt great!
• Fear of talking to strangers. Again, something I am totally passionate about. I love meeting people in the most ridiculous way – some people watch t.v., some play sports, I go out and meet people. Everyone has such cool stories, neat passions, and something interesting to share to the world. When I got over this obstacle I met some really cool people today including several musicians to jam with! Then I hung out in probably the chillest dorm hall at UT and got FREE COOKIES!!
• Neglecting my writing and blog. Writing is something I’ve loved to do since I was a little kid… but off and on typically. Recently when deciding on what to do a blog on, I came up with several answers so after some experimentation I’m down to one and it’s basically all of my experiments combined. It was one of those AHA! moments when I realized… I should be writing for me, so all I have to do is write about what I love even if I don’t share everything I find it really awesome to be able to go back and see how much I’ve grown – even in a short period of time.
• And the last one wasn’t a personal obstacle to overcome… I was challenged by someone  to learn some new stuff on the guitar. Challenge accepted. That’s why I’m even up so late tonight – I have been playing guitar for the past four hours or so. Man I love music!

Also, somewhere in the middle of all this awesomeness I managed to have an awesome lunch and hang out with some of my friends of the Asian persuasion today, got a kick ass haircut in under 8 minutes AND got some awesome stickers ~ Thanks Ka!

Now it’s time to go to sleep and see what the dreamworld has in store for me!

When I was thinking about this article I started thinking back to a time when I read much more and with greater depth and realized that in school, after every book I read, I had to take a test on the book. Not on the message the author was conveying, or how I felt the book touched upon any subject or any kind of analytical thinking. It was all just regurgitation. The biggest flaw in our school system today is kids are taught to memorize data, and then choose from four options, which one is the most probable. This is flawed thinking.

What happens when kids come out of school and life goes heres INFINITE possibilities… Pick what you want. “Well what are my choices?” or “I don’t know what I want” are typical responses to life’s question. And anybody wonders why people can’t choose a major or don’t find a career they are happy with? We obsess about the “right answer” as opposed to the problem solving skill to actually create the solution that fits the individual. The school system today is a glorified baby sitting service, training new generations of kids to be good, obedient, database driven cogs. Innovation doesn’t come from choosing from the following options, a b c or d — It comes from analytical thinking, from accessing the creative mind, or as Apple states “Think Different”.

I’ll end this with a quote from a man who failed in school, but was eternally successful and highly brilliant: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein

Over night I had a paradigm shift in my mindset and over the course of a few months the quality and richness of my life improved in leaps and bounds. And this change didn’t cost much money or time. Now as I reflect on the past I really see how much time I wasted away — but I refuse to see it as a loss. The time wasn’t all bad and anti-social and the experiences I had have lad me to a conscious lifestyle. I know where I don’t want to be and can move away from apathy and into passion. I truly believe this decision means that life gets better and better every day. I choose to be happy and content yet still remain driven towards my goals and passions.

Since I’ve made this shift, I’ve given several talks about the subject of passions and goal setting to local groups in Austin, I’ve had several people come to me to help them make a shift in their quality of life, and seen many people become more passionate about life in general… and it feels great! I love helping people enjoy a more full, rich, passionate life — So I’ve decided to start a new company doing just that!

I am still ironing out some details but I’ll make a post about this new business soon.

I’ve got several really large passions in my life and often times I find it overwhelming to improve my abilities with them because there is so much to do! I see the end goal I want and start thinking how far away I really am from that goal and it feels daunting at times. And if that didn’t make things hard enough — I have the attention span of a goldfish!

Yesterday I was updating my workout routine. I do an intense workout with a muscle group, then give it a week to rest. My schedule ended up looking something like: Monday chest/core, Tuesday shoulders, Wednesday back/core, Thursday bicep/tricep/forearms, Friday stretch/core, Saturday cardio, Sunday rest day. Then an idea hit me, why not do the same thing with my other passions? So I broke them down into smaller chunks and set days of the week to them just like muscle groups… So for Music I really want to learn the terminology, theory, scales, and chords. For web development I want to be great at design, markup, marketing, writing and scripting. For art I want to sketch, ink, paint and so much more (my awesome brother got me a Wacom Tablet recently).

My workout routine was already there, so all I had to do was expand upon it: Monday: Chest/Core, A-Scale,CSS/HTML, Sketching. Each activity gets a set duration which allows me to push through any attention issues, prevents me from feeling overwhelmed, and keeps me on the path of mastery for my passions. Now I dedicate time each day to developing my passions!

1 . Coding A HTML 5 Layout From Scratch

A really clean web 2.0 design from scratch. Only thing with this tutorial is if you wan’t the images he used you have to go to his final product and right click, save image as on them. Would have been nice to have a little zip file with everything included but the tutorial itself is very good. Also includes some extra reading on HTML5/CSS3 and a word on Progressive Enhancement and Graceful Degradation.

2. HTML 5 and CSS 3: The Techniques You’ll Soon Be Using

Another great tutorial. I really like the author’s use of rounded corners and shadows to really show off some neat CSS capabilities. Source files and Demo of the final product readily available making this tutorial fun, easy and concise.

3. Designing A Blog With HTML 5

This design focuses on the structural and form elements of html 5 and doesn’t actually go into CSS. Great read for getting the logic of the structural and date/time elements.

4. Introduction to CSS3

This is actually a 6 part tutorial introducing many of the new modules of CSS 3. Similar to the previous tutorial, this one covers only CSS 3 and not really any structure markup. Very useful reference for designing with CSS3.

5. Get Started With CSS 3

Another CSS 3 only tutorial. Covers many of the same things as the previous tutorial but also covers image/video masking. Repetition is important in learning + who doesn’t love WebMonkey?

Check Out Devirtuoso For The Tutorial

When I was 10 years old, I discovered how awesome the internet is. I still remember the first time I opened up a browser to look up cheat codes for video games on Yahoo! search for me and my friends. Being really curious to how these websites worked, I started learning some html and started creating online journal-type sites for my friends in what was my first real business. After a short stint as a web developer, I soon grew unhappy creating websites because I envisioned better looking websites, with movable content laid out how I wanted so I stopped doing the web development thing for a while.

Recently, I’ve been getting back into the coding/design/development of the web and I’m astounded how much things have changed. What I saw back then is now possible — and so much more!

A Brief History of Time (Web Edition)

During the first decade of readily available internet access for the average consumer (read: dial up) the web went through a sort of Dark Ages. Like the churches of the Medieval period, browsers waged a bloody crusade against each other, the code and proprietary plug-ins were law. Creating a website in the early days was, dull, uninspired, and tedious. Web safe color palettes  were limiting and image sizes had to be chopped to the point where they were harmful to the eyes! HTML,  which is supposed to just be the markup for content attempted to control the design, there was no standard across browsers and horrible mutations of code came into existence allowing any sadistic or absent minded person to induce epileptic seizure via a web page.

Renaissance 2.0

Flash forward to today, website design is no longer held hostage by the limited abilities of the code. CSS allows the designer more control over the look and feel of the site with often minimal effort and now we are seeing web sites more as works of art rather than just bland information inside a bunch of tables! The dark ages are over and people are expressing their uniqueness and creativity virtually in amazing new ways! In a hundred years people will look back at this time period as the Renaissance 2.0 where beauty and logic came together and truly touched peoples lives!

To Infinity And Beyond

Looking out at the horizon, now is an incredible period of time, with technological advances we have more options, more freedom and more information to pursue our passions and truly make an impact in this ever shrinking world! And with HTML5, CSS3, AJAX, and the proliferation of broadband internet I see sites like MySpace/Facebook giving way to decentralized semantic social networks hosted by individuals, beautiful works of art on-line, and the release of the OS’s death grip on our computers! And the most amazing thing about it all is we can ALL make an impact on what the future of the web world looks like!  All you have to do is listen, think, speak and be heard! So whatever you do, don’t be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting!

update: It appears that Twitter was being hit by DDOS attacks over the past couple days.