Milner had always enjoyed art as a fun and relaxing hobby, but never anything more than that.  This summer when her father moved and was getting to know all of his neighbors, he met a man that owned his own business, but as a side job he would go to storage center auctions and junk yards.  He would also just drive around neighborhoods on big trash days and find furniture and household items, refurbish them, and then sell them on Craigslist and make a decent amount of money doing it. He also told Mr. Milner that things had been slow recently because he was putting in more hours at his business so he didn’t have time to clean up or list anything online. Mr. Milner then told him about his daughter Kelsey, who had been searching for a job for a while, and how she would love to help him with refurbishing and listing all of the item. A week later Kelsey was working on her first project and enjoying every minute of it. Now she is getting paid to exercise her creativity while doing something she enjoys and can manage on her own time.

     Kelsey still has the job today and has done quite a few pieces. She has complete freedom on the artistic aspect of things and loves what she does.

     “I love taking something old and worn out and giving it a new life” Milner.

     She is usually given a useless and torn up piece of furniture or something like a picture frame, a table found on the side of the road or a chair found in a junk yard, and is just told to make it worth something. That could be done by painting, drawing, collaging, tiling or any means of art you could think of, and she can make a completely original and beautiful piece for someone’s home or office. Recently, she has completed a desk- which her boss found on the side of the road. She sanded it, painted it, and then used bits of scrapbooking paper to create a garden themed collage on it; she also created a collage on an old guitar with an Austin theme. Along with those she’s painted, she hot glued knickknacks onto a mirror giving it a very retro ‘I-spy’ theme.

     When someone posts something on Craig’s list everyone has access to it; a wide variety of buyers get on the site everyday looking for something particular to complete a space. Not only does Milner get paid for making and selling these items but other job opportunities have come from her putting her work up on Craig’s list.

     “A woman who owns her owns business wanted me to decorate her whole office after buying one of my pieces – I was thrilled” said Milner.  “Who knew that my hobby could turn into a business?”

     Some people don’t want to work in food or retail, but teenagers normally don’t have many other options. Students usually get stuck with jobs they don’t like, making work boring and unpleasant.   Before looking for a job, first consider the activities that you find enjoyable; maybe your hobby could turn into a job too.

     A giant teddy bear:  I know it’s been done thousands of times before but there is nothing that can make a girl smile more than holding a bear bigger than she is. Plus, this is a get out of jail free gift at the same time because she doesn’t have to like the color or design nor does it have to be a certain size or material. It’s a giant bear; you just simply can’t go wrong.

     Chocolate: this is perfect for boys, girls and everything in between. Some chocolate has nuts, some don’t;  there’s caramel, toffee — all kinds. It’s a timeless gift associated with the holiday itself. The only way you could go wrong is if they happen to not like chocolate; and if they don’t; then any kind of candy will suffice for a replacement.

     A phone case: nowadays most people have a smart phone with a touch screen, and when you drop a touch screen phone, the screen breaks. It’s a thoughtful and useful gift with tons of different colors and designs to choose from- there is something for everyone. This gift ensures that you can talk to each other every day; no broken phone, no broken communication.

     Personalized M&M’s: not only is it thoughtful, original, and adorable, but they’re delicious and defiantly brag worthy. They’re inexpensive and you don’t even have to leave your house to get them. They’re ordered off the M&M’s website and delivered right to your door.

     Jewelry; this is a difficult choice. On one hand you can’t go wrong with the thought, its expensive, sentimental, useful, and it shows that you put a lot of time into picking it out, but that’s the part where so many people go wrong. When choosing jewelry you really have to know who you’re buying for, what they like and what they don’t like, what colors and styles they would or wouldn’t wear. You don’t want to get them something that’s too out there but you also don’t want to get them something they already have. Before you spend a lot of money on something so meaningful, make sure you know they will love it; check with their friends or family, someone who knows their style. If you get this gift right though, you will have one very happy Valentine.

     No matter what you get for your significant other on Valentine’s Day, make sure it’s good and that they will enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be super expensive; it just needs to be beautiful, meaningful and unforgettable. As long as you get them something, you’ll still have someone on February 15.

     South by Southwest (SXSW,) began over twenty years ago in Austin as a regional event showcasing local music. By the 2000s, it quickly grew into one of the nation’s largest and most profitable annual music festivals. Singer-songwriter John Mayer and James Blunt were both discovered at the festival. SXSW begins with an interactive segment over four days with celebrity panels, informative booths and sneak peeks at new tech and other fun things. Extending four days after the interactive sessions is the film festival, where new films are debuted and new talent is scouted for directors, actors and more.

     The final part of SXSW is the music festival, and arguably the most popular. Fans get their access wristbands months in advance, drive and fly in from all corners of the earth, and suddenly Austin is alive with fans, tourists, street musicians and countless venues pounding out live performances. Everywhere from bars to lakeside stages to the street corner, musicians are out and alive, promoting their music and meeting new fans.

     This year, San Marcos post-rock band This Will Destroy You, throwback Motown soul group Lee Fields & The Expressions, and Brooklyn post-punk noise rockers The Men are all scheduled to appear on Austin stages this March.

     Each year, the aura of live music that thrives in Austin amplifies with SXSW as Austin’s grandest and most eventful festival.

     Touch tablets are a huge sensation around the world. The iPad 3 is one of many rumors that has been taking a sweep through the internet.  This device is expected to be much lighter, with a smaller and lighter battery, a high resolution 2048×1536 display, a higher resolution camera, and the newest addition to Apple’s iPhone’s, Siri. Another touch screen tablet expected by the end of 2012 is the Dell Peju. The device is rumored to have an Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM.

     Phones have taken a huge step forward in the past several years, and it isn’t going to stop at 2012. The phone that has had the most attention lately has been Apple’s iPhone. The iPhone 5 was expected to be released by the end of 2011, but instead the iPhone 4S was released. The new iPhone 5, rumored to be released late summer, is expected to have a completely different design. A larger screen is rumored along with a quad-core processor and 4G capability. The iPhone 5 is supposedly the last project Apple founder Steve Jobs worked on before he passed away last June.

Another highly anticipated phone will come from Sony, the makers of Playstaion. The Sony Xperia Ion will have a 1.5 GHz processor with a 16 GB on-board sharing capacity. The phone will be shipped in March with Android 2.3 and powered by Sony’s Bravia Engine, the same technology found in the company’s HD televisions.

     Gaming systems have also taken large advancements in the recent years, and the gaming experience will continue to advance in the new year. Nintendo will release their new replacement for the Nintendo Wii between the second hand of 2012. The Nintendo Wii U has quite a few modifications, one being the controller. The controller has a 6.2 inch touch screen, which shows the screen shown on the TV screen. In addition, the game console will have HD compatibility, making it the only console with full HD games.

      Sony officially announced in December that you shouldn’t expect a Playstation 4 to come out in 2012, but you can expect another product to be released. The Playstation Vita is the successor to the handheld game console Playstation Portable (or more commonly known as the PSP). The PSV includes two analog sticks, a 5-inch touchscreen and supports wi-fi, Bluetooth, and optional 3G. You can expect the handheld to be in stores on February 22.

     For the past few years, new technology has made it possible to watch 3D movies and television at home. On January 18, Sony shipping out their latest advancement to the 3D viewing world: the Sony Personal 3D Viewer. This product is a visor headset that makes it possibly to watch normal television, movies, and even play video games in 3D.

     The new year brings a lot of excitement and anticipation for the technology that comes with it. Whether it’s a video game, a phone, or anything else, make sure to keep an eye out for your must-have gadget this year.

     When futurists talk of superb new devices to be one day invented, they often neglect the fact that it’s incredibly discouraging to hear that one will not actually live to see the invention of said device.  Where’s the fun in having Scotty beam you up if you’re six feet under at the time?  However, while there are some fantastic things to come in the distant future, there is still plenty to be excited about in the near future.

1 — Robots: The promise of robots has been one given at least more than once in the past, and unfortunately all that’s really been delivered are Frisbee-sized vacuums that can sense when they’re about to bump into a table leg.  However, advances in artificial intelligence and robotic engineering are rapidly increasing, leaving the door open for many exciting possibilities.

     For instance, in 2007 South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication released a statement that claimed that sometime between 2015 and 2020 every home in South Korea, as well as many homes across Europe, will house a robot.  Before any naysayers chime in with bits like “Aren’t microwaves robots?” it should be stated that we’re not talking little Roomba vacuums here; we’re talking full on robots.  Not necessarily arms, legs, eyes, the whole nine yards, but certainly automated and moving (for lack of a better term) creatures, either rolling or walking around the home, performing tasks that might seem tedious to you or I.

     For you sports fans out there, in 1997 RoboCup envisioned a scenario in which by 2050 a team of fully autonomous robot players would be able to beat the top human soccer teams of the world.

     But the fun doesn’t stop there.  For those with a grim anticipation of the robot uprising, when man will have his last day and the robot will reign supreme, a 2006 statement from the Department of Defense will be particularly harrowing.  In said statement, the DoD stated that by 2015 at least one third of the United State military will be comprised of robots.  But the buck doesn’t stop there.  By 2035, the DoD expects to have the first fully functional automated robotic soldiers off the assembly line and out fighting in the name of truth, justice, and the Cylon way.

2 — Medicine: When considering the future, what becomes particularly exciting is the idea of advancing medical technology.  After all, how is anyone going to fight the coming robot menace if they can’t heal from their injuries quickly and efficiently?

     Ever find yourself in a dire case of liver or heart failure?  Wish there was some way to stop the aches and pains?  Well, according to the Federal Initiative for Regenerative Medicine (FIRM), by 2020 patients will be able to utilize regenerative medical technologies, such as cell-printing for instance, to reproduce once dead tissues and even entire organs that have fallen to disease, injury or general abuse.  What is most exciting about this technology is not that it could lead to the production of new bits and pieces as complex as limbs one day, but that the body which takes in this new tissue will not have it rejected by their own immune system.  One of the issues with surgeries like kidney transplants is finding a compatible donor, someone with a renal system similar enough to that of the individual in need of the kidney, usually a member of the immediate family.  Even then, there can still be complications.  However, with processes like cell-printing, a piece of the patient’s own DNA is used to produce an organ that would be an exact copy of the original, right down to the cellular level, meaning that the patient’s body would not attack the organ after transplant.

     Now, while there with shots in the dark there are many misses.  For example, our good friend Arthur C. Clarke theorized that by 2023 scientists would be capable of cloning dinosaurs (Michael Crichton would be so very proud).  However, we should also be cautioned that just because an advancement seems far-fetched it does not mean it is impossible.  No one wants to be the guy in the 18th century who said there was no conceivable use for radios.  But if we’re willing to talk more “fringey” ideas, I’m a personal fan of what Ray Kurzwell stated in 2005: that by 2025 it will be possible to reverse engineer a human brain.

3 — Virtual Reality: Many experts expect all communication to become purely based on IP addresses sometime within this decade, which opens up many doors for the wave of social networks on the rise.

     Once again we turn to the late, great Arthur C. Clarke for our first prediction.  According to Professor Clarke, by 2025 virtual reality will be utilized via direct input to the brain, immersing one fully in a “virtuality” of their own creation.  At first glance the idea seems rather silly, but what must be considered is that the world around any given individual is really only the amalgamation of several bits of data being perceived by their own brain and processed into a “reality” that the mind can fathom.  With this in mind (if you’ll pardon the pun), it does not seem so fictional to one day be able to manipulate the brain, conceivably through the rapidly growing advances in nanotechnology, into constructing a “reality” within a person’s own mind.  The possibilities really are endless!  However, as some transhumanists and professors of philosophy have pointed out, if we humans, living sometime around the universe’s 15 billionth birthday, can produce such a simulated world, who’s to say some other civilization did not do the same before us (or even for us)?

     To revisit an already mentioned source, in 1999 Ray Kurzwell speculated that by 2030 virtual reality would become so widespread that, regardless of where you are, you can be contacted by a friend — or your run of the mill social network creeper.  Once again, though this technology seems rather outlandish, when considering the leaps and strides made in nanotechnology and related fields, the idea of producing a social network accessed through synaptic connection to the human brain is not so untenable.  With this, the possibilities keep on popping up.  One particularly popular feature might be the ability to essentially look at someone’s future equivalent of a Facebook profile simply by looking at them — any fans of Eden of the East may find this very interesting.

     The future certainly holds an exciting potential for the world, whether we look as far off as a century or as close as a decade, it’s difficult not to become excited by such possibilities.  While we may not be able to troll the Milky Way with a balding captain on a faster-than-light starship, the good people of the world today can certainly anticipate such exciting technologies as advanced medical technologies, revolutions in communications and video gaming, and of course the robot apocalypse.

     Carnaval Brasileiro is a giant festival that originated in Brazil and is now celebrated all over the world; Austin hosts one of the biggest celebrations outside of Brazil itself. People dress up in flamboyant costumes and dance to authentic Brazilian samba music and have a great time. This event takes place February 4 through 5at the Palmer Event Center; tickets are $38 in advance and $40 at the door. This is the perfect event to let loose with friends and have a ball.

     The LIVESTRONG Austin marathon comes to Austin once a year to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation which benefits people with cancer and even funds cancer research.  The 26.2 mile course goes through some of Austin’s most charming and historic neighborhoods with 40 local, live bands cheering you on the whole way. This is a great way for family and friends to get outside and get active while, all for a great cause. You can register online at www.livestrong.org/AustinMarathon.

     The Star of Texas Fair and Rodeo is held in Austin every year, its lasts for two weeks, from March 11 to March 26, at the Travis County Expo Center. This event features a wide range of things to do for adults and kids alike. They offer ProRodeo events, daily and nightly concerts, a live stock show and the largest carnival in the Austin area. Tickets are available at the admissions gate and prices vary depending on what you want to do. Parking is $10 per car and season tickets are available as well. This is a great family event or just something fun to do with friends, eat authentic carnival food and ride a carousel or two. 

     South By SouthWest (SXSW) is a internationally recognized event held annually in Austin. It’s a chance for noted film makers, musicians, and multimedia artists to come together for one enormous affair. Music, film and interactive events all have separate days and tickets; music normally lasts for six days, interactive for five and film for nine. SXSW tickets for these events can be purchased on their website, www.sxsw.com, but there are lots of non SXSW related events happening downtown at the same time as SXSW that are free and open to the general public.  

     Austin is a great place for family, friends and fun. There is always something happening and it’s almost impossible not to have a good time. Go to one of these events and a exciting experience is almost guaranteed.

     First, in order to better understand the topic, a quick lesson in New World culture and mythology is in order.  The entirety of the world’s favorite doomsday theories have centered on the winter solstice of this year: December 21, 2012.  This date is connected heavily with the long-count calendar of the Maya tribes of Native Americans.  The Maya were a culture which used to reside in Mesoamerica; today, after the conquests of the Europeans and the introduction of Christianity into Mexico during the Columbian Exchange, much of what once made up the Mayan empire has been destroyed and buried under Eurocentric culture and the works of well-meaning pastors and reverends.  However, of the few fragments of Mayan culture, what does survive is the long-count calendar.  The Maya were phenomenal astronomers, which gave them the ability to accurately tell time, so to speak.  The calendar begins on a date which would correspond to August 11, 3114 BCE on the Gregorian calendar today, and this particular day was so significant to the Maya because, according to post-Conquest texts such as the Popol Vuh, this was the day on which the gods first created the world.  Since this day in the fourth millennium before the common era, there have been a grand total of three “creations” and two “apocalypses.”  Unlike people of today, the Maya thought of time as cyclical, not linear, and thus they saw history as one round after another of construction, destruction and then reconstruction — the world has seen three constructions, and two destructions, with the third scheduled for December 21, 2012.  With this in mind, like so very many world cultures, the end is not actually an end, but a new beginning.

     However, oddly enough, despite the fact that the Maya were a rather different culture compared to the Eurocentric world today, with a very alien mythology, this has stopped few from adopting the doomsday as their own apocalyptic date.  The adoption is really more of a crime of convenience than anything; the winter solstice of 2012 is so close one can almost touch it, which means that such a close end-day can be marketed far more energetically than an apocalypse to come a hundred or more years from now.

     As mentioned above, the various conceptions of the 2012 doomsday have been rather colorful: today, there are several scenarios, ones as relatively rational as the planet impacting with some sort of celestial object, and others so bizarre even Ralph Waldo Emerson would be hard-pressed to decode them.

     What seems to be most popular, however, is a sort of “death from above” end.  Several have theorized that an asteroid impact could fit the bill, which is a highly probable end for Earth on any day of the year, really.  Between Mars and Jupiter are belts of massive asteroids, some of which may have spawned the killers of the dinosaurs themselves.  All that is necessary for an impact between the Earth and one of these mountain-sized rocks is a game of planetary orbits; should Jupiter or Mars shift in relation to each other in some unordinary way, thus manipulating the unique balance of this asteroid belt, a few rogue rocks could conceivably be thrown in the Earth’s direction, left for this pale blue dot’s own gravity-well to turn the world into a catcher’s mitt.

     Colliding with a black hole may be a little more difficult to spin.  The fact is that black holes are bad neighbors in the universe right from their births; a black hole is often formed from a violent supernova gone wrong, when a massive dying star cannot stand up against its own gravity and eventually collapses into an object of incalculable density and unknown construction.  The initial supernova, however, is the real slap to the face when it comes to nearby stars; any object within a 25 light year radius will feel the effects of the solar blast.  Unfortunately for most advocates of a black hole colliding with the Earth, the nearest star to our own that may go supernova is about 600 light years away, pretty far out of town, and even if such a star were to collapse into a black hole the orbit of the stars around the galactic center is so cyclical it would be rather inconceivable for a singularity to take a several hundred light year leap from its local space to our own just to pay our planet a visit.  A more likely scenario is a micro-singularity, essentially the iPod Nano version of black holes, colliding with our sun and soaking up all the energy of the star, leaving this planet without a vital fuel source for heat, plant production, and so on.

     One last collision theory revolves around the Babylonian and Sumerian Nibiru.  There once was a man named Zecharia Sitchin, who, like every average Joe, believed the world had been visited repeatedly throughout history by aliens.  In this vein, Sitchin interpreted several ancient Babylonian and Sumerian texts about a god named Nibiru, represented as a star or celestial object in the sky (a common Near Eastern image for gods and souls), as documenting a collision between the Earth and a planet named after this same god.  Sitchin and advocates of his theory postulate that the poems in question speak from experience, documenting an ancient historical event when this planet Nibiru nearly collided with the Earth and essentially left the inhabitants shaken up, with a subsequent “second-run” to occur in 2012, when Nibiru will actually collide with our planet.  Unfortunately for Mr. Sitchin, his theory is invalid for two reasons: firstly, there are no other cultures in the world to collaborate the story (when an entire planet nearly hits your own you can bet the whole block will be abuzz with gossip); and secondly, if such a catastrophe were to occur then ironically there would more than likely be no one left to recount the day’s events.

     While the majority of the 2012 theories are wildly unprecedented, some teetering on the brinks of insanity and foolishness, many have nonetheless been caught up in the whimsy of it all.  Oddly enough, humanity seems to hold a rather morbid fascination with its own end, and the more gruesome the better.  For the rest of us, however, 2012 is just another Y2K, and all that can really be done when it comes to people who refuse to listen to reason is to wait for the shoe to drop — come December 21, 2012, anticipate high frequencies of ridiculous behavior; come midnight of December 22, please don’t laugh too loudly at your friends.

     Nowadays, in a burgeoning young 2012, the Internet has since blossomed with a smoldering mass of unknown bands with all degrees of obscurity, the latest pop music darlings, and everything else imaginable. Websites like Bandcamp and SoundCloud have shortened the gap between curious music fans and anyone who can create music and post it online. Not only that, with DIY blogs like Tumblr and Blogspot, countless music blogs have spawned over the years, showcasing new and established artists of the bloggers’ own interest. Pandora Radio is also becoming a popular way to discover new and unheard music from your chosen artists and genres.

     Of course, with the innovation and freedom of the Internet comes the flipside consequence; illegal downloading, torrenting and otherwise acquiring unpaid music stacking up in the everyday citizen’s iTunes library creates the void of lost money for record labels, individual artists and bands who worked hard for the royalties they deserve. On the other side of the coin, artists often peddle their recordings for free online, offering up download links on their Bandcamp or website in order to get new ears to hear their music and hopefully convert them to fans who would be willing to shell out some cash for later music by the artists. This kind of promotion has been rising in an era where most of us prefer free stuff rather than taking a chance. Indie music, once a term relegated to college power-punk bands and post-rock pop outfits, has strangely become “mainstream,” with the gap between promising independent artists and the radio and news shrinking day by day. The music scenes previously exclusive to those “in-the-know” and the aggravatingly ‘hipster’ are opening up more and more.

      Music is never illustrated by one single factor or set of genres. No longer are there base mediums such as “Rock,” “Hip Hop,” “Pop,” or “Electronic.” Infinite blends and cohesions between genres have been boldly created and popularized. In the age of the Internet which furnishes a generation adapted to technology since birth, it has become almost necessity for any artists or bands with aspirations to succeed to use the Internet as a springboard. This is certainly not to say that promoting yourself locally and doing shows would hurt. However, the importance of such a tangible and instantaneous connection to potential fans worldwide is undeniable, and the benefits are clear as crystal.