Blog and rants

Portable Sound Wave Levitation

| A is for Rebel

Did you know that you can levitate objects with sound waves?

… and even more amazing, someone has made the technology portable!

Check out the video to see a portable levitation device in action. It uses sound waves to trap an object in seemingly empty space. The object will defy gravity even when the device is held upside down.

This technology on a larger scale could be used to move massive objects. (Might need some high grade ear defenders though).

It has even been speculated that sound wave levitation was known to our ancient ancestors, but became lost in time. Could it have been used to lift the massive blocks used to construct the great pyramids?

Let me know your thoughts… share or follow. 🙂

Awesome Marble Music Machine

| A is for Rebel

This video is from way back in 2016… But I’ve only just discovered it and feel it’s definitely worth a share. Exceptional workmanship to create a machine that can do this with marbles.


Not only is it an amazing machine… but the song is an absolute banger!

Wintergatan – Marble Machine (music instrument using 2000 marbles)
Marble Machine built and composed by Martin Molin Video filmed and edited by Hannes Knutsson

Check out their website for more details at: https://wintergatan.net/

Let me know your thoughts… share or follow. It’s all good 🙂

The Amazing Sounds Of Outer Space

Amazing Sounds Of Outer Space
| A is for Rebel

Telescopes allow us to see what outer space looks like in different types of light, by transforming digital information captured in space by telescopes such as Hubble and X-ray observatories such as Chandra.

NASA, the US space agency, recently developed a way to allow people to listen to outer space. They have done this by converting the light from the Milky Way, as observed in X-rays, light rays and infrared rays, into audio.

The new project uses a process called “sonication” to transform astronomical images into something we can listen to.

The Sound of space

Sonification translates data into sound. Each sound represents the positions and brightness of distant stars and galaxies in the outer reaches of space.

The brighter the object, the higher it’s pitch will be. The intensity of the light controls the volume of the audio.

Sound plays an important role in our understanding of our world and space. For further information, and more space sonification clips, visit NASA

Source: phys.org

Let me know what you think in the comments, or get in touch.

Lindos, Rhodes – July 2014

| A is for Rebel

Just returned from a recent trip to the town of Lindos, on the Greek island of Rhodes. I’d like to  share some of my photos.
Lindos is a beautiful scenic town with some breathtaking views. It’s not a big place but it is tightly packed with fantastic restaurants, bars, shops and a couple of nightclubs (if you stay up till around 2am).
Lindos is an extremely hilly place, not ideal for the old or unfit. You could, however, just hail a donkey to take you up the steepest inclines to the ancient Acropolis overlooking the town.
Enjoy my photos and leave a comment. I’d really love to know your thoughts.

Scooter at Lindion sunrise
Boat trip in crystal water
Move towards the light
Pillars at the Acropolis, Lindos
Typical Lindian building
Beatiful Lindos sea view
Lindos’ only Wifi Router
Sky, rock, sea sandwich
Lindos boat triangle.
Lindos view from the Acropolis
Donkey with a booboo
One of the many winding, cobbled Lindos streets
Serene Lindos sea scape
Awakened by goats
Hills, steps, more hills & repeat
Souvenier tile giftshop
Above Lindos
Handy door knocker
Acropolis ramparts
Volcanically created bay
Subtle Sunset
6am Sunrise – Worth the wait
Old hatch – Love the Greek colour
Acropolis pillars and steps
Perspective
To the beach
Patched up Acropolis wall
Stone AT-AT
Hang on in there, No Entry Bear
Winding Lindos steps
Gentle gradients at sunset

All images taken on iPhone 5 – Cropped and tweaked in Adobe Photoshop

| A is for Rebel

My Personalised Pantone’d portraits Kickstarter project has now Launched.
Please take 1 minute to watch the video above and then check out my promo page and bag yourself a quality piece of art.

pantoned small
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexpatterson/pantoned-personalised-colour-swatch-portraits

Please re-blog this and help me spread the word and be a big part in Pantoned’s future history. 🙂

Get your own photo created in Pantone swatches. Personalised Pantone’d portraits available now – CLICK HERE!

Mashing up Daft Punk

| A is for Rebel

Love Daft Punk, Love this Mash Up and love the graphic treatment. Amazing!

it's a small web

The anatomy of a mash up. Cameron Adams, aka “The Man in Blue”, mashed up, edited and remixed some of his favourite Daft Punk songs. Definitive Daft Punk reveals the entire structure of Daft Punk’s track list: the cutting, layering, levels and equalisation of 23 different songs.

By dividing up the sound data for each song and computing its appearance in realtime, the visualisation combines a circular waveform of each of the songs concurrently being played with an audio map timeline at the bottom showing each song color-coded.

See also:

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F### Yeah! I got a Liebster Award

| A is for Rebel

I couldn’t believe my eye holes recently when I recieved a message in my comments telling me that my blog had been nominated for a prestigious Liebster award. Possibly the first of many accolades, but i’ll try to refrain from getting ahead of myself. It’s not very often you feel noticed in the gigantic world of the internet so even the smallest bit of recognition is more than appreciated.
I was nominated by the fantastic and talented ‘found this, painted that.’ (If you aren’t following it already, you’re missing out). Go and follow it now before continuing….. I’ll wait.
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…
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Followed it? fantastic, then we can continue.
The acceptance of my Liebster award comes with a few little hoops to jump through. That is par for the course with everything in life though. hmmm :/

Ok, here are the rules:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog and link back to them in your post.
Hmmm, I think I already did that but they deserve a second link in case you skipped the bit where I told you to follow them already. Thankyou ‘found this, painted that.’ keep up the good work.

2. Answer the 11 questions from the nominator, list 11 random facts about yourself and create 11 questions for your nominees.
See below for this stuff.

3. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 11 blogs who you feel deserve to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen.
Ok, I’ll have to do that over the next week or so.

4. Copy and Paste the blog award on your blog.

liebster-award2

(Copied and pasted this whole section and award image came along for the ride Yay!) I’ve also put it on my main banner. I’m so proud.
Note: (These are the “rules” but please feel free to do as you wish. If you have 5 bloggers to nominate instead of 11, and you can only think of 7 random facts about yourself – that’s perfectly fine! )

Questions from ‘Found this painted that’, to me.

  • 1. If you were a superhero, what would your powers be? – Evil Psychic hypnotist.
  • 2. What colour is your bedroom? – A tasteful cream with an accent wall of blue/grey.
  • 3. What’s your idea of the best gift to give? – Anything hand made or with some personal thought put into it.
  • 4. If you could only choose one, would you be beautiful or smart? – Smart
  • 5. What’s the longest amount of time you were away from your home? – Other than when I was at University, only a couple of weeks. That kind of makes me sad for some reason.
  • 6. What do you consider to be the hardest thing you’ve ever done? – I once did a skydive. but adrenalin got me through it.
  • 7. When are you most creative? A.M or P.M – Without a shadow of doubt I’m a night time person. P.M.
  • 8. Ocean or mountains? – I love to surf so it has to be the ocean.
  • 9. Book or computer? – Computer. Sadly, I never seem to have time to read much anymore.
  • 10. Dog or cat? – Dogs are much better but I like that cats have some level of freedom.
  • 11. Coffee or tea? – Coffee. More caffeine the better.

11 Random facts about me:

  • 1. Been playing video games since I was 4 years old in 1980.
  • 2. Can’t stomach mayonaise but have nothing against its ingredients.
  • 3. Life motto, is a cynical ‘question everything’.
  • 4. Favourite comedy is ‘Monty Pythons Life of Brian’
  • 5. I can’t grow a full beard.
  • 6. Hate getting my haircut even though my mother is a hairdresser.
  • 7. I really like biting into blocks of cheese. – guilty pleasure.
  • 8. I’ve arranged my DVD collection into colour order.
  • 9. I have watched ‘First Blood’ more than any other movie. – great film.
  • 10. I very rarely get bored. I can always find something to waste my time.
  • 11. One of my front two teeth is dead, the other is smashed in half and capped.

My questions for my nominees:

1. What is the best car you have driven?
2. How much wood can a wood chuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
3. What is the first single or album you bought?
4. What is your guilty pleasure?
5. Starwars (original trilogy – prequels don’t exist) or Star trek?
6. Savoury snacks (Crisps(chips if US),olives,pretsils) or sweet snacks (Jellies, chocolate, candy)?
7. Should you throw food out if it says its out of date or trust your nose?
8. What is it called when you slide your scissors through paper or fabric without squeezing them?
9. What is your favourite ‘go to’ website?
10. What really annoys you or creeps you out, even though it really shouldn’t.
11. If you’re not from the UK, what is your perception of British people? If you are, slag of the yanks! haha!

Can’t wait to see all your crazy answers.
Thankyou for your likes, follows, comments and most of all for inspiring me to actually do some creative stuff, rather than watching tv, looking at websites, playing playstation, eating pizza, watching movies and generally procrastinating.

Big thanks again to ‘found this, painted that.’