Like an eternal tattoo, if you plan on getting yourself turned into a record when you die you had best be careful about what track you want to be remembered by — will it be a one-hit wonder or a timeless classic?

Morbid or amazing depending on your point of view, Ask Studio is an offering of British company Andvinyl that involves pressing your cremains into a series of musical discs.

Each record has 24 minutes of audio (12 per side) and a single person’s cremated remains can be turned into up to 30 such discs. You can even pick which body parts become which disc, apparently (though how they separate those out in the cremation process is probably up to you).

Music is not the only option, either — the user supplies the sound, so it can be a song or simply a message to a family member, spouse, friend or other loved one. Labels feature the name, birth and death dates of the deceased. Album artwork can also be customized.

You can even have them shipped to vinyl stores for resale if you’re into that sort of thing (and if the participating shop is game to sell human remains). It’s not cheap (a few thousand dollars) but neither is burial! Pets welcome as well (Pet Cemetery soundtrack, perhaps?).

The post Spin Me Right Round: Company Presses Cremated Ashes into Playable Vinyl Records first appeared on Gajitz.

Looking like some kind of next-generation kayak, the Eta speedbike with pilot Todd Reichert now holds the global record for fastest human-powered vehicle.

He and the team of AeroVelo competed in the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, where serious cyclists tuck in and try to beat previous records. They ramp up over 5 miles before hitting a stretch of ultra-flat pavement for 600 feet – the key strip of road is repaved each year to make it as smooth and level as possible.

“If you were to describe what the team at AeroVelo does, “human-powered world firsts” would be a fair answer. The team’s Snowbird ornithopter (flapping wing craft) managed a world-first 19-second self sustained flight in 2010. In 2013, the crew would bag the coveted Sikorsky prize, which required a controlled human-powered helicopter to fly for one minute. The land speed record, therefore, was the next logical prize.”

From their website: “Advances are made by pushing limits. We are limited only by the power output of the human body. This forces us to approach each challenge from the perspective of conserving energy and creating the most efficient vehicle possible.”

The post World’s Fastest Human-Powered Vehicle Can Hit 86 MPH first appeared on Gajitz.

Breaking the world record for the highest-capacity SDXC card in the world, this design by Western Digital’s SanDisk comes just 16 years after the company shocked the world with a 64-megabyte version with 1/16,384th the storage capacity (and two years after their 512 GB one).

There is a lot of talk about Moore’s Law slowing down, but this prototype shows that there are still limits to be pushed. The disk is not commercially available yet, but SanDisk sees the need for more storage in the face of 4K and 8K footage plus 360-degree video and virtual reality cinematography.

Of course, when it does come out it will no doubt be expensive and somewhat slow – you sacrifice cost and speed advantages the higher you go – but for most of us, well, our whole digital lives could probably fit on this disk.

The post New 1 Terabyte SD Card: Record-Breaking Storage Capacity first appeared on Gajitz.

A recently-patented, rocket-powered jet designed by Airbus is akin to the classic fast-paced Concorde, but this 2.0 version blows away the latter’s Mach 2 capacity with a top cruising speed of Mach 4.5 (or: 3000 MPH, more than four times the speed of sound) at an altitude of 100,000 feet.

The jet uses a series of three engines to create a sequential set of speed boosts, maximizing acceleration and deceleration at each stage to minimize time spent during take offs and landings. Twin turbojets beneath the body and a rocket motor in the rear also allow the machine to lift off and land vertically. Hydrogen ramjets – yes, the kind used to propel missiles – get the contraption to its cruising speed and altitude.

Approved by the US Patents and Trademarks Office, this fantastic flying machine could pick you up in New York City and drop you off in London just one hour later.  Of course, you’ll have to be seated in rotating hammocks on the new Concorde 2.0 to handle the forces involved. Apparently there is a plan to help the vehicle dissipate its sonic booms – the prior iteration could not reach supersonic speeds over land without having severely negative impacts for those on the ground below.

The post Concorde 2.0: Hypersonic Jet Takes 1 Hour from US to UK first appeared on Gajitz.

No need to hit ‘Save’ when you are finished with a sketch or idea and want to move on – simply scroll further along the roll to store your creation in a physical archive.

Safe from power outages and surges, remote hackers and obsolescent operating systems, the Analog Memory Desk was designed and effectively open-sourced by MCAD student Kristen Camara.

Rolled up below but available on demand, thousands of feet of butcher paper  are connected to the legs supporting the surface above. The top, meanwhile, will record anything from scribbles to coffee stains. “1,100 yards of paper will record the lists, the phones numbers you call once, the pixel size of that box on that website, the street name of that business, and the long division you try to remember.”

Licensed Creative Commons, anyone can download the plans and build their own version of this desk. “I’ve come to realize that I’m somewhat obsessed with how we remember the past. This is the latest installment in that series and a more serious attempt at furniture making. There are a hundreds of little things that we don’t try to remember every year or even every week. Does the sum of all these tiny parts produce a new narrative on our lives?”

The post DIY Analog Memory Desk: 3,300 Feet of Scrolling Paper first appeared on Gajitz.