Nordstrom tests drive-by curbside pickups for online orders

Store pickups give you the luxury of shopping online without waiting days for deliveries, but there’s still one big hassle involved: you have to, y’know, enter the store. That won’t be a problem if Nordstrom’s latest experiment pans out. Several of the retail chain’s locations (including its Seattle flagship) are testing an option that lets you pick up an internet order while staying in your car. All you do is call or text when you’re near the shop, and a staffer will wait for you outside. There’s no word on whether or not Nordstrom will expand the streetside option, but here’s hoping that it does. This would not only save you time picking up a new wardrobe when you’re in a rush, but spare you from hunting for that elusive downtown parking spot.

[Image credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images]

Filed under: Internet

Comments

Source: Puget Sound Business Journal

To keep a Boeing Dreamliner flying, reboot once every 248 days

The 787 Dreamliner has been plagued with battery woes since its early days, to the point where the Federal Aviation Administration kept it from flying the skies in the past. And while those technical difficulties are apparently taken care of, Boeing’s flagship airliner could be on the way to more trouble soon. According to the FAA, there’s a software bug in the 787 Dreamliner that can cause its electrical system to fail and, as a result, lead to “loss of control” of the plane. But why? The FAA says this is triggered by the aircraft’s electrical generators, which could give out if they have been powered on continuously for over eight months.

248 days == 2^31 100ths of a second. even in 2015, our airplanes have integer overflow bugs https://t.co/6Z8d4y9gjM

– Fiora Aeterna☄ (@FioraAeterna) May 1, 2015

“A Model 787 airplane that has been powered continuously for 248 days can lose all alternating current electrical power due to the generator control units simultaneously going into failsafe mode,” the FAA said in a statement warning of the flaw. “We are issuing this AD to prevent loss of all AC electrical power, which could result in loss of control of the airplane.” Boeing, for its part, is aware of the problem and has reset the power on 787 Dreamliners currently in service. Most importantly, the company’s already working on an update that will patch the software vulnerability — though there’s no word on when its jets will receive it.

[Image credit: Associated Press]

Filed under: Transportation

Comments

Via: The Hill

Source: Federal Aviation Administration

NASA’s 10-engine electric UAV now flies as well as it hovers

NASA’s ten-engine UAV, dubbed the Greased Lightning (GL-10), recently showed off a slick new trick in the skies over Hampton, Virginia. The drone, which is under development by a team at the Langley Research Center, had already passed its initial hovering tests last August; but that was the easy part. As the long and miserable development of the V-22 Osprey has shown, the real challenge is switching over from hover mode to conventional forward flight without the vehicle falling out of the sky. But on Thursday, NASA’s battery-powered tilt-rotor aircraft successfully did just that.

“During the flight tests we successfully transitioned from hover to wing-borne flight like a conventional airplane then back to hover again. So far we have done this on five flights,” aerospace engineer Bill Fredericks said in a statement. “We were ecstatic. Now we’re working on our second goal — to demonstrate that this concept is four times more aerodynamically efficient in cruise than a helicopter.”

Should the GL-10 prove its aerodynamic ability, the Langley team hopes to spin the technology off into a number of commercial applications including small package delivery (put your hand down, Amazon) or industrial/agricultural surveillance. And as Fredericks continued, “a scaled up version–much larger than what we are testing now–would make also a great one to four person size personal air vehicle.”

[Image credits: NASA Langley/David C. Bowman and Gary Banziger]

Filed under: Transportation, Science

Comments

Source: NASA

Cooking with Watson: Indian turmeric paella

‘Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson‘ is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Once a week, as part of an ongoing series, we’ll be preparing one recipe from the book until we’ve made all of them. Wish us luck.

So, here’s a question: Is it still a paella if it doesn’t involve olive oil or saffron, and doesn’t generally represent the flavors of Spain? At what point does it become a pilaf or, since this particular recipe is brimming with spices from the Indian subcontinent, a biryani? Really the only discernible quality that this Indian turmeric paella has that screams “paella” is the presence of socarrat — the toasty, browned rice that sits at the bottom of the pan. Oh, and the presentation. And so, here we go again, Watson and his human interpreters from the Institute for Culinary education take a seemingly familiar dish and, with a little computer-generated nudge, create something wholly unfamiliar.

The first challenge here is finding fresh curry leaves. Thankfully, Staten Island has a healthy Sri Lankan contingent, and I was able to find the elusive herb in unmarked bags (clearly packaged by hand) stashed alongside stale cans of Arizona iced tea in a small grocery store. If you’re not lucky enough to have an Indian, Sri Lankan or other South or Southeast Asian grocer nearby, you might have to make do with dry curry leaves from the internet. They don’t have quite the same flavor, but they’ll have to do in a pinch.

Otherwise though, this is not a particularly difficult ingredient list to pull together. Sure, you might not find all the right produce in the first megamart you walk into, but it’s not like poblano peppers are a specialty item. And, even though the sheer number of items in this dish is staggering, it’s not terribly complicated. All of the techniques are pretty simple, even if you don’t have all the required gear like a pressure cooker or a paella (the pan, not the meal). I only have so much room in my tiny NYC kitchen, and I made the choice (rightly or not), that a slow cooker was more important than a pressure cooker. So instead of quickly brewing up the ham hock stock in 60 minutes, I had to cook it in a crock pot over low heat for about eight hours. It also turned out that my paella was too small to cook this recipe in, so I used a nonstick pan and just made sure to crank the heat toward the end to get that nice crisp layer of socarrat at the bottom.

See, here’s the truth: Making a paella is basically just tossing stuff in a pan and waiting the proper amount of time. Sure you have to do things in the right order and stagger the ingredients to pull out the right flavors, but making agar pearls this is not. The most difficult technique here is julienning the mango. Doing it manually with a knife takes skill and patience, but it’s certainly not impossible. In fact, there are plenty of great instructional videos online (like the one below). Or, you can cheat like me and just get a mandoline with a julienne attachment. For those that don’t know, a mandoline is just a slicer where you slide food over stationary, razor-sharp blades for super-thin cuts. Adding blades perpendicular to the main one in 1/8-inch intervals gives you easy julienne.

#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-208033display:none; .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-208033, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-208033width:630px;display:block;

trydocument.getElementById(“fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-208033″).style.display=”none”;catch(e)

The only real problem I ran into was making the “crisp” spinach. See, hot oil and water don’t really get along so well. And, as it turns out, baby spinach holds a whole lot of moisture in its adorable green leaves. This means lots of splattering and hot oil getting everywhere. It’s messy; it can stain your clothes; and hurts like a mutha’ (shut yo’ mouth). Invest in a splatter screen. Seriously. Or don’t even try this.

One thing not to skimp on though is that mango salad. It makes the dish.

This is definitely one of the less flashy recipes in the book. In fact, it pretty well highlights what Watson can do for even a novice chef. There’s no meat glue or strange chemical additives here. No high-tech kitchen gadgets. Just the flavors of one region being brought to the national dish of another. It was also the most successful dish so far with my taste testers. This pretty non-traditional take on the paella disappeared. And quick.

Indian turmeric paella

Smoked Ham Hock Stock

1 pound smoked ham hocks
1 pound beef chuck, cubed and seared
1 quart vegetable stock
2 sprigs fresh mint
2 branches fennel greens

1. Place the ham hocks, chuck, vegetable stock, mint and fennel greens in a pressure cooker. Bring to pressure over medium heat and cook for one hour.

2. Strain the stock and reserve.

3. Remove the skin and bones from the ham hocks, cut the meat into chunks and reserve. Pull the beef into large pieces — do not shred — and reserve.

Paella

¼ cup clarified butter
10 cardamom pods
1 branch fresh curry leaves
1 cup Idaho potato, diced
1 whole poblano pepper, diced
1 cup fennel bulb, diced
5 cloves garlic, chopped
2 ½ cups bomba or Arborio rice
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon curry powder
½ teaspoon nutmeg, grated
¼ cup light rum
1 ¼ cups ham hock stock
2 ½ cups vegetable stock
Kosher salt, as needed
Cherry tomatoes, halved, for garnish

1. Heat the butter in a paella or large nonstick sauté pan. Add the cardamom and curry leaves. Cook until lightly browned and very aromatic.

2. Add the potatoes and sauté one minute. Add the poblano and fennel, sauté one minute. Add the garlic and cook.

3. Stir in the rice, turmeric, curry powder and nutmeg. When the rice is well-toasted, deglaze the pan with rum and cook until completely dry.

4. Add the stock and meat. Stir well and season to taste with salt. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer approximately 20 minutes (until all of the liquid has been absorbed and the rice on the bottom of the pan begins to brown).

5. To serve, top the paella pan with the cherry tomatoes, green mango salad and fried spinach (recipes to follow).

Green Mango Salad

½ green mango, julienned
2 teaspoons lime juice
2 tablespoons green Anaheim chile, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon fresh mint, chopped
Kosher salt, as needed

1. Combine the mango, lime juice, chile and mint. Mix well and season to taste with salt.

Crisp Spinach

1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup baby spinach

1. Heat the oil in a sauté pan to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Add the spinach and cook, stirring gently until crisp. Remove immediately and drain on paper towels.

This recipe and others can be found in Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson.

Filed under: Household

Comments