Head in the clouds

Ok, this is going to start out a little bit techy today but that's where my head is right now. So feel free to skip ahead if this isn't your cup of tea.

There is more and more talk about Cloud Computing lately and here's an interesting article on the Google/Apple Cloud convergence. I went searching for a high level overview of what this Cloud Computing is all about and found this article. Basically this is a way of serving software from a centralized, network server rather than installing it on the end users desktop or laptop;

ie. reading your Yahoo email through the Internet on Yahoo's website instead of MS Outlook running on your laptop. Love it when the computing industry comes up with these clever names for things that have been around for a while. This is really not much more than the basic 3-tier architecture software. For the past 10 years I've been administering and developing Remedy applications in this manner. Tier 1 is server side which 'serves' the application/database and so on, Tier 2 (middle tier) is the web interface allowing Tier 3 (End User) access to the files/data through the Internet. By doing this you reduce the footprint of the end user's desktop/laptop by offloading off of the user to the server. Ok, actually this is like going way back to the olden days when you just had a dumb terminal and keyboard connected to the mainframe. So, what's old is new again.

I've also been going through a PHP tutorial today which is fun. I've been stuck back in .asp too long. Next up, Web 2.0 and Jquery.

Now for the knitting content of my blog...

I am working on the Simple Garter vest from Folk Vests. This is another wonderful knitting book by Cheryl Oberle. I've named this one Simply Van Gogh since the way the variegated Jojoland Rhythm yarn is working up reminds me of a Van Gogh painting (see pic at the top of this post). This was a perfectly mindless knitting project for working on while watching the Super Bowl ads and half time show. As a side note here my 2 fave ads were the Fetching Bud Horse and the Love Sick Circus Bud Horse. I'll catch you up on my current sock in progress tomorrow.

News from The Knitting Hutch ...

Last week I received a very nice phone call from Mike at Maggi Knits. Maggi Jackson is an amazing knitwear designer from Ireland with a wonderful collection of yarns. Last year I attempted to carry her items in the shop but it was not an easy feat with the distributor at the time. Well I was very happy to hear that Maggi is distributing her yarns and books directly here in the US. So, I will be bringing these back in the shop very soon. In the meantime I do have some of her linen/cotton blend, mist slub and rag in stock so take a look.

Enjoy and knit on!