Monday June 28, 2004

Will the real Plain Layne please stand up?

"I am Plain Layne". Remember the TV game show where contestants had to figure out which of the three (four?) panelists was the real deal? I've been reading the comment thread of one of the Plain Layne officionados, and apparently I am Plain Layne:

There was tech company called Integrity Solutions. IS went through a series of restructurings in the mid 90's. In '97 Project Manager, Russell Hayes and Business Development analyst(and self-professed novelist), Odin Soli left IS to begin a new venture. Joined by cash-cropper Paul Soli, they formed AgWave. It was there intent to use the internet to help midwestern farmers.

They soon moved offices to Minnetonka, MN and with capitol provided by Lang Communications set up shop. They shortly became AgDomain.com. Lang Comm. is related to KX Investments, Inc. Both are presumably funded by Dale Lang, who cut his teeth on magazine advertising, and televesion station ownership.

Lang was made chairman and placed his business associate, Rob Jensen in charge of finances. Jensen had spent time in Africa during the 60's.

At least two people joined AgDomain from IS. Mark Saarinen came in and took over sales. Lance Lavandowska was hired as a lead developer. Lance is well versed in java, perl, etc. He helped roll out a website function that would enable agricultural retailers to set up free web pages and email service to be hosted by AgDomain.

Sometime around 2000, a decision was made to take this webpage creation tool and market it to other sites. Aptura was born. Aptura was located in the same building as AgDomain, and shared a phone line as well. Lang, Soli, and Jensen were all carried over from AgDomain and Chris Lang was put in charge of Business Development.

Lance Lavandowska and Mark Saarinen both worked for aptura. Lance wrote a well respected piece on JSP Architecture which was hosted on Aptura's server. Sometime around 2001, Lance moved the JSP article to Brainopolis.com. He set up a technical blog there and also a personal blog for his wife.

2001 was also the first year of archived posts from Acanit on the Aptura domain. This was then followed by Layne.

Although, there are some oddities, nothing directly ties Lance to Layne. Lance currently is involved in developing blogging tools.

Posted by: Greg at 16.06.04 19:05

I am Plain Layne. Not.
( Jun 28 2004, 11:52:19 AM ) News Permalink [Trackback]

Plain Odin

From time-to-time I came across references to "Plain Layne", a Minnesotan like me. I never read the blog but noted that my brother spells his name the same way (I did not know that Plain Layne was a female, let alone a lesbian).

And today I find out that Plain Layne was my former boss and current friend. Odin is not plain in any way. Now I'm curious to go back and read Plain Layne, to see what - if any - details of our startup come through on the blog.

Man, I can't believe he didn't share this with me. I could've held my tongue, honest!
( Jun 28 2004, 11:00:14 AM ) News Permalink [Trackback] [Link]

Wednesday June 23, 2004

The Fable of the Dragon

From MetaFilter, a fable. Can you identify the Dragon?
( Jun 23 2004, 02:36:48 PM ) Personal Permalink [Trackback] [Link]

Tuesday June 15, 2004

Re: Worst RSS and Atom article ever

As you may have guessed, I support Atom. But I am distressed when Atom (and RSS) are represented so poorly as in the article that Phil rips apart. What got a chuckle out of me was this line of Phil's:

If you are creating your own RSS feed by continually scraping your own HTML, you really need to fire your entire IT staff.

If this is representative of their current quality I'm glad I let my subscription to New Scientist lapse.

Of course, Dave Winer has to follow that up with his own potshot at Atom:

... it's totally clear now that Atom is no more "open" than RSS is.

The only thing I saw in there that suggested any such thing was a quote from Winer himself.
( Jun 15 2004, 08:06:57 AM ) Atom Permalink [Trackback]

Wednesday June 09, 2004

Good text mouseovers

I've been looking for something like this. Found via JavaRSS.com.
( Jun 09 2004, 03:59:55 PM ) Technology Permalink Comments [1] [Trackback]

Resin author blogging

Resin is still my favorite "servlet engine", so I'm glad to see Scott Ferguson blogging.
( Jun 09 2004, 12:13:52 PM ) Technology Permalink [Trackback]

For further reading on today's posts:

Feelings and Thoughts: Tooltips in JavaScript : Via Lance

Tuesday June 08, 2004

Matt is back! Yeah!
( Jun 08 2004, 01:40:23 PM ) Personal Permalink [Trackback]

Friday June 04, 2004

Re: Public Exposure

Rather than displaying my "ignore words" on this page I created a Veloci-Page to list them in XML. This is one short step in sharing this list.

Because I'm actually pulling this data from a field not meant for sharing, I cannot add the things that would make it useful, such as a LastModified timestamp (which would inform you if you need to update your information). But this does get us on the way towards something like MT-Blacklist ( Comment Spam clearinghouse) and Blam!.

Post your suggestions as comments, please.
( Jun 04 2004, 09:59:47 AM ) Technology Permalink [Trackback]