Daland's Personal Blog

William Kamkwamba

Dale — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:36:40 +0000

It was shortly after this year’s TEDGlobal Conference that I heard about William Kamkwamba. To quote from the Sydney Morning Herald,

William Kamkwamba, a 19-year-old high school student, first saw the internet at a TEDGlobal conference last month in Arusha, Tanzania. He was invited to the event – which aims to promote an exchange of ideas in the fields of technology, entertainment and design – after Malawi’s Daily Times newspaper covered his efforts to generate electricity for his parents’ farm by building a windmill of his own design.
The windmill is remarkable because Kamkwamba left school at 14 as his family was unable to pay the school fees. Armed only with his intelligence, a book on electricity, some plastic piping and found objects, Kamkwamba built his first windmill, which generated enough power to run a light in his room.

William now has a blog where you can keep track of his endeavors. He is a truly remarkable young man and an inspiration to others. We wish him the best and we’re confident he has a great future ahead of him.

Invite Share

Dale — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:45:03 +0000

Getting invites to a private beta just got a wole lot easier with Invite Share. For the past month or so I’ve been searching for a Joost invite. I tried Michael Arrington’s new site, Invite Share, and within a day I had my invite. A great concept, and a great website.

Big Production

Dale — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:22:06 +0000

I finally have Big Production up. I still have a lot of content, forms, etc to get up there but at least it’s a start. Oh, and yes, it feels strange building a standard website from scratch; very old school. I guess I’ve been working off blogs and writing applications for work for too long. But at least it’s fun and that’s what it’s all about, at least for now.

Merlin’s War on Clutter

Dale — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:58:35 +0000

Merlin Mann has some great posts about his war on clutter. The first of ther series can be found here. This really struck home with us, as AJ and I are getting ready to start jettisoning crap over the next few months.

Plus, I love this quote from Peter Walsh’s book, It’s All Too Much:

If the stuff that you accumulate doesn’t help get you closer to the life you want to have, it’s simply not worth keeping. Period.

Thunder on the Ohio

Dale — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:14:37 +0000

Here’s some of the video I just finished from this past weekend’s Thunder on the Ohio.

Evansville

Dale — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:38:40 +0000

Well, the bags are packed, the work is just about done, and we’ll be heading home to Atlanta tomorrow morning. We’re currently in our “Other” home, Evansville, Indiana. I guess our “Other/Other” home can be considered Wilmington Island, Georgia. There is something liberating about creating my first post for this blog from a hotel room. Even more so, from a place that we have really come to love. Atlanta is O.K., but it has simply become a tool for us; a place to do what we have to do. The growth over the last 15 or so years has wore us thin.

As we drive home tomorrow I will savor the flatland, the countless corn fields and the soy beans. I still have no idea what they do with all that soy, I’ll need to ask sometime. Evansville is middle America in so many ways. It is what Atlanta once was.

It’s been a great week and we look forward to coming back, hopefully in October. We have a lot of photos and hopefully some video to post next week. I’ll also be working on getting this blog off the ground over the next week or so. I looks like “I’m back”!