The end of suffering does not imply the end of love. Their love will stay with us for ever. Today both my mother and my father in law left us officially to go to higher spheres..... It was a dark day casting shadows forward.....

The concept that all content becomes digital, the internet solves the distribution problem and those companies that can do something smart with this combination will be incredibly successful is appealing to many. At today's Immovator session the topic was IPTV. more then half a dozen Dutch companies shared their boxes and software with a couple of hundred people in Hilversum. Replying to the question: "When will half of the Dutch population use these boxes and software to enjoy all this content on their couch?" the answers varied from 2 to 8 years. Some way to go.....

The big 5 party. Most of Roderick' s friends joined in today to celebrate my little boys fith birthday.....

The powerranger suit! The ultimate for a five year old. Happy nipper ;)

I did a duo yesterday by both presenting the case for the digital creative and being a jury member on behalf of the Ducth Creative Industry fund at the Kapitaaldag in the Casino in Breda. Jerry Heystee did an excellent job moderating an interesting programme followed by pitches of local entrepreneurs. Tom Pfaffen, Ariend den Haan and I selected The Flexmill project from Breda as the overall winner. Tom will share this pitch at BNR.

Roderick became 5 yesterday. But the teacher of group B had her birthday party yesterday too, so we decided to push the official birthday for today.... big big party and a happy little big man.

The French mountains bring a totally different perspective. Close to the Mont Blanc innovation, multimedia, new media etc. sometimes appear to be happening on a much lower pace. The rationale behind that proved to be one of the group running enormous downloads....

This morning the official launch of Tribler took place in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I had to leave the conference to fly to Switzerland. It did mean though that Tribler was available in both Switzerland and France only a few hours later.

The ICT~office gala was very nice. A good combination of interesting people, music, food, snacks and drinks. The key message in the openingsaddress was that 2006 will be another year of growth, just as 2005 was. Again with a structural shortage of people to get the job done unfortunately....

As I imagined the biggest hit of the new iMac is photobooth. Roderick has claimed the iMac as 'his' now and is flabbergasted by the fun of the picture application......

My Leicas were firing on all cylinders today as I was asked to cover the Dutchbloggies. Over 400 pictures taken and nearly half of them have been posted on flickr, with a first for me using the flickruploadr. What a great tool!

The event was fascinating and all congratulations to Frank Meeuwsen and the rest of the crew and a special mention to Gabe of Xolo.tv for the great vlogs.

Switching to Intel from the bottom up. I am nearly fully moved from windows to mac. The last more or less active windows machine was my Sony Z1 in heavy use by Caroline and Roderick. That one will be in less use now too, as I ordered a Intel Core Duo iMac for Roderick and Caroline to use (I might occaisionally sit behind it myself......at least until my Macbook Pro arrives). As I wanted more mobility, I ordered an iGo movable desk to go with the iMac. Awkwardly it had to come from further and still arrived before the iMac, which is due on Monday. So for now the bottoms only switch to Intel.

Where the Dutch Creative Industry Fund is created to support entrepreneurs, the Digital Pioneers are created to support non-commercial digital projects. With a group of experts we went through interesting projects and made selections and added some suggestions to further improve.

Eckart always surprises with nice gifts at special dates, like birthdays. This multitool is indeed a multi-useful-tool.....

Most of today was based around activities for the Dutch Creative Industry Fund. At the Nextstage meeting a number of interesting companies presented their ideas, companies and products. Some did so using pwrpoints, some read their story from a couple of paper notes. But according to the presenter with the paper notes, all ready the proposition for several million euros was already oversubscribed....

With the final bad wheather, computer based creativity is a nice alternative. Larger and larger media markets are around, now even with specialised Apple instore shops with staff in Apple outfits. I had a quick look at the new Intel Core Duo iMac I ordered. Indeed a great family machine.... According to the latest info, it should be arriving later this week.

Being a city slicker has not deterred Roderick from jungle life. We are Friends of Artis and go to the zoo quite a lot and Roderick's jungle room at home is progressing quite well. To his pleasure I can add....

Ties are becoming back in to fashion again. I quite like wearing them actually. And even in ties innovation has struck..... Thomas Pink introduced the commuter tie, attaching a snazzy pocket at the back for inserting ones iPod Nano..... What a spot to listen to venturevoice or blognomics podcasts....

Snow in March.... messed up the football.... as traffic jams were built like there was no tomorrow...

Financing for the creative industries is a combination of art and craft one might say. Therefore it is always useful to discuss these matters with those specialised.....