Now what is this Beautiful blogger award?
It’s something that’s been around for about the same amount of time as sunlight, so I can’t really tell who was the first to give it away, but he/she was the one to make the rules, so here goes:

• Thank the person that nominated you
• Put the award up on your blog
• Post a link to the person that nominated you
• Share 7 interesting facts about yourself
• Finally, nominate 7 other people you think deserve the award

Lyntje, being a good girl, did all of this… And that last bullet point is why I’m writing this blogpost: She nominated me, using the following words:

Ronny, because he’s very talented and should just realize that once time! (Yes, it’s true!) Absolutely one of my best friends!

Now, there’s no disagreeing that Lyntje is a close friend of mine, but I still think she’s exaggerating when it gets to the ‘talented’ part of the mention. But it pleases me to hear that anyway, so thank you for that

So: This is where I tell you 7 interesting things about myself…

1. I love challenges. In fact, I love challenges so much it kind of is one of my big weaknesses. If somebody tells me I won’t be able (or dare) to do something, I’ll make it my mission to prove him/her/them wrong! Even if it’s not that important. Even if it doesn’t change anything. Even if it is super time consuming. I believe in the fact that if I can think it, I can make it. And as far as I can remember it has always applied.
2. I’ve had a pretty rough youth. Lots of things went wrong and I did quite some stupid things. I thought they would make me happier… If I think back about it now, I can’t stop wondering what I was thinking… However, being here, right at this point in my life and having learned my lessons, I think that whatever happened back then made me a better person. I appreciate life more than ever. If at my age (23) there’s anything that I could teach you about life, it would be that you should never make compromises with yourself. You only live once: Make it count.
3. For more than 3 years now, I have been in love with my amazing girlfriend, Dorien. She’s really amazing and let me tell you why. First off: She’s beautiful, she’s funny, she likes lingerie (and so do I ), but most importantly: She’s so supportive! If you happen to be the boyfriend/girlfriend of an artist, you probably know what kind of insanity she’s facing every day. And at good last: She makes me feel like I could do anything. I love her.
4. When I was little I had all kinds of ideas of what I wanted to become when I’m a grown up. I wanted to be a dentist, a formula 1 pilot (in fact, I’d still like the job, so if you are somehow connected to Ferrari or Mercedes, do let me know if they’re looking for some crazy person), a rockstar, I wanted to become Micheal Jackson (yes it IS a profession!), a professional skater and the one thing I wanted to be that actually started to make sense: I wanted to help developing Linux and make lots of money doing that… At the age of 8 I didn’t know Linux was open-source, or what open-source means… However: Looking where I am now, that last one got pretty close to reality: I am a developer, I do work on open-source projects and I love it!
5. Most people say ‘in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you came from‘ referring to knowing your family roots and (maybe) knowing a bit more about yourself. I tend to disagree: I have never known my real parents, therefor I don’t know what to expect from life at all. It’s out there, waiting for me… And I’m eager to go out there and discover all of it. What good is living for 70-80 years and missing all of the big surprises?
6. I can’t play a single instrument! But I’d love to be able to do so! However I think learning to play the piano, the saxophone or drums is  more time consuming and more difficult than I’d like, so I probably won’t master playing any of them, ever. Instead, when listening to music, you’ll often see me play some imaginary drums floating in the air and then jump up and down the very next second (if you tilt your head a bit, it might look like dancing). Yes, I am a very crazy person.
7. I’d like to see the world. This thing beneath our feet is the legacy of time. Whatever happened during the history of Life (mind the capital L) left us this: Our planet. Our world. And I want to see as much of it as I can.

So, with that done… No, wait. Let me tell you this before I go on: Having to tell 7 interesting things about yourself is exceptionally hard! You should try it… You’ll be surprised.

Back to business: Next up are the 7 nominees for the Beautifull Blogger Award!

1. Mark Knol: Mark is a creative web artist who currently is doing a lot of magic creating generative art using AS3. He’s definitely closing in on Erik Natzke. He posts his experiments and results on his blog and his Flickr stream. Make sure to check it out!
2. Peter Elst: Peter is an Adobe community expert. The cool thing is: He’s close enough to Adobe to really love the platform, but not close enough to have lost an honest opinion. That makes Peter a great blogger and a very passionate community member. He’s also a very interesting person to talk with. If you ever meet him at a community event, make sure to go over and talk to him (He’s on his way to India as we speak, so if you’re not over there right now, it might take some time before you see him again )
3. Keith Peters: Definitely one of the most inspiring Actionscript developers I’ve met. Do check out his blog and don’t forget to bookmark it!
4. Aral Balkan: Aral is probably the person that had the biggest impact on my life as an Actionscript developer. When I met him for the first time at Multi-Mania in 2007, he was presenting SWX and made jokes about me liking XML (in AS2). That enormously funny presentation was my first impression of Aral. It was a good one. In fact it was so good that I went to  see that same session 3 times! He blogs about whatever is on his mind at a given point and doesn’t mind a little discussion.
5. Kris Temmerman: Kris is an awesome Actionscript Designer (‘developer’ sounds too boring for what Kris actually does) who experiments and creates. Most of his experiments end up as blogposts featuring the sourcecode. So not only does he blow your mind with one blogpost at a time, he actually shows you how he does that ( = blowing your mind).
6. Lee Brimelow: Although he works for Adobe, I think his opinions are mostly his own. He writes about experiments, answers Adobe related questions, posts tutorials… And he basically is still a skater. How is that not cool?
7. Matt Brett: Matt is WordPress developer and designer. He’s a freelancer located in Canada. I’ve been reading his blog for 2 years and he never bores me. He writes about the things he encounters in life as a freelancer, a gamer, a webdesigner and a father.

So that’s it! A month worth of reading material! Seen as I just wrote a blogpost that turns out to be longer than the average book, I think it ‘s okay to just stop talking