Two days ago it was my mother’s name day, the St Barbara day, which is celebrated by many Christian churches. I called her to wish her for the day, as ‘name days’ in the Greek culture are more important than birthdays.

I think I’ve never heard my mother being so happy. She was blurbing, she was making jokes, her voice was dancing left and right. And it wasn’t because of the name day, no. It was because she’s close to freedom. A freedom that she didn’t enjoy for 35 years now. Close to life itself.

My parents filed for divorce last month. Hopefully, the divorce will get finalized this coming May.

I am happy for both of them, and I only wish it had happened much, much sooner.

A few days ago the Cineform guys announced their plans for a hardware encoder via HDMI which would feature the Cineform lossless encoder on a chip. The product does not exist yet, but this can be a pretty cool solution for both pros and consumers with an HDMI-capable camera. Users of the HV20 for example can use it to capture fully progressive HD at 1920×1080/24/30p rather than at the default HDV interlaced 1440×1080/60i or at the so much hated PF24 format. If the price is right, I’ll get one.

Additionally, they now offer discounts of their pulldown-removal NeoHDV/HD utilities for the HV20 users in particular. These utilities are the most convenient way currently to go around the pulldown removal annoyance.

Let’s assume an Indian young man. He originally comes from a village where young boys and girls are betrothed to each other at age around 6 or 7 and get married when older, all arranged by their families. Before the wedding occurs, the young man goes to the university in a big city. He interacts with other Indian cultures as well as the western culture. When he comes back to the village, he proclaims that he doesn’t want to get married by arrangement, he wants to meet someone on his own. He has a fight with his parents about the shame he brings to the family, and he takes off and never comes back — although he occasionally calls his mother in secret.

Through her, he learns that the girl he was supposed to marry, never got married. Young men are already married in the surrounding villages, and the only people who show interest are very old men whose previous wives are dead. The young woman only has basic education so she doesn’t have the luxury to also take off to a big city and find a good or respectable job. She was brought up to be a wife.

So, what the young man should do? Should he just go on with his life and just do what he believes in and ignore the trouble his decision brought on both families, should he show mercy and marry her, or is there another, middle solution? Like, trying to take her away from the village, pay for her education and feed her until she can stand on her own feet? What if her parents don’t like this idea and he has to take drastic measures (like, taking her away regardless) that can cause legal action against him?

What would you do?