If you happened to visit this site earlier today, you may have found it devoid of a suitable banner. That is because I took some time pondering on that design detail for this new site. I wanted something that resembled the banner of the old site which hosted my blog, over at wordpress, which showed a starry field; but I also wanted to convey some personality with it -no more anonymous pictures stolen from a prepackaged theme (Regulus in that case); and possibly, some meaning.

This short post is my first contribution to ScientificBlogging: with it I am relocating my blog here from wordpress. I am thrilled by the opportunity to join a larger group of excellent science writers, and possibly reach a larger audience interested in particle physics and in my other occasional discussions of chess, politics, astronomy, astrophysics, or the personal notes I sometimes choose  to dump here.