I just left the following comment in the thread of my most recent posting, but thought it was more visible here, so I am cut-pasting it:

sorry for leaving comments unattended here for long. The fact is I am playing a chess tournament and have no internet connection at home because of a move, so I am a bit disconnected for a while. Will be back at full speed next week.

So maybe I can complement the information here about the chess tournament.

This is the XVth "Città di Padova" tournament, and it runs from December 16th to December 23rd. It is very strong (for my standards) with 11 grandmasters and 10 international masters, plus a few lesser souls such as yours truly acting as a mattress.

I am not too satisfied with my score. I only have 2 points out of 6 games so far (for a performance Elo rating of about 2070), but the last game should have been a win or at the very least a draw, while I blundered in time trouble after playing very well the first 30 moves. When I have the time I will post here some of my games, with proper commentary.