Welcome of the third installment of #RealTimeChem, the diary. As I did yesterday and the day before, I will summarize my day in chemistry throughout the Tweets sent over this event.

Sup. Info finished. Figs & tables will b ready today; on it. Off to a (video)conference by Dr. Marcos Hernandez @iquimicaunam #RealTimeChem

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

(Haha, I found the button to include the feed!)

I finally finished editing that supporting information I’ve been Twitting about all week, now I’m back at the manuscript re-editing a bit. This is a problem I have that I’m sure is shared by most of you: I just can’t let go. If I’m writing a manuscript I’ll read it and change it over and over; if I’m working on a presentation, I will edit and reorder the slides almost ad infinitum if it were not for deadlines. Professor Cea-Olivares, of whom I’ve written before in this blog, used to say that projects are never finished but merely abandoned. In all fairness we are still not on the ‘not letting go’ phase, there are still some sections of the manuscript that need our attention; and when I say we, I mean me and my collaborator Dr. Rodrigo Galindo who is currently working at the University of Utah (BTW go check out his blog and persuade him to pick it up again!)

But in the middle of the day there was a conference at Instituto de Química, in Mexico City, that I wanted to listen to. Dr. Marcos Hernández is a good colleague of mine who deals with asymmetric organocatalysis. I like his work a lot and I hold him in high esteem so I asked for a video transmission of his talk to be sent over to CCIQS at Toluca. In the following two Twits you can get a glimpse of our video conferencing facilities.

Me. At the videoconference hall #CCIQS waiting for @iquimicaunam #RealTimeChem twitter.com/joaquinbarroso…

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

And we are good to go! Live from Mexico City, is Dr Marcos Hernandez conf @iquimicaunam during #realtimechem twitter.com/joaquinbarroso…

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

Not all is work during RealTimeChem week, although perhaps it should be. Still, safety first! that’s our motto! (follow the link in message)

stock pic: important 2 remember: protect eyes & hands when u’re naked in a lab! twitter.yfrog.com/nymcyzp 4 those too excited by #RealTimeChem

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

Today I took some time to have a few interactions with other participants of #RealTimeChem and got to follow very interesting people. Definitely, after this week I will become a more active Twitter user (ouch!). But the research must go on, and today Maru started working on rendering the electrostatic potential surfaces for a rather large set of calix- and thiacalix[n]arenes for our line of research on molecular recognition agents.

#RealTimeChem Electrstatic potential surface of a calix4arene 1 down 119 to go 😉 twitter.com/joaquinbarroso…

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

#RealTimeChem same as before; top view; transparent surface. Which so u like better? Compchem yields nice pics too! twitter.com/joaquinbarroso…

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 24, 2013

#RealTimeChem Another EPS (diff scale as in previous pic) twitter.com/joaquinbarroso…

— Joaquin Barroso (@joaquinbarroso) April 25, 2013

This is pretty much it for today; I’m very tired and I still need to work in other things so I’m off for now but stay tuned for more tomorrow when this blog will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of DNA’s structure in Nature.

Cheerio!