I set up another run of experiments in my long-running series today. I'm repeating the best results from last time (the previous post in this category), with fresh samples of everything (just to be sure that there wasn't something odd about the last batch, which seemed to work so well.) There's a new type of control in there, too, off in another direction from the ones I've run before. And I've made several new compounds to test, all closely related to the things that seem to have worked.

That's been a big part of the delay. I've exhausted most of the commercially available starting materials by now - as I narrow down to the most promising structures, I find that I have to make a lot of my starting materials myself. Some of them are easy to whip out, but I still have to purify them, and all these things take time. And, of course, none of this is officially what I'm supposed to be doing, so I have to work these things in as I can.

I've also accepted an offer to present the whole idea in a public forum for the first time. Well, an inside-the-company public forum, that is. I've grabbed folks by their shirt collars and scribbled all over their office whiteboards during the last couple of years, but this will be the first time I've put everything together into a real presentation. My submarine project is beginning to surface.