Anyone know any good hosts for large videos? it's going to be just under 100mb, most likely, once converted from .mov to .mp4
As for latest projects, I think I just found one.
And thinking...I am getting SO pissed off with my doctor.
Basically the problem is, I want to get on a specific med, memantine, for a lesser known use (actually it does a whole bunch of useful things, ), really fixes my executive issues, overloading, and does a pretty damn thorough number on opiate tolerance, lowers existing tolerance, slows development of further tolerance, and more or less eliminates both the psychological reinforcing effects, and either stops or drastically lowers physical withdrawal effects)
The doc in question is a decent guy, and after I showed him and explained a few journal articles on the stuff, and my past personal experience with it, he's up for the idea, but there seem to be two problems, one-he's forgetful and two, seems like some kind of approval from some sort of specialist is needed for the off-label use. And since it's taken me several years even to get the GP to agree, and despite keeping reminding him, he either forgets, or whoever has to sign off on it either forgets, can't be arsed or never got the message (since I assume an outright refusal would be communicated to me) I've been waiting..fucking hell, I can't even remember. A good long portion of last year, at the very least.
So, decided to say 'fuck it', and make the stuff. Just been doing some digging, and found a rather useful journal article, plus plenty of chinese suppliers for the starting material they used, 1,3-dimethyladamantane, followed by bromination and a rearrangement to 3,5-dimethyladamantane, conversion to the acetamide followed by reflux in acetonitrile (methyl cyanide, a polar aprotic solvent with, unlike many other polar aprotics, a decently low boiling point, making it easier to strip off after) containing either sulfuric or phosphoric acid. But apparently the yields are not too good for large-scale synthesis.
But it involves a 6 hour reflux with LARGE quantities of bromine, not the nicest sort of task to have to undertake, as bromine is volatile, corrosive (I have some I made a while back from sodium bromide, by passing chlorine gas through a saturated NaBr aqueous solution, and distilling off the side product, bromine monochloride, although it was on a relatively small scale, ounces of Br2. And I DON'T want to have to do that on a scale fit to provide the liters of Br2 that I'd need for the scale I want to work at [about 1kg to begin with, that way, I can tell my doc 'sod the waiting, got enough for the next 10 years or so, as I'm tired of being fucked about and kept hanging', besides, thats the minimum order of most of the companies I'd have to get the precursor from]. Producing that much Br2 would be a real shitter of a job. I could do it, no doubt about that, but the byproduct, the BrCl is NASTY stuff, a golden yellow gas, quite a nice looking colour actually, but it's war-gas level toxic and most lubricants for glassware joints would be destroyed by it. I've still got two condensers and a flask fused together, from distilling iodine monochloride, ICl being a volatile liquid.
AFAIK BrCl is more hazardous than iodine monochloride, and being gaseous, rather than a distillable liquid that can be stored [I've got some in my hazmat fridge, and the ONLY way I'm able to store it, is in glass bottles that have a teflon cap, with a flexible teflon seal underneath, which compresses when the cap is tightened to prevent the vapours escaping, and wrapping the screw-threads on the bottle in a thick layer of teflon tape] And whilst the small amount of BrCl produced during the bromine synthesis was easily disposed of, I don't want to have to deal with it on a production-level scale, because fuck me, the interhalogens are all reactive as hell, viciously corrosive to pretty much anything they can't set on fire/cause to violently explode, including most greases/lubricants, water-reactive devils to handle, and toxic as blazes. I had an accident, once, with the friendlier relative, ICl, after the gas mask I was wearing slipped the non-return valve, causing it to just pull in the ambient atmosphere, I detected a very faint halogen-like odour, somewhat like iodine, but different in it's own way, not at a concentration that caused any immediate coughing or irritation (something like chlorine or bromine fumes have enough warning properties that if someone has a choice, and assuming it isn't some huge industrial spill big enough to incapacitate someone straight away, that one will instinctively back off. The ICl didn't, not at the levels I was exposed to, which amounted to tiny traces diffusing through the silicone based lubricant I managed to find that would survive the stuff, and the minuscule gaps between the ground glass surfaces of the joints. Could just barely smell it, got one little whiff of extremely dilute ICl vapour and ran like hell.
Hours later, I could barely breathe, wheezing, choking, spent the next week and a bit using an asthma inhaler I got scripted. Was a close one, could easily have put me in hospital had I not run for it, knowing the toxicity of the stuff. Or had there been any larger concentration when the mask broke, it could well have killed me. Stuff eats plastics other than teflon and similar resistant fluoropolymers like nobody's business, I tried using plastic keck clips at first during a distillation of ICl, to secure the ground glass joints, and they lasted maybe 10-15 minutes before crumbling, cracking and falling to pieces. Stainless steel ones fared a little better, somewhat less than 24 hours. BrCl isn't nearly so tame and liquefying it for storage isn't an option I'm willing to try, as it boils at 5 'C, and being so unholy corrosive, I'm no way trying to pressurize it in a cylinder, as it'd doubtless eat through it and explode, releasing a fucking crapload of lethal gas into the neighborhood.
Reactive isn't even the word when dealing with interhalogens, I've read some downright scary things about the fluorinated ones, such as a spill of chlorine trifluoride burning (and I don't mean melting/corroding, I mean actually causing it to burst into flames) through three feet of concrete, then setting about a meter of gravel and earth ablaze before it finally burnt itself out)
But the same paper details a route with much higher yields, they still start with the same precursor and rearrange to a 3,5-dimethyladamantane skeleton, via bromination, but I've found some more suppliers that actually have the required 3,5-dimethyladamantanyl-1-bromide in stock, and that a high-yielding two-step process can be used to prepare memantine, first step being refluxing with formamide, then refluxing the formamido derivative of the intermediate in concentrated hydrochloric acid. Yields are apparently almost quantitative for the formamido intermediate, and they got a 74% yield of the end product.
Looks like it'll cost a minimum of £100 for the 3,5-dimethyl-1-bromoadamantane for 1kg, but with the improved process, I'd put that down as worth it. Will give me a good reason to put my relatively new 10-liter 4-neck round bottom flask to use.
Shouldn't even need to buy the formamide, well, I'll be able to test the reaction, certainly, on a smaller scale, then scale up (in this case, surprisingly, it'd be the formamide that'll prove my limiting reagents, at 100 quid a kilo for the 3,5-dimethyl-1-bromoadamantane. It can be produced by careful thermal decomposition (overheating, past 150 'C will decompose the formamide produced into a pretty unpleasant witch's brew of ammonia, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide) of ammonium formate. Something I happen to have on the way, actually, although can produce more with ease now the 85% formic acid has arrived (just mix garden fertilizer, lye (ammonia evolution and lots of it on initiation of the reaction with a little water, water being added slowly from an addition funnel) to prepare a gas generator. Ideally to produce a concentrated solution of formamide, and strip the water under vacuum.
