Running for a Cure
This is an open invitation to all and I hope you will consider a small sponsorship/donation towards a great cause. In the past I have worked to raise funds for a number of institutes in the past (Livestrong, Movember, Daffodil Day, Oxfam, Ocsober), This year my efforts will be put towards CanToo. You can donate as little or as much as you like – any amount will be appreciated.
The cause
Cancer is devastating. Everyone knows someone who has been affected directly or indirectly by cancer – personally it has affected family, friends and mentors. We all want a cure. I’ve committed to participating in the Melbourne Marathon’s half-marathon. The funds raised will be passed on to CanToo – an organisation that raises money to help cure cancer, through participation in a major events such as the Melbourne Marathon and Sydney Marathon.
The money raised will be used to fund promising young scientists in their pursuit of a cancer breakthrough.
CanToo Half-Marathon Pod
About Can Too
Donations received from CanToo are supporting talented scientists working in all areas of cancer for example; cancer genetics, control mechanisms in cancer, melanoma, myeloma, brain tumours, resistance to chemotherapy, breast, bowel, prostate and ovarian cancer and inhibiting cancer cell growth. Cure Cancer Australia has provided an essential link between the community and Australia’s young research scientists to deliver breakthrough cancer research.
Sponsorship
To sponsor me, go to the CanToo Sponsorship page and search for ‘Lalor McMahon’. Check the box beside my name, enter a sponsorship amount and select ‘Add Sponsorship’. On the following page, fill in your details to complete the process – you will receive a receipt for tax purposes.
Thank you very much for your support of this worthy cause.
A Short History of Rosedale
This is where my family used to live back in the early nineties. My parents, Kathy and Michael, renovated the house (with a bit of help from my brother and I as well) and it is now heritage listed. Nice work!
“Rosedale” at 8 Ellison Street Ringwood was built in 1923 by a highly regarded local builder of the time, Harry Peake.
Ellison Street, and the adjacent Haig Street, formed part of the Ringwood Township Estate which was the subdivision of the former orchard of Count Herrmann Conrad Von Horn. Von Horn had bought his orchard which fronted West Prussia Road (soon to be renamed Wantirna Road) in 1915 from pioneering Ringwood orchardist and estate agent (and later Councillor and Mayor) A.T. Miles. Miles was one of a series of orchardists and speculators who could see the strategic value of its 15 acres (six hectares) so close to the embryonic township of Ringwood and its new railway station and had bought and sold it since the 1890′s.
The Ringwood Township Estate comprised 58 lots, of which 18 lots were in Ellison Street. Number 8 is typical of these, with a frontage of 48 feet by a depth of 145 feet. Ironically it was the narrowness of the lots – too small for unit development – which has lead to Ellison Street now enjoying the best intact pre-war streetscape in Ringwood.
8 Ellison Street, Ringwood was built by Harry Peake as the home for his wife Emma, himself and family. The Peakes occupied it until selling to Alf Ibbotson, a local produce merchant in 1929. Ibbotson held it for 21 years (until 1950), followed by George and Miriam Anderson for 12 years (until 1962) and finally by Ida Pump for 27 years until 1989.
It was in 1989 that “Rosedale” received a new lease of life. Up to that stage, it was a simple six room timber bungalow typical of its era. Ida Pump’s Estate sold the property that year to Michael Sirakoff who, with his wife Kathy, coordinated an extensive, thorough and sympathetic renovation and extension of the home using local builder Kiama Homes.
It is that-nome, joyfully extended and reborn, which is now being offered for sale by its current owners.
In recognition of the heritage value of not only 8 Ellison Street but also of its neighbours at 6, 10 and 12 Ellison Street, Maroondah City Council in 2007 proposed that 6, 8, 10 and 12 Ellison Street, collectively referred to as the Ellison Street Ringwood Precinct, should be protected by a Heritage Overlay (H0100) under Maroondah Planning Scheme. That Amending Planning Scheme Overlay is expected to be finalized shortly.
“Rosedale” is a rare and valuable property. It is special not only because of its location in Ellison Street but also because of the way it contributes substantially to the integrity of the 1920′s streetscape. It is also an excellent example of how the best of the old can mix with the best of the new.
WordPress 3 Memory Allocation
After a couple of months of playing around with the WordPress 3 betas and release candidates, I have been mightily impressed by this platform. Matt Mullenweg has announced that WordPress 3 Theolonius has finally been release en masse. This is great news as the numerous features are awesome and there has been over 1200 bug fixes applied in the latest release. I did run into an issue with the admin back end though on one of my production sites – yes I tested everything else out on a couple of development boxes, but the old production environment always throws in a few gremlins to sort out. So let put some light on this one such gremlin.
Following standard procedure when upgrading manually, I deleted the wp-admin and wp-includes folders and then uploaded the new WP3 files and folders and performed a database upgrade. All good so far. I tested the actual site itself and that was up and running and working as expected. OK now to test the back end and make sure that is working as I don’t want my content editors to be bothered with something that isn’t quite right but rather be presented with the new look of the admin area.
Ok not the clean and fresh new admin interface I was expecting after logging in. A blank page! First things first – check the files are all there; check. Next, time to check out the log files on the server. The error logs were displaying a PHP error and this was the cause of the problem:
PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 368640 bytes) in /home/site/html/wp-admin/menu.php on line 214
So now we know that it is a PHP error and it is trying to allocate 32 MB to the process. resolving this will involve editing the php.ini file and upping the memory_limit parameter
memory_limit = 64M
I updated it to 64 MB as it was at a lowly 16 MB and I wanted a bit of future proofing. All that is required now is to restart the web server for the new setting to take effect. Now everything is working as expected
So if you upgrade to WP3 and can’t get into the back end – check your error logs!
How would you play it?
Played at the Tankerville int he 888 Poker League on Tuesday and bubbled for the points. The final hand I was involved in has left me contemplating my decision making. I’ll set the scene.
The tournament was broken down to two remaining tables of eight. I had made some good hands and lost some big hands. I was on a good run presently and had about 18k in chips with the blinds at 1k and 2k. Two new players had come to the table on my right with about 20k each. Chris was under the gun and folded, Brendan folded after him. The first new guy raised it to 4k and the second new guy to my immediate right folded. I look down at 
two off the button, playing it cautiously as I have not seen this player in a hand as yet, I decide to call. Everyone else folds and we go heads up to the flop.
The flop comes 4 6 K rainbow. My opponent makes a meek continuation bet of 4k, I smooth call with a little trepidation about the King. A Jack on the turn gives me second pair, I am pretty sure I have this guy beat as I don’t think he has a King with the way he bet out on the flop, putting me at about 80% to win the hand. He continues with his betting and pushes all-in to which I call instantly. He shows 
which now puts me in the drivers seat needing to dodge one of the three remaining Tens with him as an 20:1 underdog.
Needless to say, he hit his three-outer Ten on the river and knocked me out of the tournament.
In hindsight, I should have possibly tested the waters earlier and taken control of the hand pre-flop with either a re-raise to 10 or 12k or pushed it all in pre-flop. But my passive play was influenced by the fact I had never played against this opponent before and he had me out chipped. Taking that into consideration, I think the call was the easy option, but the correct option was at least a re-raise pre-flop.
How would you play it?
Round 4 Win
I took down round 4 of the Siomos Palace Home Tournament, which had eight runners. It was a bit of an up and down night hitting quad sevens in the second hand of the night with 73c in big blind, and then losing most of my chips a couple of levels later. Despite this, I never hit the felt and gradually built my stack to reasonable size when I played a crucial hand against two other all-ins. Read the rest of this entry »