Initially, a bit of background - about 2.5 years ago, myself and another Plone consultancy took the initiative to begin translating Plone into Maori, Samoan, and some other Pacific Island languages. Unfortunately we were denied funding for translating Plone into Maori (apparently Microsoft New Zealand had already created a bilingual CMS for the Maori Language Commission on the then pre-release MS CMS 2002) and as none of us were native Maori or Pacific Island language speakers and therefore not able to translate Plone ourselves the project stalled.
Recently, though, I've made a decision to start translating Plone 3.x into Samoan myself. It's a little slow going as I am not a native Samoan speaker (though I have Samoan heritage :)), but I am making good use of a Samoan dictionary and some online resources. I thought particularly with the end of year approaching and the inevitable slow down in work that happens over the holiday period I would ask the community if they would pledge any money towards my translation efforts over the holiday period (and therefore also contribute to my continuing to eat over the holiday break :)), so we can have another 'shiny translation' in Plone!
If you'd like to pledge any funds towards my translation efforts, click on this chipin for a Samoan Plone link. Thanks!

Recently I had to setup Enfold Server on Windows XP and as I run Kubuntu on my notebook, the virtual environment I've chosen to run Windows under is QEMU. I've been running QEMU for some time now and it provides all the features I need in a virtual machine, especially with kqemu installed. When I was in the process of setting up Enfold Server, though, I accidentally loaded the same QEMU image twice and the 2nd instance started running a CHKDSK on the drive and writing to it. After closing the 2nd instance down and restarting the already running Windows XP QEMU instance, Windows XP would get as far as the loading Windows XP screen and then cyclicly boot. I then attempted to mount the QEMU image (as it was in the RAW format) but when I did, I got the following error message: "primary boot sector is invalid". This was when alarm bells really started to ring as I'd put quite a lot of time and effort into this Windows XP QEMU image (including setting up all the Internet Explorer browsers and Safari for Windows), and unfortunately due to a file size error I was getting when attempting to backup the QEMU image, I didn't have a backup! After fruitlessly googling around for a resolution, I decided I'd attempt to boot off the Windows XP cdrom and attempt to recover the image that way. The following are the steps I took to restore my QEMU Windows XP Environment:

1. Booted off the Windows XP cdrom by typing the following at the command prompt:
   qemu winxp.img -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appeared, pressed R to start the Recovery Console.
3. Executed the FIXMBR command from the Recovery Console.
4. Ran a CHKDSK to fixup any other problems that may have existed.

I had the honour of giving the first Plone speech at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan recently. TsungWei Hu, who arranged for me to give the speech, manages the Open Source Software Foundry (OSSF) project, whose key objectives are to promote Open Source Software in Taiwan. TsungWei mentioned that he had been meaning to ask Paul Everitt to give a speech regarding Plone at the Academia Sinica (Paul - hint, hint) but hadn't, so I got in first ;-)

This speech was the last in a series of Plone presentations I have been giving. The first of which was in Tokyo, Japan, and the next was for the Taipei Open Source Software User Group (TOSSUG). At the TOSSUG meetup I was able to meet Sean Moss-Pultz and Harald Welte of the OpenMoko project. Sean is the General/Technical Manager for the OpenMoko project, while Harald is the Lead System Level Architect. As I'm an Open Source fan and enjoy hacking my own computer, I'm really excited about what Sean, Harald and the rest of the OpenMoko Core Team are doing as mobile phones in general are pretty much closed devices nowadays.

On Wednesday, April the 18th, the Japan Zope Users Group had their quarterly meetup, and I gave a presentation regarding the use of Open Source software in New Zealand and particularly the use of Plone in New Zealand Government. My presentation also included a demonstration of creating a UML model for a simple Plone content type and associated workflow and then using the code generator, ArchGenXML, to create the product. I also demonstrated some of the benefits of using Instance Manager while doing Plone development. Following my presentation, Jonathan Lewis gave a report regarding what was achieved at the recent Sorrento sprint.

About 30+ people attended and it was really encouraging to see the enthusiasm for Plone in Japan, where Plone appears to be experiencing a similar surge in popularity as New Zealand and other countries around the world. Many thanks to Shigeo Honda who organised the event, WiseKnot who provided the venue (and beverages), those who helped me prepare the presentation, and all those that turned up to listen to the presentation.

Prior to our leaving for Japan, on February the 16th, we had a Plone Meetup 'New Zealand-style' where 6 of us met at a Malaysian restaurant and discussed the progress of Plone in New Zealand, some Python and Zope technologies, some Flash front-end goodness, and some friendly Microsoft Vs Google banter. I've received some nice feedback regarding the meetup so thanks for that and thanks to those who were able to attend and also those who were there in 'spirit' :-)

Finally, yesterday I met with Atsushi Shibata in Akihabara. Some of you may know that Shibata-san is responsible for the Plone Blogging product, CoreBlog2. Shibata-san has been pioneering the use of Plone/Zope in Japan for some time now and it was nice to discuss with him the progress of Plone in Japan and some of the challenges Japan faces going forward. I'm sure we both came away from the meeting enlightened and it is always nice to meet another Plonista!