From the looks of our log files, the Web was a quiet place on Christmas day — traffic fell almost 75 percent on December 25. I hope you were all having a great holiday with family and loved ones (I was), and I look forward to handing out more Flash-based gifts for our readers in the next few whatevers.

Meanwhile, my apologies to all those who were unable to view last week's new Flash game. It was the first project I've produced relying on the latest Flash Player (version 8 ), and well… crap! In my errant OSX/Win32-centric world, I hadn't realized that Macromedia-turned-Adobe has yet to release a Linux version of the new player! The game in question was never actually designed for Web distribution (it was originally built as a stand-alone projector within a controlled environmen), but I thought others might get a kick out of it. Sorry about that!

Regardless, rest assured that until there's an official release of a Linux Flash 8 player, we'll stick to Flash 7 for future projects (here and in my "real job," I'm afraid). We certainly don't want to leave anybody out in the cold! (And yes, Adobe, that was a subtle jab at you, there.)

Thanks again, readers, and to those who celebrate it, Happy Hannukah!