there will be cake when you're done

it's the holiday (Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, etc), so that means you are either
a) feeling marvelous because you get to spend time with your loved ones having snowball fights, eating many animals and tearing gift wrap paper with a ferocity not seen since the Gauls ransacked Northeastern Europe;
b) feeling depressed because it's cold and you don't have anyone special to wrap you up in a fuzzy blanket and drink hot chocolate with you under the stars;
c) feeling bored because you have nothing to do.

if you are a), make sure those loved ones know that they are loved.
if you are b), don't sweat it -- there are others who are equally desperate.
if you are c), play this game: Portal: the flash version.

this game is based on Valve's Portal, a revolutionary puzzle/adventure game. carl showed this to me a few weeks ago and i was immediately hooked. you are given a portal gun that can shoot a single yellow and a single blue portal. entering one portal will allow you to exit through the other, with your angular momentum intact. in other words: "speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out". aiding your quest are moveable, stackable blocks. impeding your progress are walls that cannot hold portals, deathtraps and line-of-sight machine gun turrets.



the flash version has all these things, but in two-dimensions, rather than three.