T'is the season for snow and twinkling lights, and the PHP-GTK Community site has taken this to heart with their latest tutorial posted today showing the creation of a Drawing area with stars and blinking lights.

They start with an overview of the mini-project (three different parts) and quickly get into the code.

First it's the abstract class Object, then the BasicStar that extends our object (complete with the method for drawing the dots), and finally the "Christmas widget" that they all get pushed into. The result is a small window that has flashing "lights" and will run until you shut it off. Happy holidays!

Pádraic Brady is back today with another update on the game he's working on and his latest addition - the stars and planets ("bodies").

Planets and Stars ("Bodies") form the central hub around which the majority of a player's activity will center. This planning document addresses the generation and mapping of these entities, and not their individual contents, facilities or uses.

He breaks it down into a few steps:

• Laying a Foundation
• Adding Stars
• Skeleton Map_Star Interfaces
• Implementing the Map_Star Interfaces
• Position Random
• Generate Simple
• Conclusion

The end result is a system for positioning stars and providing all of the star's data to the user.