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12 Days of holiday downloads, Day 2: Mac

X-MasTreeToday's Mac Christmas download is two-for-one. The first is John Schilling's wonderful X-MasTree, a Christmas tree that sits in floats on your desktop or sits in your dock. It can be several sizes and the lights, garland, star and even tree color have a number of options. And if that isn't enough, John has information up on how to add custom ornaments. The real draw here, though, is the lights, which are extremely well done and can fade gently in and out, or blink and flash in that gaudy way only Christmas lights can.

Since X-MasTree began life as a tribute to the grandaddy (or is that grandma?) of all Mac Christmas trees, YourHead software's Christi's Tree, I think it's only fair to talk about them together, especially since John's X-MasTree page is the current repository for Christi's tree, too. Christi's Tree isn't as big on the lights as X-MasTree, but it's still shiny and comes with a classic Mac look and configurable garland.

Both programs can be configured as Christmas count-down clocks, just in case you've forgotten how long it is until the big day.

Previous 12 Days of holidays downloads for OS X:
Day 1

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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