remake with uglified ruby oneliner (ruby 1.8.x and 1.9.x compatible)

terminal-x-mass.awk

# reverse engineering gawk code
{
  rnd_column = $3; # comes from bash $(($RANDOM%$COLUMNS))
  snow = $4;       # comes from bash $(printf "\u2743\n")
  snow_progress[ rnd_column ] = 0;
  for(row in snow_progress) {
    old_col = snow_progress[row];
    snow_progress[row] = snow_progress[row] + 1;
    # erase snowflake at previous position
    printf "\033[%s;%sH ",old_col,row;
    # draw snowflake at new position
    printf "\033[%s;%sH%s \033[0;0H",snow_progress[row],row, snow;
  }
}

terminal-x-mass.rb

C=`stty size`.scan(/\d+/)[1].to_i;S=["2743".to_i(16)].pack("U*");a={};puts "\033[2J";loop{a[rand(C)]=0;a.each{|x,o|;a[x]+=1;print "\033[#{o};#{x}H \033[#{a[x]};#{x}H#{S} \033[0;0H"};$stdout.flush;sleep 0.1}

terminal-x-mass.sh

ruby -e 'C=`stty size`.scan(/\d+/)[1].to_i;S=["2743".to_i(16)].pack("U*");a={};puts "\033[2J";loop{a[rand(C)]=0;a.each{|x,o|;a[x]+=1;print "\033[#{o};#{x}H \033[#{a[x]};#{x}H#{S} \033[0;0H"};$stdout.flush;sleep 0.1}'

cool rework!
and just to mention the original: http://climagic.org/coolstuff/let-it-snow.html

:-) I'll let them know :-)