Normally, I wouldn't put this on the front page... but it's the best way of making sure everyone who needs to see this will. The next HBO Junkies lanfest has been scheduled for October 2, 2004; details (and instructions that EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO ATTEND MUST FOLLOW) can be found on the HBO Junkie's Events page at b.net. I'm already overwhelmed with how many people want to come... so don't sign up unless this is really something you can make it to. (Even if you DO sign up, please understand that I'm gonna have to turn away at least half the folks who sign up; nothing's guaranteed. I wish I had a bigger house... but I don't.)

Equally as surely, we're working our way through the Miscellaneous Art backlog - another ten pieces have been posted today. We're still in July, as far as submissions go... but that won't be for much longer.

Dolbex, synide, and Jason of MLG put together an 8-minute long retrospective of the MLG-Seattle Halo 2 experience; you've already seen the in-game footage, this will give you some flavor of the event itself. 26.9 mb, QuickTime format; we've put copies up on both files2.bungie.org and mythica.org.

No matter how hard you try, sometimes info gets out before you mean for it to. Take One One Se7en, for example.

Another day, another 10 desktop images for the Wallpaper Section. Slowly but surely...

Nice. Wideload Games, the brainchild of Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian and the first (and only?) company with plans to release a game using the Halo engine, has finalized a publishing deal with Aspyr Media, a Mac publishing house. (This doesn't mean Wideload's first offering will be Mac-only... in fact, it'll be released on Mac, PC, and Xbox.) There's very little info about the game itself in the article, other than some comments about it not being just like Halo. We'll be keeping our ears to the ground about this one - the Halo engine is a pretty solid asset, it'll be fun to see how else it can be used. Thanks, Elite Marine and Gundulf.

Frankie showed up at the PAX event (the Penny Arcade blowout last weekend) with 12 Xboxes loaded with Halo 2 in hand... and seems to have had a good time. Of sorts. Check out the pictures and entertaining commentary over at Bungie.net. (He states, near the end, that this is probably the last chance the public will have to play this build. I think he must mean 'in the US', because unless something really stupendous is happening at the ExCeL center in London next weekend, they'll be playing it again at the Gamestars event there.)

Didn't think I was going to get to it today... but sometimes you get lucky. The next of about 8 backlogged batches of Miscellaneous Art (ten items per batch) is now up for grabs - so go grab. Cool sketches today.

Boxer points out that Episode 5 of Adventures in Disaster has been posted at akba.net. Careful where you step.

Don't expect to hear from me until after September, maybe....