radiant penguin stopped in with a bunch of new panoramas – great work! Check ’em. (Louis Wu 12:17:58 UTC)

The Bungie Weekly Update went up a bit early today – it’s not too earthshaking, but has a few interesting bits, including some LIVE boasting, a behind-the-scenes look at playtesting, and a cool Recon armor contest for the weekend. Go read! (As always, it is also available in our Weekly Update Archive.) Jordan117 gets either kudos or a kick in the pants for this. (Louis Wu 23:31:12 UTC)

Heh – Hawty McBloggy stumbled across a photograph of a shadow that made her think that maybe she plays too much Halo…(Louis Wu 20:05:13 UTC)

The next installment of jdars’ Aesthetic Artist Interviews is now online – he talks to jEEborz, a guy with some serious screenshot skillz. Check out the interview – and the pics!(Louis Wu 17:50:09 UTC)

Morpheus is running a rather odd contest – submit the slowest overall time on Halo 3 (all solo levels, combined), win a copy of ODST. There are plenty of rules to keep you from parking your character in a corner and leaving your Xbox alone for a week… go read ’em all. (I do NOT envy the guy having to judge the entries…)(Louis Wu 17:43:02 UTC)

New movies (and stuff) are up for you now at the Bungie Blog. HaloTracks’ denizen ‘kiler200o’ has released Final Effort; there are links to a video and the map itself in the blog post. And xkevlarpro whipped up a montage that tells a story, called ‘Halo 3 Handlebars‘. Enjoy!(Louis Wu 17:38:11 UTC)

jake108 sent along a link to Geekscape’s latest Teabag Prevention article – this one covers the Banshee. Read it, suck less!(Louis Wu 15:36:02 UTC)

There’s a fascinating article over at AiGameDev.com – it looks at AI bugs from various games that have been caught on film by players and uploaded to YouTube. In most cases, it provides general outlines of how the developer might fix the bug. Halo’s Swimming Grunt comes in at #12, and a funky driving glitch in Halo 3 comes in at #16. Go read! Thanks, Devin.(Louis Wu 15:17:43 UTC)

A quick update from Mr Sark, regarding his Sarkathlon 3, running now over at G4TV’s X-Play – looks like the top two finishers will also earn Recon armor. Nice!(Louis Wu 14:22:04 UTC)

It’s a little bit late, but last night RandomSauce sent along the second of his ‘Director Dialogues‘ interviews – this one is with CMNeir, the man behind the Halo 3 Tricks videos. (We most recently mentioned him for his ‘Earth’ video, showing off cool Halo 3 landscapes right here at home.) Go read about what inspires him, and what he’s got to offer to upcoming machinima artists!(Louis Wu 10:47:38 UTC)