Man. I can’t believe it’s been two and a half months since the Wallpaper section was updated. There’s some really cool stuff in there this time around – go check ’em out!

QuickTactical submitted Episode Two of his Soldiers of War series to the MPRRS, and it passed. (I guess Ep 1 didn’t pass; you can find a link on their website.) Because we’re hosting, you can grab it in WMP9 format (45.5 mb) or QuickTime format (43.7 mb). (Episodes on their site are WMP9 only.) This tells the story of an American platoon protecting the west coast from a foreign invasion.

Rockslider has written up a new section on his Bad Cyborg site which covers getting to the top of Silent Cartographer, including creating a good save to work from. Once up there, you can make use of his plasma pistol sniping suggestions.

Query Spree has been updated; lots and lots of changes, it seems. Swing by the site to grab a copy. (Still no OSX version, unfortunately.) Thanks, Vironex.

Ever broken your Xbox Live headset, and then felt sad because you didn’t have money to buy a new one? This isn’t totally Halo-related… but there are a lot of Halo players in this boat, so… check out Thomas Reynolds’ tutorial (with pics) on how to fix a broken headset.

Heroes & Heretics Episode 3, ‘Operation: Bloated Rodent‘, is now available for download. Almost 7 minutes long, it indroduces you to the Mark VIa Combat Exoskeleton, and what happens when insane people try to work together. Hilarious stuff! Go grab a copy at Slacker Entertainment’s website.

Pinkuh posted another piece of work on the forum – it was created using a Java-based painter called ‘Oekaki‘. Check it out! (It’s been added to her gallery here at HBO, as well.)

Thanks to Amaroq and Ducain, High Speed Halo is back online! (The URL has changed slightly, but that’s only because the .org was snatched by a squatter.) Go check out this classic Halo site.

Skav’s back. Sort of.

Se7en One put together a documentary on the Glide Dragon (otherwise known as QuadWings, seen primarily on the Delta Halo level of Halo 2) – it’s built entirely in 3ds max. It was submitted to the MPRRS – and didn’t pass… but KP agreed to offer hosting space on Boomerica, so you can visit SO’s forum post for a download link. 41 mb, WMP9 format. Before we get a bunch of email about this… almost all the info in this documentary was made up by Se7en One; it’s an excercise in rendering more than a canonical look at a Bungieverse creature. Don’t let that stop you, though!

Way behind on stuff – life’s getting a bit out of control right now. A couple of days ago, DocOctavius posted word of a new HaloCE map on our forum – you can grab a flythrough of the beta version, or download the map (there are pics included in the forum post). Looks like a lot of fun! (It’s available for play on his dedicated server this weekend.)

Bungie’s Weekly Update today covers some music stuff (no, not the Soundtrack release, sorry), the 77,777,777th clan-player game session, more taunting about the ‘next game’, staff changes, the making of ponies (or, more accurately, ponys), and a note about ‘Bungie Cribs’, coming soon. Go read! (Or read it in our Weekly Update Archive.) ‘First’ credit goes to Marty, even though it hadn’t actually been posted at that point. (He IS pretty old, I guess; sometimes, it doesn’t pay to wait too long.)

Today’s One One Se7en is gross. Trust me.

Thirteen new stories in the Fan Fiction section today. Let’s hope that’s not bad luck.

Apologies for the downtime last night; the webserver decided to simply keel over. (The server never went down – just the application.) Things SEEM to be back up and running – I think.

LegendaryMark wrote up a nice article on Clan Training over at halowiki – go read it for some great pointers. Thanks, PEZ.

boltofaire and a friend decided to make a Master Chief statue in ceramics class – check out some of the in-progress photos in this forum post. Pretty cool stuff!