HaloPlanet mentioned the release of PodTacular Episode 49 back on Thursday – I kept forgetting to post it. (Been a rough few days here…) Speculation about Halo 3 is the big subject. Go listen!

Wow – swing by Halo2Forum and grab a copy of this Flag Tactics vid (58MB, WMP9 format) – some pretty amazing techniques. Most of ’em would be pretty hard to pull off in an actual game – but a few look pretty straightforward, and might just change the CTF games you play. (The Lockout flag tosses are totally feasible, and mimic some of the superfast captures I remember from Hang ’em High.) Thanks, Z.

Today’s Weekly Update is, unsurprisingly, mostly about the Halo 2 for Vista announcement yesterday. It’s worth a read, especially if you feel betrayed. There’s also some pretty droolworthy stuff about upcoming Halo novels , and a rather disturbing picture. And, of course, you can read it locally if you so choose. I haven’t been to the forum yet, but I’ve no doubt Frankie was first with the announcement. Hang on… yep.

There’s a Lost the Lead update – Pinkuh meets some weird people online! Awesome artwork. Check it out! (Pinkuh pointed it out on the forum.)

Captain Spark turned in another 19 dialogue snippets – you can snag them from his website, or peruse them in our Dialogue Databank. He’s baaaack…

You didn’t think Stuntmutt was gonna miss a chance to comment on yesterday’s Halo 2 PC news, did you? Go read One One Se7en.

You might remember LatinoReview.com – last November, they posted a review of the Halo script, which stirred up a little bit of controversy. Today, they posted a review of the Casino Royale script… and buried at the bottom is a small note of interest to Halo movie news watchers:

Also we just got word that D.B. Weiss, the writer of the excellent spec script KASHMIR, which was one of my top 5 scripts of 2004 is rewriting HALO. Expect an official announcement soon.

Go read the rest of it for El Mayimbe’s comments… and this time around, think twice before screaming “fake!” (It’ll be interesting to see if/when this news makes it public in more standard channels…)

Okay, this is a little over the top, if you ask me. Josh Smith decided to write a blog post on the frequency of profanity during Halo 2 online play. Granted, it’s one person’s experience, and it’s gathered from a pretty small total sample (34 hours of gameplay – back in October, Frankie stated that more than 180 million hours had been logged, so we’re talking about a 0.00002% sample size – and that doesn’t even COUNT the hours played in the last 4 months)… but geez. Thanks, 3Suns.

Team3D, consistently one of the top pro Halo teams, is gearing up for MLG’s National Championships in New York at the end of this month, and Saiyan has taken a few minutes out to chat with F13ND about their hopes and expectations. Go read!

On the anniversary of their first episode, the Codex Series team has released information about The Heretic, a new series in production. Cause for excitement from folks who like good machinima! Thanks to many for noticing – but squattingb was first ( even beating Nerrolken’s own email by a couple of hours). Go read about it!

Heh – Larry Peterson found this picture, and wondered… have the Forerunner been building in Mexico City?

Jillybean updated the Halo Story Page this morning – but the note got lost in the flurry of Vista-related mail. You should go read it, if you like having your brain wrapped around like pretzel dough.

Over at Bungie.net, Frankie’s posted a pretty large article about the whole Halo 2 on Vista thing; there’s an awful lot of “we’ll provide you with more details in the future”… but there’s also some decent info. Bungie’s not doing the conversion, but they’re helping. (It’s not being farmed out to a 3rd party developer, like Halo was; the conversion is being done by an internal MGS team.) No (real) word on a Mac version yet. There’s also some cut-and-paste PR on Windows Vista… which might make you wonder a bit about the “we’re not doing this to sell a new operating system” answer. (But only a bit.) As you get closer to the bottom, you can pretty much stop reading; the answers to every single question are ‘we haven’t said anything yet’. Whee! (I’m sure that’s as frustrating for Frankie as it is for us.)

TastedBigworm found an odd little Halo comic at Lifemeter… that seems like bad sportsmanship. (But fun, probably.)

A little birdie pointed out a trailer over at apple.com for a movie coming out next month: Duck Season was made by Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke, and covers a day in the life of two fourteen-year-old boys. The Halo angle? Heh. Watch the trailer.

Devin Eastman has yet another piece of sheet music for you, courtesy of Rampancy.net – swing by and grab (remember, you must be logged in to see the download link) a copy of Peril for Piano. Awesome!

Frontline With Suzie is back! She’s found what might be the dumbest grunt in the Covenant… go read her interview. Thanks, rockslider.

A number of people pointed out that the WindowBlinds skin we mentioned last week is out now – along with a bunch of other stuff for your desktop. Swing by WinCustomize to download. Looks like The Vector Kid was first.

Wow. I’m not one for rumors, generally (have you noticed?), but when the BBC gets involved… Apparently, there was a link on the BBC front page that claimed that Halo 2 PC would debut on Windows Vista (the successor to XP). The article was pulled almost immediately – but Joystiq got a screenshot of the link (though not the article itself; it had already been pulled by that point), and addict3d.org saw it in time to actually summarize it. If this is true… wow. We’ve been telling people that we doubted a Halo 2 PC would ever come out. This is one time I wouldn’t mind being wrong. (At this point, it’s JUST A RUMOR. The only information has been pulled from the web almost faster than it was put up. We know nothing, and it could easily be a mistake (or a prank) on BBC’s part; in fact, if it were anyone less reputable than the BBC, we probably wouldn’t even be mentioning it. Goes to show you, though… it’s really, really, REALLY hard to keep stories quiet – even mistakes.) Thanks, Muskie, for the heads-up. Update: Holy moley – it’s REAL! We just got the press release from AEG. Update 2: Turns out the article is still on the BBC website – it was just at a different link. Thanks, Dark Knight and Brandon Smith.

Whee. ClanFSR (no relation to the Futuristic Sex Robots, though they DO have a link to FSR’s video on their Vidz page – without attribution, though it’s a Mythica/HBO link) looks to be doing some pretty sleazy stuff. The Simpsons Montage, for example, has ClanFSR.com credits at the beginning and the end… but in actuality, it’s DarqKnyght’s ‘Homertage’ video, released (here) last August. Similarly, Defending the Base is a local movie with FSR credits pasted on it. Thanks to imSuck, who brought this nastiness to my attention (Halogrid’s own Chubark was ripped off, as well, though it looks like ClanFSR took down the offending movie already). Stealing sucks. You shouldn’t do it.