Captain Spark was playing Campaign, and started hearing a bunch of new Grunt dialogue. He’s not coming out of retirement – but he sent along nearly 50 new snippets for our Halo 3 Dialogue Databank. Some of them are simply priceless. Go listen!(Louis Wu 14:37:08 UTC)

It’s Friday, so Hawty McBloggy has another edition of Friday Caption Fun for you – this week’s image is a great shot, and should lead to some interesting choices!(Louis Wu 14:02:20 UTC)

TTL Demag0gue let us know that Reclaimer 59 is up – Ferial’s talking to a new AI. Who’s this?(Louis Wu 13:09:56 UTC)

Nine new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this week – go read!(Louis Wu 13:04:33 UTC)

A few inquisitive souls have already found the new links… but for the rest of you, I’m (tentatively) pleased to announce that our Halo 3 Cutscene Library has just been upgraded with HD versions (thanks, once again, to Cody Miller) – this leaves only the Halo 1 scenes in standard res. (That’s almost completely my fault; we’ve got people chomping at the bit to record, and I’ve been too busy to process stuff. But that’s neither here nor there, right now.) Swing by and grab (some) Halo 3 scenes! To explain the hesitancy: I’m nervous, because we’re talking about a LOT of bandwidth, and even though I’ve devoted three servers to the situation, I’m not totally confident we can keep up with demand if people start downloading the entire collection at a shot. So be gentle… but go see what you can find! And if you see Cody, say thanks.(Louis Wu 23:13:54 UTC)

Simpsons Rule noticed that Amazon has The Cole Protocol available for preorder – current price is $10.17, and posted release date is November 25, 2008. Poking around a bit, though, Barnes & Noble has a listing, too – sort of. (No author, no title, just a release date of September 30 and a price of $12.70 – the only way you know it’s The Cole Protocol is by the ISBN number. I’ll stick with Amazon on this one, thanks.)(Louis Wu 21:05:50 UTC)

ZZoMBiE13’s latest episode of Another Halo Comic Strip shows just how innovative the Master Chief can be. (Well… or the fans that put thoughts in his head…)(Louis Wu 19:46:09 UTC)

Yay! KP stopped by with some awesome news – Xbox 360 downloaded content licenses can now be migrated to a new machine. This means (for example) that if you buy Halo 3 DLC, and then your Xbox red-rings, or you upgrade to an Elite, you no longer have to jump through hoops to play the maps you already bought. More details in KP’s post, or in the Xbox.com article he references. Have I said yay yet? Yay!(Louis Wu 19:42:11 UTC)

Dennis Powers let us know that Shipwrecked 32 is live – looks like Taylor got a bit pummeled by the river trip.(Louis Wu 18:45:37 UTC)

SonofMacPhisto was the first to notice that the new Double XP Weekend Playlist is live – 3 Ball is full of games with 3 oddballs, and 4 teams of 3 players each. Go have fun!(Louis Wu 18:12:01 UTC)

Magnus “ScUmMy” Valebjørg let us know that HaloNorge.com just hosted a summer tournament – and ZpiKe uploaded video footage from the three Winners Bracket Finals and the three Grand Finals – you can grab them from this post (they’re hosted on FileFront). I don’t think there’s any way I could get ‘wood’ into this newspost for a bad joke.(Louis Wu 17:45:46 UTC)

TJ Ramirez caught a Scorpion on Avalanche getting… buffeted. Wonder if the driver lived through that? Thanks to Urk for the mundane stuff. (If you have a Vimeo account (free), you can download the HD version at the bottom of the page. It’s worth it.)(Louis Wu 17:15:54 UTC)

MLGPro.com has posted the ESPN/MLG Top Ten #5 – this one features user-submitted clips, and they’re quite good. Thanks to Buttskunk, who was proud of his son’s appearance at #9!(Louis Wu 15:27:26 UTC)