Dave Candland, Halo’s lead UI designer (you might know him as Evil Otto), decided to try his hand at guest-stripping for Another Halo Comic Strip – the result is actually quite funny. If ZZoMBiE13 can get enough submissions that conform to his guidelines, a Sunday Guest strip will be a regular feature – but they have to be funny! See? If Dave can do it, you can do it.(Louis Wu 13:47:40 UTC)

Smurfa noticed that DigitalPh33r has posted Episode 9, Part 2 (Act 2) of ‘Deus Ex Machinima’ over at Machinima.com. Lots of action, no dialogue. Make sure you’re up on the story before you watch this.(Louis Wu 13:37:00 UTC)

Today’s edition of Another Halo Comic Strip is an interesting look at Finders Keepers…(Louis Wu 22:36:42 UTC)

The Halo 3 ‘Believe’ campaign continues to rack up advertising awards – the latest is a pair of Gran Prix Lions (Film and Integrated) won at the 55th International Advertising Festival in Cannes last night. Check sample writeups at Adweek and AdvertisingAge.(Louis Wu 20:15:39 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has kicked off the Halo Corpse Alphabet, a rather macabre project aimed at reproducing the standard English alphabet in… well, dead Spartans. The news story shows off an example of an X. Go see what you can contribute!(Louis Wu 19:36:56 UTC)

Tyler sent word that Forecast the Series Episode 4 is now online – you can read about it on their website, or watch it on YouTube. Folks are getting pretty creative with the machinimatography! (On second thought, there’s not much to read – just go watch it.)(Louis Wu 19:36:10 UTC)

Inside Halo 18 has a really short recap of MLG San Diego, the top 5 plays of the week, and some machinima highlights – go watch! Thanks, Bob 116.(Louis Wu 16:55:19 UTC)

Heh – the Plumsted, NJ public library has discovered that you can attract a little-seen demographic (young adults) by hosting a Halo lanfest. (The article mentions that young MALE adults were brought in – but the picture accompanying the story shows a mixed audience.) The question is, are they checking out books before they leave?(Louis Wu 12:44:45 UTC)

News.com.au has a story about Supanova, a science fiction convention in Sydney, Australia this weekend. The picture gallery has a couple of nice shots of a fan’s Master Chief costume.(Louis Wu 12:44:19 UTC)

UNSC Trooper pointed out that the Fan Fic Pick of the Week is up over at the HBOFF forum. Go see what (ENS) Rabid_Gallagher came up with as the top few stories of the batch! (Louis Wu 12:43:42 UTC)

Last night, Bungie posted their Weekly Update (available, as always, in our Weekly Update Archive in addition to Bungie.net), and it contains a monster writeup of the Halo 3 Battle Rifle, and how it was designed to work. (This week saw a lot of discussion around the net about how the battle rifle is ‘broken’ – its bullet spread is too random at long range for many hardcore users. The explanation in the WU makes it clear that this is by design – and only affects the weapon at long range. Bungie wanted the BR to be used primarily as a mid-range weapon, with long-range tasks (like pinging a sniper to pull him out of scope, or finishing off an unshielded target), but without the ability to be used as a universal “I can kill anything on the map with this puppy, regardless of location” tool.) Past this very detailed writeup, there’s also information about the San Diego Comic Convention, mention of a couple of dates to keep track of, and a couple of gorgeous screenshots of Cold Storage (nee Chill Out). Large versions of the Cold Storage shots are available in Bungie’s Screenshot Gallery. Go read! It’s a good ‘un.(Louis Wu 10:38:03 UTC)

You might or might not remember link4044 – he built a really cool Assault Rifle last year. He’s back – and this time, he’s putting together a Legendary Crest. It looks incredible! Check it out.(Louis Wu 20:43:03 UTC)

MLGPro.com has posted the MLG/ESPN Top Ten #4 – this one is completely culled from the MLG Meadowlands tournament, and you’ll see some great pro playing. Take a look!(Louis Wu 19:23:08 UTC)

Wow. NOKYARD sent word that Pahis (Pahat Pojat) has done some amazing Campaign work – first up, he beat the Million Point Challenge using just three levels; The Ark (443,175), The Covenant (415,230), and Cortana (168,075). (This blows away the first instance of that challenge being beaten, back in October – that one needed six levels.) Go read the news post at High Speed Halo for download links (or grab the runs themselves from Pahis’ FileShare). That October news post, with the challenge getting beaten the first time? I asked if anyone wanted to try for two million points – Pahis has done that, with a combined total of 2,243,974 points for all nine levels. These runs are done Solo, Legendary, All Skulls On – as of May 2, only two people had completed the game in this mode. According to NOKYARD, he holds the High Score record for all Campaign missions, the SLASO record for each mission, and has completed the entire game in SLASO style in 4:13:22 (though not in a single sitting). Insanity. Go watch some of it. (Louis Wu 18:50:27 UTC)

Chairleg Productions has posted a podcast discussing some of the special effects and how they took care of them in their latest production, Console Wars. (We mentioned it on Tuesday.) If you haven’t seen the video yet, you should – since our newspost, which contained links for an SD flash version and a downloadable HD QuickTime version, they’ve put it up on YouTube, and we provided a couple of mirrors (the HD QuickTime, and an HD WMP9). Watch the video, listen to the podcast – these guys are at the top of their form! Thanks to TheSquareCoin for the heads-up.(Louis Wu 18:26:11 UTC)