Twelve new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today, including the Noob Diary entries that made the front page of B.net a couple of days ago, some intriguing poems, and more. Go read!

Pvt. Jenkins posted a note on our forum – he’s looking for a ‘manly voice’ for his Flash movie. The movie itself is done – all that’s needed is the audio. (This makes a project like this much more promising than, say, “I’m really interested in making a Halo movie – who’s with me?”) Read the post, see if you meet the requirements (no, Jilly, you don’t) – drop him some email!

drumyouaway submitted a trailer for Barney Just Wants a Hug to the MPRRS – and though a few people were unhappy with the aspect ratio of some of the footage, it passed the system, and so we’re hosting it for you to see. Short, odd… sort of like my kids. WMP9 (7.6 mb) or QuickTime (7.1 mb) formats.

There’s another piece on Bungie.net that should be read by everyone who plays Halo 2 on Xbox Live; apparently, the’ve started to run queries on their game database, looking not for modders, but for players who’ve played ‘a significant number of games with modders’. Yesterday, they temp-banned a few thousand of them – and the next time won’t be temporary. This doesn’t mean you should panic if you find yourself in a game with a modder; one is not a ‘significant number of games’. It DOES mean that if you’re doing a lot of custom gaming, and your friends are modders… you might find yourself banned, even though you don’t mod. Worth thinking about! Update: Sketchfactor dropped by our forum to clarify that the current tempban was only for people who were playing with modders in Matchmaking – not custom games. (There was some apprehension that you could get banned from matchmaking by inadvertently playing in custom games with modders.) He certainly did not rule out the possibility that playing with modders in custom games might, at some point, get you banned from matchmaking – but right now, they’re focusing on matchmaking primarily.

Yesterday afternoon, Sketchfactor posted an interview with Major Nelson, Xbox Live Director of Programming, over at Bungie.net; read it to get a sense for what this guy does. There was a snippet that hinted at how much new info Live would be giving you about opponents once the 360 is released – I’m looking forward to that!

New comic up at Halo Babies – I gotta say, that’s one fast-thinking grunt! There’s also a reminder about the Red vs Blue Comic Contest, which ends in a couple of days. Go check it out!

I meant to post this yesterday, when she put it up on the forum… but real life has been getting in the way recently. Pinkuh revealed a sketch of an upcoming piece of work she’s making for the Team Schooly D clan – we’ve added it to her art page. (It’s the one dated ’18 August’.) Enjoy!

The High Impact Halo logo contest has come to an end – you can see the winner (and a fine choice it is) on their front page. Congrats to T010! (And taking a page from the HollywoodHalo playbook, there is a Video Update summarizing the past week – multiple formats, 25-35 mb, depending… give it a watch!)

This Spartan Life has put up a new Video Blog – Episode 2 gets into the host’s personal life (well, sort of). Scary. (Just hit the ‘Blogs’ link at the top to see it.) 5.4 mb, QuickTime format. Thanks to Squatting Bear, who pointed it out before it even showed up on the page.

Eep – sometimes, time zones bite you. The Fall of Reach is filming today at 6:30 PM England time. (They sent along a link showing what time that is in the rest of the world.) Bottom line – it’s less than four hours from when this news post is going up. If you’re interested in helping, check this forum post for details on how to get in. But do it soon!

Over at 2old2play, there’s another writeup of last weekend’s LAN activities – complete with pics and… scary descriptions. I dunno if I’m sad I missed it… or grateful. (Oh, yeah… and some questionable behavior – a site mod takes advantage of a site admin; WMP9 or QuickTime format (only about 350kb each). Hmm…) Thanks, doodi.

That Sarge – he’s so cool, even when he’s telling OLD jokes he sounds great. Check out today’s One One Se7en.

Hikaru writes that Halo Arena has posted an interview with Brian Towne, known online as Amaroq – the man behind mythica.org, a huge supplier of Halo-related bandwidth over the past few years. Check it out!

D-Man, DK, and trigger119 have teamed up to create their own Halo-based podcast; you can read about it in this post, but use this one for an updated (and working) download link.

Podtacular! Episode 4 has been posted – this one’s an hour and 15 minutes, so be sure you have a bit of free time for listening. They’re currently 30th in iTunes’ Top 100 Podcasts… pretty impressive! 26 mb, MP3 format.

CNN has an article on machinima, and its potential as a new medium for Hollywood – Red vs Blue gets prominent mention. It’s clear that many in Hollywood still don’t get it:

“Hollywood looks to all kinds of places for a fan base and given the enormous success of video games, that’s a natural place to look,” said Jon Richmond, managing director of media and entertainment at Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin. “But ‘Final Fantasy’ was a movie based on video game technology and that was a whopping failure.”

Excuse the banging noise – that’s the sound of my head hitting the desk, over and over. Thanks to Germain Couët for the heads-up.

Kelli ‘Pinkuh’ Washburn, one of our featured artists (you can find a link to her work in the short ‘Hot Pages’ menu to the right), whipped up a… somewhat risqué interpretation of Cortana yesterday – it’s nothing you haven’t seen on, say, Superbowl halftime shows, but it’s definitely no longer G-rated. You can find this on her page here (it’s currently the last image in the ‘Completed Works’ section), or at her DeviantART site. (The description there might explain where she was coming from on this one. Or then again… it might not.)

Se7en found a fun little Flash animation by TheWax at DeviantART – a fusion of the Master Chief and Sonic the Hedgehog. (The Voice of God seems to be going soft…)

Hehe – Andras Ostrom found a tidbit at IMDB.com, blaming Halo 2 (and Netflix, but this is a Halo site, so we’ll focus on that) for the downturn in moviegoing this summer. Darn that Bungie – keeping people at home! Update: Eep – Gregory Prill found the same info (but more fleshed out) in the Chicago Sun-Times. In fact – that’s where imdb got it.

A couple of weeks ago, a story circulated that the RIAA had shut down a site hosting fan-made videos because the music in them was unlicensed. It turned out that the cease-and-desist letter was forged… but in case anyone was really worried, you should check out Weezer’s site; in a news post from a few days ago, they point out imSuck’s Beverly Hills video (hosted here) – nice when the band whose music you’re paying tribute to actually notices! Thanks to Ducain for pointing out Phantom’s news post at High Impact Halo.