GryphonOsiris wrote an ode to Ban Hammer – fun stuff.

The Auto-Update is now fully in force – if you log into Live, you must either accept it or be blocked from Matchmaking. Some noticed modders online this afternoon, even after they’d been updated – this doesn’t mean the update isn’t working; as Achronos mentioned on our forum, you’ll see a decline in cheating, rather than an instantaneous stoppage. Patience! Update: Some good info in the first post in this thread on the B.net forums, as well. Thanks, Dojorkan.

Jay Marrero sent along word of a tourney taking place in Orlando in October – full details can be found on the PGL Events page. $1000 on the line.

In the not-so-good category, we got mail from Tina and Tim Leyk – they thank the community profusely for their support, but wanted to pass on the bad news that as of October, they’re out on the street (no jobs, no house). Not sure what the community can do for them – but the PayPal link is still up, and linked from our front page. (The address changed recently – so if you’d tried to help and had gotten an error message, you can try again.) Personal hardship is always a bad thing…

Recently, Phatcorns mentioned on our forum that a new book had hit the shelves – It’s called ‘Machinima: Making Animated Movies in 3D Virtual Environments‘ and it uses several movies from HBO regulars (including Phatcorns’ ‘Out for Blood’ as examples. c0ld vengeance pointed out that his ‘Haliens’ is in there, too. Nice!

Last night, when Frankie posted a link to the Autoupdate news piece on Bungie.net, Littlebigman asked if he could get hold of a large version of the Tartarus thumbnail used in the article. Frankie complied – and LBM sent it to us, so you can have it too (77k).

SSGT Cutter points out that the Master Chief is in another DoomToons today. The downsides of Cortana…

A few days ago, we posted a pretty impressive parody from Patriarch917 – he’s back, with another one. This one is called ‘Hide‘, a takeoff of Slide, by the Goo Goo Dolls. 3.7 mb, MP3 format. What are you waiting for? Go listen!

In July 2004, Xbox Live hit the 1 million subscriber mark (taking roughly 20 months to get there). Today – 12 months later (nearly to the day), they hit 2 million. How many of those are directly attributable to Halo 2? Thanks, Cybrfrk. (And sorry, Marty – it just popped into my head.)

OftenK found a pic of a Covenant Elite costume from Comic-con. Pretty nice work!

Sometimes, clan tryouts don’t go as you’d expect. Today’s One One Se7en looks at alternative goals.

Narcogen has taken another look at the ‘Digital Couch’ concept – has Bungie lived up to its promise of providing us with a virtual extension of our physical living room, or are real-life gatherings still the only way to enjoy gameplay? He makes some good points – go read the latest Narc’s Retort!

Okay, that Cairo Station vid we mentioned yesterday is sort of a mess right now. There are a ton of versions floating around; there’s the original MPEG version, there’s a 180 mb WMP9 version trigger119 created from that (which has been mirrored by jtdoepke and torrented by amaroq), there’s a 120 mb WMP9 that comradx himself created, and there’s a new 127 mb WMP9 that has the credits included in the film. (This last doesn’t seem to be accessible on the net yet.) Because the WMP9 field is so tortured, I’m staying away from it – you can find links for every version I just mentioned (except the MPEG, and the newest comradx version) in the High Impact Halo thread we mentioned yesterday. What I CAN offer is a 135 mb QuickTime version, available via BitTorrent (with decent seed bandwidth) – this was created from the 120 mb comradx-created WMP9, coupled with his latest credits file. Wow – I gotta say, if movie creators would just be patient and line up their bandwidth BEFORE release, life would be simpler for everyone. That said – this one’s worth watching, so go grab a copy! (Of course, it might be re-encoded again in 15 minutes…) Update: [HC]D-Man has put up a version of the 127 mb WMP9 (the one that corresponds to our QuickTime – encoding by comradx, includes credits) on HaloCHAT – the download is being handled by Filefront, so bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem.

Ten new pieces in the Fan Fiction section today, including some good stuff by Dave Luck. Go read!

Looks like the team that’s putting together the Metroid mod for Halo CE has put up a website to keep track of their progress – check ’em out! Thanks, MasterGrief. Update: their popularity has forced them to switch hosts – you can find them here.

Reinsoft posted a link to a new Halo rap song using the Game ‘Dreams’ beat. 3.3 mb… didn’t do it for me, but make up your own mind.

F13ND has posted an interview with Team 3D’s Saiyan, over at Team3d.net – go read what makes this guy tick. (This is a guy who helps pay for college by winning Halo tourneys.)

Talk Xbox has posted an interview with BornRazz, who seems to be a random Xbox Live player who created a montage vid. (The montage itself is available for download in the interview.) It’s not clear to me after watching what makes this deserve its own article… but it’s there, and you can watch it. 19 mb, WMP9 format.

Another mini-review of the Multiplayer Map Pack was poasted yesterday on the website of the Fort Wayne News Sentinel – more love for Bungie. Go read.

Wow. Go check out Bungie.net – there’s a new article up, explaining how tomorrow, July 20, Autoupdate 4 will be released – if you’ve got modded content on your box, and you connect to Live, you’ll be banned from matchmaking. Period. Permanent, no appeals. You’ve been warned… (There’s more info, including details – go read. And comment on our forum!)