Logan “Crab” Rini sent along a bunch of panoramas he’s been putting together; they’re more varied than many of the ‘glorious landscapes’ we’ve seen from others. (Some are exactly that – but others are action shots with a much wider angle of viewing than we’re used to seeing.) These are quite large, for the most part – so we’re hosting them on one of our big-pipe fileservers. Take a look!(Louis Wu 16:47:33 UTC)

This blog post showed up in my Google Alerts mailbox – I’m posting it because (past the amazing-to-me fact that an English teacher living in South Korea knows NO Korean) I found it interesting that Halo 3 seemed hard to navigate without verbal cues. I can’t remember any places where things weren’t mostly clear by the geography (or HUD indications, if you waited too long)… but maybe that’s just because I WAS listening to directions. How many games are playable without prompting? Do you agree with this writer? Seemed like fun questions for a lazy Sunday morning.(Louis Wu 15:14:34 UTC)

A couple of days ago, we mentioned a contest at Maximum Fear – apparently, the submission email was incorrect. If you submitted an entry, you might want to swing by again and resubmit. Maximum Fear says “sorry!”(Louis Wu 14:58:44 UTC)

Ultimate_Dragon wrote up a glitch he experienced a few days ago… but when he posted it in text form, it didn’t get a lot of response – maybe because people couldn’t really picture what was happening. So he made a small vid, which he’s posted on YouTube. His theory is that under certain conditions, if you’re off-host you can be killed by a flying object… but the host won’t enforce the death unless you come in contact with the item a second time. (Anyone ever watch ‘Pushing Daisies’?) Seems sort of far-fetched… but the video is intriguing, and apparently, the result is repeatable. Go look! (Louis Wu 14:54:10 UTC)

Halo Action Figure Theater is updated with more unveiling… and another mystery. Check it out!(Louis Wu 14:31:57 UTC)

Keegan has begun work on the detailing of his Arbiter helmet. (Search our news for earlier posts.) This pic is a bit out-of-focus… but it’s still clear enough to see that this is looking good!(Louis Wu 14:30:24 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy found a papercraft Master Chief at Cubee Craft – cut him out, fold him over, stand him up. (Apparently, it’s a bit more work than it looks…) Swing by and make your own!(Louis Wu 19:06:14 UTC)

Today’s edition of Another Halo Comic Strip solves the mystery of Cortana’s rampancy – I should have known.(Louis Wu 16:08:32 UTC)

PEZ let us know that halowiki.net is hosting new Flash map overviews, put together by Devozade. The first map up is Sandtrap, and the overviews should be embeddable in other sites. Check it out!(Louis Wu 16:04:48 UTC)

Ross Mills noticed a tiny reference in the writeup for the London Movie Comic Media expo, coming in late May – Weta workshops will be there, with (among a lot of other things) “A sneak preview of the new Halo range of Collectibles, featuring Master Chief.” Nice!(Louis Wu 16:01:57 UTC)

Okay, the next Halo 2 HD cutscene release is ready… but this one’s a little different. Whisper in the Storm is 5:40 long – an enormous piece of work. In HD, it’s also an enormous file – it’s roughly a quarter of a gigabyte. To save our servers just a little bit, we’re holding back on the direct download until some of the initial demand is sated via BitTorrent – swing by the Cutscene Library and click the ‘bittorrent’ link for either the QuickTime or the WMP9 versions, and leverage the power of peer-to-peer filesharing! (Depending on demand, we’ll release the direct download later this weekend… but if you can utilize the BT link, we’d really appreciate it.) We’re seeding the torrent with 20Mb/sec for each flavor to start, so even early downloaders should see speedy downloads. This one’s great – go watch it in HD glory!(Louis Wu 02:47:18 UTC)

Sane Intolerant has restarted Halo Toy Box – he, too, has switched to McFarlane figures, and like Elnea, has noticed Cortana’s hawtness. (Louis Wu 02:43:22 UTC)

Kevin Larrabee, of Red Zone Gamer, let us know that in their latest podcast (number 4), he interviewed Seth Gibson (Bungie Tech Designer) and David Hunt (Bungie Lead Character Rigger and Cinematics Technical Director) about working at Bungie, how they got into animation, what they enjoy playing now, and more. The podcast is two and a half hours long, 66.1 mb, in mp3 format; go listen!(Louis Wu 02:27:37 UTC)

Lordstemplar1 stopped by to announce the release of Blackstone Teaser 2. Just under a minute, about 10 mb to download, or streamable from a couple of places. Looks a little scary!(Louis Wu 02:24:57 UTC)

Pixellated ran across some pictures of a laptop case mod that’s heavily inspired by Halo. Nice!(Louis Wu 02:07:28 UTC)

SPARTAN 294 noticed that DigitalPh33r released Arby ‘n’ the Chief Episode 6 – “Brawl”. Eight and a half minutes long, it gets back to the fun that might have been missing from the last couple of episodes. Arby and the Chief play some Super Smash Brothers Brawl… and it doesn’t go so well for one of ’em. Go watch!(Louis Wu 02:02:27 UTC)

Bungie’s Weekly Update is available now over at Bungie.net (and in our Weekly Update Archive) – lots of details about the upcoming MLG playlist, some stats about the popularity of various settings and armor choices, a few random Recon giftings, and some great screenshots of vehicles that have received a cosmetic (and in the case of the Hornet, gameplay) update for the upcoming Legendary Map Pack. Go read!(Louis Wu 23:51:13 UTC)