Paul Maestri pokes his head up again with a new Halo Heads comic – I must say that while his imagination is clearly vast… the direction his thoughts take him can be a bit disturbing.(Louis Wu 11:51:27 UTC)

The Eurogamer live chat with Frankie and Jonty Barnes went off as expected yesterday; a full transcript is now up on Eurogamer. Lots of good discussion in there, check it out! (I was a little flabbergasted that when a question of whether there would ever be a Marathon game on the 360 came up, nobody mentioned that Marathon: Durandal is on the 360 already. I know they were interpreting the question with an unspoken ‘from Bungie’ – but geez, just a mention, you know?) Overall, this is full of reassuring info – Bungie isn’t planning on leaving the 360 (I know, they said that after the split, but it’s nice to hear that things haven’t changed in a couple of months), Bungie listens to fans, Bungie might be bringing back older maps for upcoming DLC, and on and on.(Louis Wu 11:48:06 UTC)

First off, apologies for the sparse updating; I’m out of town, and free time is rarer than I’d expected. Let’s barrel through the biggest new stuff for you. As expected, there was a Bungie Weekly Update last night (available, as always, in our Weekly Update Archive as well) – reminders of things to come, a summary of Live playlists changes you’ll see over the next month (starting next week), and more info about the DLC maps coming on Tuesday. There’s also a link to another story on Bungie.net – SketchFactor wrote up a piece on the Spartan Soccer game that a number of press and fansites saw last week. Beyond the intriguing game itself, the article shows you some of the potential you can expect from Foundry… and from playing games in Forge. Go read both of these!(Louis Wu 11:31:36 UTC)

In an effort to keep the really IMPORTANT news up-to-date while Wu is otherwise preoccupied, here is today’s One One Se7en Advent offering. May all your holidays be filled with cheap artwork and bad puns.(mnemesis 17:42:49 UTC)

Today’s the last day to participate in c0ld vengeance’s Puzzleball 03 contest, and maybe win yourself a copy of Crackdown for your troubles. Because I archived the August through November posts on our forum yesterday, his original forum post is no longer accessible for replies – so use this new one if you want to submit an entry. Good luck!(Louis Wu 12:42:08 UTC)

A little over a week ago, we posted over 50 new images in our Miscellaneous Art section – which cleared the queue through August 1. I promised then that I’d do my best to continue on through the backlog; 10 days is longer than I’d hoped, but the next batch is up. Swing by the section for 60 new images – 100 or so, if you count variants (mostly bigger versions). This clears the queue through November 1 – we’re getting closer to the present! There is some truly amazing work here; artists that haven’t appeared before, but who are showing themselves to be enormously talented… one-offs from people who clearly draw better in their sleep than I, say, breathe… sketches and models and all sorts of fun stuff. Go look.(Louis Wu 05:42:29 UTC)

Haloplayer announced that the first Halo 3 episode of Lost Cause is now up on the Injured Knee Productions website. Watch it before you read the thread; it’s… full of surprises. I’ll probably have to watch it again.(Louis Wu 05:38:40 UTC)

Jase pointed out that Red vs Blue’s Recovery One Part Four has appeared on Xbox Live Marketplace. If you’re a sponsor, it’s also available on RvB’s website. This wraps up the miniseries… and I must say, I didn’t see it coming. Great work!(Louis Wu 05:33:35 UTC)

Beorn has done a pretty spectacular job of vectorizing all of the UNSC Rank/Insignia artwork from Halo 3 – and you can grab the fruits of his labor in a variety of formats. Go see!(Louis Wu 05:23:56 UTC)

Wow, this is a cool trick. There’s a tutorial over at 360WTF that shows you how to remove explosions (and other particle effects) from a screenshot. I just tested it, and it works exactly as advertised. I know there’ve been times when I find a fantastic angle… but I can’t see what I want to see because of an explosion. Now there’s a way to take care of that!(Louis Wu 05:20:15 UTC)

If you’re a .NET programmer, you might be interested in helping out in a new open source Halo 3 statistics aggregation project being spearheaded by Rick Casey. Check out what he’s done so far at CodePlex – and if you’ve got the skills, add to his work, or use it on your own site!(Louis Wu 05:08:39 UTC)

swampiedonkey let us know that Halo 3 Artifice is now online – and it’s chock-full of strategies you can use to improve your Halo 3 skillz. Check it out!(Louis Wu 05:01:59 UTC)

Luke posted Bungie’s response to the drumming they took from PraetoriaGuard – one might think, upon reading it, that Bungie are pretty sore losers. We all know that can’t possibly be the case… so I’m guessing that Bungie’s servers were hacked by mean, nasty representatives of the PraetoriaGuard. Yeah, that’s it. (Louis Wu 04:59:58 UTC)

A bit earlier than usual… but all day Friday is going to be a crazy day, so it’s better to get this posted now. There are ten new pieces in the Fan Fiction section this week – go read!(Louis Wu 04:48:21 UTC)

Leviathan dropped in to remind us that he’s still working on Halo: Pixelated, a 2D shooter built in an RPG-making program. The artwork is really, really cool; check out his shots for confirmation. Can’t wait to see the final product!(Louis Wu 04:32:21 UTC)

I managed to forget a newspost to announce yesterday’s (Thursday’s) One One Se7en Advent offering – which is a shame, because it was actually pretty cute. Sorry, Stunt!(Louis Wu 04:18:40 UTC)