Ross Mills found a very cool speed painting of the Master Chief, created by Nico di Mattia. If you like Nico’s work, check out his website!(Louis Wu 18:36:25 UTC)

Dustbunny27 pointed out a bunch of Halo-related artwork he’s done over the past few months – they’re all hosted at DeviantART, and they’re pretty cool!(Louis Wu 18:34:17 UTC)

Stuntmutt has decided to do something very special this holiday season; he’s created a One One Se7en Advent calendar. Every day this December (until Christmas), there’ll be a new ornament on the tree, corresponding to that day’s comic. These comics will go live at a fixed time – probably noon, Eastern time (5pm UTC, 9am Pacific), and I may or may not get the news post up at the same time. When you visit the One One Se7en page, you’ll be met with a Christmas tree – the numbers correspond to the Advent offerings. As each day comes online, the ornaments will be numbered. Click on a number, view that offering. You can then get back to the main tree by clicking on the mini-tree that shows up next to the offering. (Try it. It’s easier understood than explained.) Strip One is up now. (Louis Wu 17:02:00 UTC)

It seems that there was a problem with the Puzzleball 03 map c0ld vengeance released yesterday; a bug which pretty much killed the competition. He’s fixed it, and asks that everyone re-download the map if they want to participate. (If you used the old map, but didn’t exploit the bug – see his post – your entry will still count.) Apologies for the irregularities!(Louis Wu 16:50:21 UTC)

trigger119 let us know that the MLG Halo 3 Film Festival winners have been announced – congrats to GuN SmOk3d, zbsh0gun, Peridious, and the underdogg!(Louis Wu 15:08:42 UTC)

Heh – a safe holiday message, from QuickTactical. Nice!(Louis Wu 15:06:53 UTC)

Bungie Weekly Update is up – Frankie lets you know why you shouldn’t worry about the downloadable content coming next week. And what’s coming after that. And when the next podcast is coming. And how to make REALLY awful motivational posters. You can, of course, read it in our Weekly Update Archive.(Louis Wu 00:05:05 UTC)

c0ld vengeance continues his creation of Forged puzzle maps; Puzzleball 03 has been released. This one even has a prize for the fastest finisher – a copy of Crackdown, courtesy of Simpsons rule. Go read the rules, and get to practicing!(Louis Wu 19:37:19 UTC)

Many people are annoyed by the delays occurring with the Halo: Uprising comic from Marvel. Judging by today’s One One Se7en, Stuntmutt is one of them.(Louis Wu 18:47:22 UTC)

TTL Demag0gue has gone back to the poster-edged look for Reclaimer – Chapter Two, Part Five looks great, and makes it clear that the Viper team is in trouble. (Louis Wu 11:24:52 UTC)

After being posted a couple of days late last week, the weekly Fan Fiction update is back on track. This week’s offering is understandably light – six pieces. Go read!(Louis Wu 11:20:50 UTC)

stan has proven that he has way, way, WAY too much time on his hands. (Louis Wu 11:18:17 UTC)

1UP has put together a graphical summary of the Halo 3 storyline, for folks who might be confused about certain points. Not all the info is canon (for example, I was under the impression that Installation 05 was closer to Earth than Installation 04), but in general, it’s a decent overview, in an entertaining format. Thanks, BlueNinja.(Louis Wu 11:11:10 UTC)

Don was the first to let us know about an article on Yahoo! Games – it’s another summary of games that might be up on the big screen in the forseeable future. Halo’s on the list, though the project is currently in limbo. Yahoo is pessimistic about the chances that a decent flick coming out of the franchise…(Louis Wu 10:39:37 UTC)

Halo3.junk.ws is quickly becoming the place to go to look at your Halo 3 stats; the options they offer over Bungie.net are ridiculous. They’ve just added a game browser that lets you filter your games based on more than 20 parameters – date played, game length, headshots, type of medals… you can see exactly how you perform, in any way you choose. If the results were directly linkable, for example, I’d show you how selecting ’11/28/2007′ games for Indutiomarus would yield the three Humpday Challenge games that the Junk.ws team played against Bungie this week. They lost that challenge – but you can read either their writeup (on their front page, or on their forum with comments), or you can read Bungie’s writeup, on Bungie.net. Looks like it was a good match! And the stats can be exhaustively analyzed using the tools these guys have put together. If you haven’t signed up for a (free) account – do it today!(Louis Wu 10:35:41 UTC)