Okay, I’m out of here for a while. The site is in the capable hands of the HBO grunt crew; If you have news you think they should be posting, send it to halo (at) bungie.org. Do NOT send anything to lwu (at) bungie.org that you want to have read in the next week or so. That’s about as clear as I can be; if you insist on mailing stuff to me personally, it’s gonna sit in limbo until I can read it. Be good.(Louis Wu 12:22:36 UTC)

Pinkuh created a pretty cool convention badge for a friend – check it out in her gallery here!(Louis Wu 08:13:02 UTC)

Wow, this is sort of odd – there’s a pretty nice new t-shirt design at Hot Topic; it celebrates the Brutes in Halo 3, and has some cool artwork. The odd part? It features Tartarus – the guy you killed in Halo 2. Thanks, Megan Stewart.(Louis Wu 07:31:13 UTC)

If you’ve got a long memory, you might remember Nick Singer as the guy who was looking for Halo mods that needed original music a couple of years ago. He’s back – and this time, he’s mixing the music of Marathon and Halo, and doing a wonderful job of it. Go check out his Marathon Mix 1.(Louis Wu 03:06:42 UTC)

Mister Froggy sent word that Halo, Articulated #60 is up. Looks like the anti-smoking lobby is even more agressive in 2552 than they are today…(Louis Wu 02:58:30 UTC)

Wow, bizarre. According to MacGold Direct Online (a Macintosh game seller in the UK), MacSoft has discontinued the sale of Halo for Mac in the UK. There’s no announcement at all on their site, and it seems to still be available in the US – we’ve got no decent guesses as to why the UK has been shut out. Thanks, The More Deluded.(Louis Wu 02:55:53 UTC)

Sane Intolerant has finished his Halo/Transformers story arc for Halo Toy Box; There are four new strips (There’s Nothing You Can Do, Autobots Wage Their Battle, More Than Meets The Eye, and The War Has Just Begun). If you’ve been following this storyline, go visit and see how it ends! (Louis Wu 02:25:49 UTC)

Wired has an article about the Halo History Pack, a special Japanese-only release that contains Halo, Halo 2, and a disc that contains the system update that allows both games to run on the Xbox 360. (Since both games ran on the 360 on the day it was released, I can only assume that the disc includes all the updates to the backwards compatibility emulator that are relevant to the Halo titles.) nash–housewares wonders how many hardcore western Halo fans will seek this out, simply to have a complete collection?(Louis Wu 02:22:18 UTC)

Sean Mortensen sent along another score, this one inspired by the cover of Contact Harvest, the novel coming out this fall. It’s called Harvest Suite; mp3 format, 1:38, 1.4 mb.(Louis Wu 02:01:28 UTC)

The Bungie Weekly Update is posted over at Bungie.net; Frankie and Sketch are off on a whirlwind tour of Europe (starting in Amsterdam), so it’s Luke holding down the fort tonight. He chatted with the Jasman Toys folks about their upcoming Laser Pursuit game – what’s revealed might make you think that $80 and $120 is actually worth spending… he also teases a little with hints of upcoming Halo 3 goodness. September 25th can’t come fast enough! If you need it, this update is also available in our Weekly Update Archive.(Louis Wu 00:47:56 UTC)

Marc Rein, top dog at Epic, talked to CVG about Halo 3’s showing at E3. (Yeah, I sort of wondered about that, too.) He was discussing the lack of awards Halo 3 won this year (due to the lack of a playable demo, most likely) – and how it’s a good thing, overall, for Microsoft.

“What they wanted to do was highlight all the other great games… that are on Xbox 360 too so people don’t just think it’s a Halo box. They don’t care, they’re going to sell eight million of them anyway.”

Sounds about right. (Louis Wu 19:27:11 UTC)

LostRock11 noticed that Master Chief makes an appearance in today’s PvPonline – nice.(Louis Wu 17:33:53 UTC)

reticence dropped into our forum to point out a Lego Bionicle Elite he built. (Use the ‘Download’ link on the left for a full-sized version – thanks, Kanbo.) Wort!(Louis Wu 17:08:06 UTC)

Server 3 just opened up at Halo3.com, moving the Iris ARG forward a bit – a perfect time for Stuntmutt to tie it in to One One Se7en.(Louis Wu 16:07:49 UTC)

Hellhawk sent us a bunch of Brute sounds for the Halo 2 Dialogue Databank; I can’t GUARANTEE none of them are repeats, but I’m pretty sure most aren’t, at least. Find an audio editor that lets you layer multiple sounds, and play ’em all at once – sounds like the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo!(Louis Wu 14:43:52 UTC)

On July 16, we put up an odd picture. Two days later, we did it again. (Different picture.) Well, they were both teasers for Fathom, a new Machinima project from some heavy hitters in the machinima community – SodaGod, BlackouTT, Jamie98s, FantasyCubed. You can find a variety of download links in the HaloGrid announce thread. I’ve also encoded a local QT version, 30 mb, that’s not on that page (yet). BlackouTT says this isn’t a trailer – but I’m not sure what else you’d call it; it sets up the series. Maybe a prologue? Mysterious, with great filming, great audio, great effects – very well done piece of work. Go watch it.(Louis Wu 14:22:46 UTC)

Heh – Devin Olsen almost got away with a Halo 3 Legendary Helmet for cheap yesterday. I HATE it when store managers foil my plots!(Louis Wu 14:11:39 UTC)