As we mentioned yesterday, Halo Babies is offline for another week or so, due to bandwidth excesses. However, Gruntsbane had actually finished the week’s strip, and felt that their audience deserved to see it… and we’re happy to help out. You can read the weekly strip here (112K).

Stuntmutt looks at the logical extrapolation of the modding craze in today’s One One Se7en. Let’s hope it never gets this bad.

The lag joke continues on today’s Halo: Resolution…

A Red vs Blue fan has started up a two-phase contest over on the RvB forums. Chris Short is offering one Season 2 Super Sponsorship ($20) to the best idea for a contest… and then the winner’s idea will become phase two, with another super sponsorship (and one standard sponsorship) on the line for the winners. Pretty interesting way to hold a contest when you don’t know what the contest should be… rules and stuff can be found in this RvB forum thread.

Rams, of Battleground: Halo, has been spotlighted over at the Junkyard; read up on what makes him tick. I’m pretty sure an addiction to mini-sausages doesn’t count as a hobby… but hey, with the right mustard, they can make a meal!

There’s a new Halo comic, called Subzero Rivalries, created by Evilburger; there’s something familiar about it. Thanks to MarkHawk for pointing it out.

Clearing out the Miscellaneous Art queue built up since Christmas… some fun stuff here. Sketches, comics, concept art. Go take a look!

If you’ve been curious about the Battleground 1942 mod Homefront, Framerate has written up an in-depth preview over at Battleground: Halo. Check it out!

mrsmiley wrote last night to let us know that though Halo Babies is down again (bandwidth excess), they’ll be back online on the 22nd with new material. They’re also hoping to have their move (to bigger digs) up and running by the end of the month; new design, better host, the works!

Red vs Blue has set up a much slicker subscription process than they had in the past; Hi-res stuff is now password-protected, and linked to your username. $10 gets you access to the hi-res files, a couple of days before the public gets the low-res ones, and $20 gets you the DVD at the end of the season, as well. Give ’em your money. You know you were just gonna spend it on something frivolous anyway…

Wow. MonoxideC has created a multiplayer version of the Library. This forum post from Nick includes links to both the level itself (with a readme on how to install it) and a 36 mb movie (WMP9 format) showing 7 minutes of gameplay. This map looks incredible. So incredible, in fact, that gwdpto (the man behind the HBO-COERCE server) has set up a dedicated server for it; you can play it right now. (Information on how is in that forum thread, as well.) This opens all sorts of doors for multiplayer maps, I’d guess…

9 pieces for you this time around in the Fan Fiction section…

• The Death of Eden, by Mainevent
• Countdown Earth: Hour Four, by Mainevent
• Deep below the skies (Halo 2: Chapter 15), by Shadowrunner
• (Part 14/15) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• Manufactured Destiny: Chapter 1, by MoZ
• The Sands of Derelict Chapter 2 Takeoff, by monitor101
• A Series of Wierd Events – Sequel, Part Seven, by Hunter_Killer
• Forgotten Angel Chapter 1 The Prophecy, by CovieKilla
• Battle for Tectron Chapter 7 : Caught, by Helljumper

You might notice this update is smaller than most. There are some no-nos that are being violated; here’s how you can avoid having your story deleted… 1) Keep your story at least nominally about Halo. Random fanfic is not appropriate here. 2) If you are submitting a series segment, and you need to add 10 paragraphs from your LAST chapter to bring the current one up to the 750 word minimum… wait, and combine it with the NEXT chapter. (The story in question is lucky the next chapter was in the queue, so I could combine them – otherwise, I would have simply deleted it.) 3) If you write a 750 word story with no punctuation, capitalization, or linebreaks, don’t expect to find it in the section.

Another Blackstar-created Calvin and Halo – helps to know the forum regulars for the full humor of the strip.

The rapture-created Guest One One Se7en strips continue; once again, homage is paid to StrongBad. This time, though, the inspiration is an all-too-common occurance…

I don’t have any easy way of pointing this out to everyone who needs to see it – so I’m posting it here. It’s irrelevant to most of you, except that (as usual) Blackstar will likely make a cool wrapup vid for everyone to see… but hey, it’s good to be the king. The next HBO Junkies lanfest is happening here, at HBO HQ, on January 31. This one has a LOT of Halo community luminaries slated to come… so while access is open to the public, the number of folks I’m gonna be able to handle is MUCH smaller than usual. Please don’t be offended if you don’t get invited. You will definitely NOT get invited if I don’t receive a signup from you – the form is linked in the writeup over at the HBO Junkies 7th Column chapter. Even if I do receive a signup from you, I might STILL have to say no – because my house is only so big. So if you’re planning on coming, go sign up now – but don’t buy plane tickets until you get a response.

Cool news from SketchFactor in our forum today; looks like Frankie will be starting Halo 2 Weekly Updates, a la Matt Soell’s Halo 1 Updates in 2001. I’m getting goosebumps!

Blade writes to say that he’s back, with his own domain. Go visit TeamHalo.net for details!

We got mail from ‘pimp’ of the Ptown_Players, an online Halo clan based in the Southwest US. They’ve put together a bunch of sounds they use with XboxConnect, and wanted to share them with the world. The collection (7 sounds) is about a quarter-meg, zipped, and you can grab it from our Miscellaneous section.

Joshua Rhoads writes to tell us about Halo 2 Leagues; no games yet (obviously, since the game’s not out yet), but they’re ready!

Catching up on email – sorry folks. Several people wrote in (or posted on our forum) about the Gamespy Grudge match going on right now; Halo Warthog vs U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank. The tank is kicking butt right now… but maybe that’s as it should be? (Grudge match is down at the bottom of the left column, if you haven’t voted yet.) Seems like the Scorpion would have been a fairer choice.