Well, it’s time for the Seven Day Poll to come to a close – and if you hadn’t noticed, ‘Wait for me!’ was the runaway winner of the ‘lamest Crewman voice snippet award’, garnering 62% of the 8200 votes (beating its nearest competitor by by almost 3300 votes). Interestingly enough, I just discovered today who did that snippet… and while I probably shouldn’t say WHO it was, I can definitely tell you I was surprised. (None of the other snippets in the poll were voiced by the same actor.) We’ll consider resurrecting the Seven Day Poll again if we run across something we think worthy of voting on… in the meantime, I’ll leave this data up until tomorrow.

Two new websites to mention to you tonight… A very classy Flash-based site called 343 Guilty Spark (Your 100% Unofficial Halo 2 Source) and a German clan site known as DGD-Clan. The Halo community is growing by leaps and bounds!

It took a LONG time, and a LOT of help from Warbow and Free at Last (who did all the real gruntwork)… but the Miscellaneous Section is finally up-to-date. (Well, almost. There were a couple of things yesterday that should probably go in it… but they’re not local yet.) Some of the search functionality has been improved, as well – if you know you read about something cool and it’s not in any other section… this is the place to look. (The Dialogue Databank? It’s in the HBO Prime section. And so on.) Whew! 50 new items, in 8 months. That’s a lotta stuff!

SketchFactor has posted some impressions from a fan who was at the CPL 2003 Summer Event – an inspiring read. Swing by b.net and take a look!

Tocki, of Halo Orbit, points out an exclusive at their site – information about the German version of the ‘Fall of Reach’ novel. There’s a cover pic, a release date, more. Stop by if you’ve been waiting for this!

C.C.R. and Spartaco have put together a movie showing how to get all the vehicles on top of a Blood Gulch base. It’s 2:47 long, 10.4 mb large, in WMP7 format. They’re hosting it themselves at Suite904. If you’ve had trouble getting vehicles on top of the bases, you might want to grab this.

Four new Halo Cover concepts came in in the past week – one front cover, and 3 front-and-back combos. You’ll find them all in our Cover Art Contest section (they’re the last entries on the page). One of them isn’t even Halo 2 – it’s Halo 1.5. Take a look!

11 new dialogue snippets from Captain Spark for the Dialogue Databank. The man is a treasure trove – 416 of the 554 snippets currently in the collection have come from him – and they’re almost invariably clean (minimal background noise, good capture). Enjoy these!

Once again, Stuntmutt is slighted by my busy schedule. Yesterday’s One One Se7en didn’t get posted properly. I blame Cortana. (You have to blame SOMEONE, right?)

That Weasel Television has ramped up the number of movies it’s currently hosting – new arrivals include, among others:

• FTC 5 (QuickTime, 10 mb)
• FTC 6 (QuickTime, 15 mb and DivX, 20 mb)
• Black and White 0 (QuickTime, 10 mb)
• Predator (QuickTime, 21 mb)
• Dr Swiss’ How the Grunt Stole Halo 2 (TWTv Exclusive, WMP9, 2.8 mb)
• Halo 2 Unpromotion (TWTv Exclusive, WMP9, 2.8 mb TW: Seal of Approval)
• Hog Wars (TWTv Exclusive, DivX, 28 mb)

There are many, many more – check ’em out! Have we said recently how grateful we are for Halo movie hosting help?

C.O.E.R.C.E., the bandwidth consortium, continues to make new movies available in our hour of bandwidth crisis. Newest addition to the archive: Enter The Matrix, from Athol Productions. 15.9 mb, 4:07 long, in QuickTime 5 format, this movie has some pretty awesome editing effects. It’s not everything its creator wanted it to be, but it’s still a killer piece of work! Grab it from the C.O.E.R.C.E. mirror page – and toss your comments into this thread!

Fire Team Charlie has finished FTC 6 – their most ambitious piece yet. Editing is fantastic, sound is good (though still rough in places) – this one has to be downloaded! One of these days, I gotta try that warthog trick… This one is 5:55 long, 20 mb, 352×128, in DivX5-encoded AVI format. (A 15.2 mb QuickTime version has been created, but I’m not sure where it’s going to be hosted.) Stop by XboxOttawa.ca and grab this! Mirrors are, of course, highly appreciated – download the vid, send us a link, and we’ll be sure to make it public. Thanks!

Gettin’ there… Desktops are now cleared out, as well – 16 new images for you (plus one size variation). Check out the Wallpaper section! Update: We removed one of the images, because it used an older wallpaper as a base, without permission. Removal was at the request of the original artist. People… please. If you’re going to use someone else’s work, ask first. (The only real exception to this is Halo artwork placed on Bungie’s site – it’s there for your use in this manner.)

Another Monday, another Weekly Review! If you think you might have missed anything in our forum this past week, read this post. (Even if you think you DIDN’T miss anything, read this post – it’s got a nice spin on things you might have overlooked…)

Since my return from vacation last week, the art sections of b.org have been woefully unattended. Here’s step one in fixing that problem. 11 built-up pieces for the Miscellaneous Art section. A wide mix. Update: Oops, missed one.

mnemesis is on vacation… but Finn, less than two weeks from a pretty major paradigm shift, has managed to update the Halo Story page with a tasty morsel culled from today’s forum droppings. That Wado guy… he’s pretty sharp.

Full details will be forthcoming at the Halo50K site in the next day or two, but we got email from Bigsauce (a finalist at the Halo National Championships last year) with details about the top spots:

Top 4 for the FFA:
1. Ogre2
2. Ogre1
3. StrangePurple
4. TDT Alex

2v2 Winner:
Ogres

4vs4 Winner:
StK

Darkman took 6th place and in the 4vs4 TDT took 2nd.

For those not up on the Halo Tourney scene, TDT is The Dream Team, a team of four guys that includes Dustin ‘HP Darkman’ Langton, recently mentioned in our news as being the first Halo gamer to go pro. They won the 4vs4 competition at Halo50K. (StK won the 2v2 competition, and Ogres were 3rd in the 4vs4 competition there, as well; guess the top bracket has just switched positions a bit, rather than given way to a new regime). StK, this tourney’s winners of the 4vs4 competition, is currently spotlighted at Halo50k – nice timing, that.

After several months of being offline, Shishka’s Megg FAQ has been resurrected over at Subnova. There’s a few more steps than what you’ll find in our own Megg mini-FAQ (created at the height of the Megg furor) – if you’re new to the community, and have always wondered what the Megg actually is/was… check it out. (It’s been found, however, and full details are linked to from both FAQs, so please, don’t mail us with breathless messages about how you found it, okay?)

Three days’ worth of Fan Fiction:

• Once, In A Field with Dying Hopes, by TheRambler
• Earth, A Place for Death. Part 3: NYC final action, by FuManChu
• The Virus Part 6, by monitor101
• A John Before Halo: Part 6, by J-117
• Halo from the Flood’s Point of View: The Attack, by Simpsons Rule
• Halo 2: Revenge of a Spartan, Chapter 8, by LostRock
• Halo: The MCconto Chronicles Part 3, by JCDenton
• (Part 13) M31: First Blood, by Greg and Wes Foutch
• Search for Chief part two , by Legend Player
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 9, by S7N
• Project: Shadow Spartan, Chapter 11, by Agent Shade
• O.C. Tango Red: Welcome aboard the Autumn, Chaos., by Shinai Purugganan
• In Light of Destiny Part I, Chapter I: And so it begins…, by Jinkaiden-XI
• A Marine Named Peters: Snow Day, by GLADIATRRR3000
• CORRUPT [1], by GLADIATRRR3000
• Long time gone part 1, by grylsy
• The Defense of Earth 6; Spark’s Demise, by Steele

Hopefully, I can get to artwork later today… off again now, though.

It’s BOLL day, it appears. The guy just doesn’t stop. Check out his Halo Discs – I could see printing these as CD labels, I really could.