A few days ago, GamingTV.org came online – it’s a new site devoted to hosting machinima, and though it’s not Halo-exclusive, it certainly focuses on Halo. It’s being run by trigger119, who’s been around the Halo machinima community for a few years now – if you haven’t checked it out yet, you should! (Louis Wu 16:03:59 UTC)

I didn’t think folks would notice so quickly, but I’m getting mail, so I might as well make this public. Several events this weekend have made it clear to me that the Movie Peer Review Rating System is no longer functional; a significant number of reviewers are members of machinima clans, and (contrary to the rules they agreed to when they signed up) do not always skip videos made by clan members. Similarly, machinima makers who have friends that happen to be reviewers are getting inflated scores from these friends whenever movies are submitted. Because of this, a number of movies which probably would not have been released had the system truly been impartial have made it through to the public. This weakens the entire foundation on which this system is built; if you can’t trust that the films coming out are the cream of the crop, what’s the point of the MPRRS in the first place? To be totally honest, I simply do not have a solution for this problem at the moment. I have no way of knowing who knows who behind the scenes – we worked on trust, and that’s been broken now. Because of this, I’ve shut the system down. If we can come up with a reasonable way of ensuring this problem doesn’t continue, we’ll reopen the doors. In the meantime – I apologize, you’ll need to find other hosting for your videos. (Louis Wu 03:10:41 UTC)

Took a little longer than I’d hoped – but voting is now open for the 2006 edition of the Guilt O’ Lantern pumpkin-carving contest! Swing by, check out the entries, and pick your favorite 5 – we’ll give the top rankers some cool schwag!(Louis Wu 22:54:19 UTC)

Laird points out that Alone Episode 8, ‘Welcome Back Ben’, is now available for download. Not a lot of Halo content in this episode, but it’s nice to see the series is going to be finished! WMP9 format, 55.4 mb.(Louis Wu 22:51:52 UTC)

Sigafoos writes to let us know that WikiRiot 23 is now online – 40 minutes, 16 mb, and the chatter covers the new Halo 3 pages on the wiki, clan challenges, and the new WikiRiot forums. Check it out!(Louis Wu 22:07:11 UTC)

EternalScrappy submitted ‘Pushing Me Away’ to the MPRRS; they liked it. (You might have noticed a large number of EternalScrappy vids coming through recently. We have, too. We’ve also noticed some reviewing… irregularities associated with these films. We’re not going to penalize any films that have already come through the system, but we’re going to be looking very closely at future films – ALL future films. (The problems we’re noticing weren’t something I thought we had to worry about at all – I guess I was being naive.) I suppose this is a heads-up to filmmakers in general… if you try and game our system, you might end up being shut out of it completely. Again, though – that’s a warning from this point forward; it doesn’t affect this current release.) You can grab this in WMP9 format (40.7 mb) or QuickTime format (42.5 mb).(Louis Wu 21:07:10 UTC)

Interesting article in the Toronto Star; it suggests that the new ad campaign for the Canadian Forces is using ‘a kind of video-game imagery’ to attract new recruits. The idea is that the target audience is males aged 17 to 25… a big video game playing crowd, so if you ‘speak their language’, they’ll respond to your ad. Halo is mentioned several times (though it is not part of the ad campaign – in fact, no video game is actually shown in these ads.) I found a pair of the ads on YouTube; you can definitely see the ‘video game imagery’. I’d be interested to know how well this works – are commercials that show war in terms that might be more familiar to young people more effective as recruiting tools than commercials that are ‘squeaky clean and all about getting a job’ (an assessment of the last CF campaign)?(Louis Wu 16:40:53 UTC)

Alex Tice pointed out a video clip from Video Games Live over on AOL; yes, there’ve been others around, but this one is the entire Halo piece, including the intro, and it’s really nicely filmed. Streaming only.(Louis Wu 16:35:11 UTC)

Major.Dump continues his 3D animation experiments – this time, it’s a pair of Seraph fighters, weaving through a small Covenant formation, with a glassed Harvest in the background. Nice work!(Louis Wu 16:22:31 UTC)

1Up.com’s Halo coverage starts for real on Monday (keep your eye on this minisite), but the most recent 1Up Show (Episode 53) contains quite a bit of Halo coverage. It’s huge (266-755 mb to download, available for streaming as well), but according to Cocopjojo, worth watching. Check it out!(Louis Wu 15:19:18 UTC)

A Connecticut Fox affiliate did a story on Major League Gaming, and the money to be made playing Halo 2 professionally – it’s been tossed up on YouTube. Swing by MLGPro.com for details. Thanks, 3Suns.(Louis Wu 15:14:48 UTC)

Z gave us the heads-up about a pair of montages available over at Halo3Forum.com; Wes2000’s montage is getting some great reviews (folks love the music choices), and Don Miguel’s Montage is chock-full of killtaculars. Both in WMP9 format, both just under 140 mb. Grab ’em if you got the space!(Louis Wu 15:09:31 UTC)

Cap KEEZ pointed out that a new version of the Halo Models Pack for Garry’s Mod (Half-Life 2) has been released – some great looking stuff in there! If you’ve got HL2, give this a look!(Louis Wu 15:07:07 UTC)

Red vs Blue Episode 82, ‘The Grif Reaper’, was released last night for sponsors, just before the team headed to New York for the Mackies. It’s unlikely it’ll be up for the masses before they get back. This episode contains a funeral. (I cried.) Looks like LX925 was first.(Louis Wu 14:40:28 UTC)

Bryn Casey was quiet all summer – but he’s back, with a vengeance! There are five new images in his Gallery here – check out The Flood, Scarlett, Dogfight, Flood Cage, and Streets. Awesome stuff! (Apparently, there’s still more on the way!)(Louis Wu 02:53:34 UTC)