Three more desktop images for you in our Wallpaper section.

Another team tournament for you, in Michigan… The ACM Microsoft Michican Halo Tournament. This one’s 3 vs 3, takes place on November 7, and the entrance price is a measly $5/person. Check out the details, and sign up if you’re local! (This was announced on our forum.)

Pair of new art submissions; another SA-style sketch from Gasmask, and a pretty slick vignette from David Glen Walker. Check our Miscellaneous Art section.

Whoa, random info. Hot on the heels of a discussion over at Subnova about who’d left Bungie recently, we got mail from Matt Segur, a programmer on the Halo team who left after Halo shipped. He’s got a brand-spankin’ new mixed-media publishing company called Ghostweed Press, and they’re currently selling a book and a CD. The music’s pretty good… go check ’em out, and see what happens to Bungie expatriates – after they receive “the operation”! UPDATED: The discussion in question was held in a private forum; the link that used to be in this post would deny access to pretty much everyone so it was removed. –CZ)

iGames is ready to kick off their Halo Winter Season – a series of 4-man tournaments held across North America. Grand Prize is a trip for four to E3 2003… but there’s lots more to it than that. Go read about it at iGames! (Thanks to Jester for the heads-up.)

MacOSX Jaguar boot icons, and a pair of… situations, today in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Shallow Throat has gotten into the cough syrup again.

Congratulations to The Specialists, of San Diego, CA, who took home the $1,000 top prize in the Halo: Running Riot Invitational that took place on last Saturday. (We originally reported on this when it was named ‘CobaltNova‘.) A massive summary (summary? blow-by-blow, almost) can be found on our forum. Thanks to emildux, of xboxlanaz, for the heads-up.

Pallor points out that a blurb in the current issue of Rolling Stone has Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) stating that Halo actually delayed work on his newest album:

Halo is a spectacularly done piece of work. I got it right before I was going into the studio. I thought, ‘OK, to get on with my life, I better just finish this thing.’ It put me back a few days. But what’s a few days when there’s something important to do?”

What’s a few days, indeed? This blurb was first mentioned to us by David, a couple of weeks ago… but there wasn’t anything about the work stoppage, so we forgot about it.

Hehe – you knew it had to happen. Kayas pointed out a map for Unreal Tournament 2k3 called ‘SOT Bloodgulch‘. The screenshot shows a bit more… um, scaffolding than I’m used to, but the concept is great.

Gasmask comes up with a novel use for Grunts… check our our Miscellaneous Art section.

Apologies to Fan Fiction writers; on busy weekends, more time-consuming tasks get pushed back, and formatting fiction entries falls into that category. Here, then, are the submissions from over the weekend:

• Wings of Death, part 11, by el_halo_diablo
• Revolution, part 18 (series finale), by Gruntkiller
• Cry for a Hero: Epilogue, by el_halo_diablo
• Halo 2: Return of Death, part 1, by Lord Dagon
• He’s Baaaaaack! Intro, by Killer_Fairy

Note that there are two series-finishers in there…

ICDedPpl wanted to point out that the 7th Column chapter MOSHPIT will be hosting a tournament in mid-November, with $850 in cash on the line (if full attendance – 64 people – is reached), and pizza, soda, and snacks for everyone. Entrance fee is $20 a head, and the location is Rochester Hills, MI. If you’re in the area, check it out!

Four new desktops for you in our Wallpaper collection, including one from the curator of the newly opened Bungie Wallpaper Stash over at Forerunners.org. Go check ’em out… and check the stash for other Bungie-related (not just Halo) desktops!

Charles Powell has whipped up a pair of banners for our Banners section… we’re honored. You’ll find both a small version and a larger one.

The Posthumous Phoenix Artwork page has been updated again.

It’s been said that Halo can inspire obsession. We recently received a pretty clear example of this. Zachary Hahn, armed with Halo and a stopwatch, managed to run some time trials and calculate various speeds and rates related to Halo vehicles and weapons. You’ll find the results in our Miscellaneous section, in a document called ‘Random Stats‘. (Note: except for rounding numbers with more than 3 significant digits, and adding the note from Chucky Gough, we here at HBO had nothing to do with the actual values; any contentions should be taken up with Mr. Hahn.)

Since the announcement that Bungie’s secret project known as Phoenix has been shelved, the artwork has begun to pour in. We started by placing it in our Miscellaneous Art section… but it’s clear that it has the potential to crush that section, and it’s not particularly Halo-related. We’ve therefore added new additions (as well as recently submitted pieces that are already in our Misc. Art section) to phoenix.bungie.org… and will continue to add new pieces there as they’re submitted. Minimalist interface; the art is the thing. Hope this works for everyone!

Recently, Bungie posted the eighth chapter of their Legendary Walkthrough at the Tru7h and Reconciliation site. It included a whole passel of the now-legendary (hehe) Bungie-quality screenshots to illustrate the text. We’ve added these to our Screenshots database; you’ll find the 43 shots shown on that page, plus 9 others that didn’t make the cut. Go crazy!

Ghôlsbane has submitted an .eps file containing a path of the Phoenix logo outline. To use this, open it in Photoshop (or anything that reads Photoshop paths) and select the Paths palette. It’s invisible until you select it. Quality is quite good; there’s a simple example of what you can do with it in the Miscellaneous Art entry that houses it, and a fancier one at the Phoenix Hub over at Forerunners.org. The Phoenix project, a shadowy enigma these past couple of years, has been shelved… and to add to the history of this image, the word from Bungie was that “it’s not an ‘official’ Phoenix logo, just one that the team picked out from a dozen or so Chris Barrett put together for our Bungie business cards.” However, it’s all we’ve got, and now that Phoenix is no more, I’m sure folks will put it to good use. 🙂