There were those that said this day would never come… I was one of ’em. But times change, and opportunities arise, and if you’re really, really lucky, you can grab ’em as they’re going by. That’s true for us… and it’s true for you. (Wait – what’s he talking about?) I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. HBO got together with some of its favorite artists, and put together some amazingly cool stuff for you. We have some totally unique posters that you can’t buy – but you can win. We also have a spectacular new t-shirt, thanks to our friends at splode, that you can’t win, but you can buy. In fact – if you want a shot at the posters – you HAVE to buy! Go read all the details on our E3 Goodies page. (There’s also an opportunity to get invited to the infamous DeanFest (I’m not sure it has a real name yet this year, but search our news for ‘Plasma Fiesta’ for reports of last year’s version) – you have to be in the LA area for this one, but a raffle for this, too, is available to all shirt buyers.) Before I crash into bed for the night, I’d like to send out a HUGE round of thanks to all the folks who made this possible – the artists, Dustin at splode, and Miguel Chavez, the Peruvian version of the Tasmanian Devil, without whose energy none of this would have happened. Enough blathering. Go check out the cool artwork, go buy a shirt, go register for cool stuff. We love ya.

Fr3d-105 points out that Podtacular Episode 60 is out – it’s a grab bag. Go listen!

Sane-Intolerant, one of the winners in our Soundtrack Contest, had something of an edge over other contestants – he’s been doing this for a while. Check out his DeviantART gallery – there are a LOT of Halo action figure shots; there are some pretty cool ones in there. Good stuff!

Mintz pointed out that there a couple of newly-formatted movies available at Halo Portable (as well as the chance to grab the next set of wallpapers early) – go visit!

Even after deleting all the non-English fanfic and the non-Halo fanfic (!!), there are still 25 new pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section. Go read. (Sorry it didn’t get posted yesterday, as it normally would have.)

The team that brought you The Codex series last year has released an Announcement Teaser for The Heretic, an upcoming series. Spectacular editing work, married to pristine camera handling, all bundled up with a gorgeous new piece from Edgen, called ‘Halo – The Heretic’ – this one should SERIOUSLY whet your appetite. Grab it in QuickTime or WMP9 formats from The Heretic website. If you love the music as much as we do, Edgen has given us permission to host a copy of it, in MP3 format – 2.3 mb. (And if you want to check out more of Edgen’s work, visit his portfolio reel – there’s some amazing stuff in there.) Comments (on either The Heretic, or its music) can be added to Nerrolken’s forum thread.

The Weekly Update is available now at Bungie.net (thanks, Frankie) – and the best news of all is that there won’t be any more Pimps at Sea fakery after this! No, actually, the best news of all is that they’re making an Excel spreadsheet with all the game variants in use on XBL available – go grab it! There’s also some great new schwag at the Bungie Store, a HINT of movie news, and a nice Mister Chief sketch. Go read. (As usual, you can choose to read it here at HBO, in our Weekly Update Archive.)

Swing by the results page for the final results of the Halo 2 Soundtrack contest – and congrats to our 7 winners! (You folks will probably get email later tonight or tomorrow with a bit more detail.)

Voting is now closed for the 7 on the Seventh Soundtrack contest; I’d post results, but I need to leave for a bit. I’ll put something up later this afternoon, I hope. Although a number of the finalists had more than one entry in the final 49, the top 7 vote-getters were all from unique submitters, so no fudging will be needed! More to come…

Stuntmutt looks at the post-game carnage report in today’s One One Se7en.

We got email from Michael Yates, over at Machinima.com – he wanted to point out a fully-devoted Halo channel with over 150 machinimas. They also have great tutorials and plenty of pros to answer questions, if you’re looking for help in making your own. Check ’em out!

This Spartan Life is now iPod-friendly – swing by their website for iPod-compatible downloadable versions of all their episodes. w00t!

Eleven new dialogue snippets got posted by Captain Spark today; you can grab the zipfile from his website, or you can browse them in our Dialogue Databank. Good stuff!

Allmusic has put up a page for the Halo 2 Soundtrack Volume 2 – no review yet, but there are easily downloadable track snippets. Thanks, Funkmon.

Wow. There’s so much new content on the Halo-related blog Dead Man’s Hand that I can’t even list all the new articles, much less summarize them. The most recent item is an interview with Stuntmutt that’s definitely worth a read – but there’s plenty of other stuff; I liked the Legos to Halos rant, for example. Check it all out – and thanks to Dweezle86 for dropping by our forum to let us know it was there.

Interesting juxtaposition of articles; at the same time that Gamasutra posted an earnings report on Microsoft, in which it reported that Microsoft officials admit that even today, at the end of their lifecycle, “…the first generation Xbox consoles continue to have negative margins”, IGN put up a piece discussing ‘The Xbox Effect‘, which talked about how the Xbox was a success, primarily because of… well, Halo. I guess you don’t have to make money to be successful…

A quick note – if you haven’t yet voted for your favorite images in the 7 on the 7th Halo 2 Soundtrack contest, go do it now; I’m going to close voting late tonight or early tomorrow. There are some funny pics in there – help their creators to win a free signed Halo 2 Soundtrack!

Kenneth Wan points out a fundraiser tournament over at 2Old2Play; they’re raising money to send a team to MLG Dallas next month. Swing by and read the details – and sign up!