Apologies for the downtime last night; the webserver decided to simply keel over. (The server never went down – just the application.) Things SEEM to be back up and running – I think.

LegendaryMark wrote up a nice article on Clan Training over at halowiki – go read it for some great pointers. Thanks, PEZ.

boltofaire and a friend decided to make a Master Chief statue in ceramics class – check out some of the in-progress photos in this forum post. Pretty cool stuff!

Frontline with Suzie continues – Broadcast 16 has Suzie talking to (and being hit upon) by an oversized Captain Keyes. Puts a whole new angle on the getting-taken-over schtick. Go read. Thanks, Rockslider.

Captain Spark released another batch of dialogue snippets – you can grab ’em on his site, or in the Dialogue Databank. (Yes, I know there are others still waiting in the queue – but CS submits so many, I automated the addition of his files; adding ones that are not formatted the same way takes more work (and therefore gets backburnered) – unfair, yes, but there it is.) Go listen.

F13ND has written up Part II of Team 3D’s MLG Nationals Wrap article – this one is an interview with OGRE 2. As always, it’s great to see what the pros think about how they played – lots to learn. Go read!

Oscar Gordon put together a few Halo-related Haikus a bit ago, and last night posted a link on our forum. Memories…

Last week, Mothergoat released the MPD public service announcement – and fans loved it. Today, you can grab just the MP3 – hi-res, 3 mb worth of teh funni. Go listen!

Wow. Elnea’s latest avatar… is for me. Awesome piece of work, in fact. I’d tell you to go read about its creation in her RvB journal – but RvB seems to be down right at the moment… so maybe try again later. But in the meantime… thanks, Elnea!

Over at the Internet Zillionaire, The Centaur has put together a list of Xbox Live Personality Profiles – and for the post part, it’s people you’ll meet playing Halo. (There are also some pretty funny additions in the comments.) Go read!

There’s a press release flooding the gaming world right now, announcing the existence of Giant Bite Games, a new studio founded by Hamilton Chu, Michael Evans, Andy Glaister, and Steve Theodore, who between them have worked on Halo, Half-Life 2, Counterstrike, and Microsoft’s DirectX technology. The earliest two that showed up in my inbox were at Gamasutra and GameDaily BIZ. There’s also a thread in our forum.

Sketchfactor’s posted a new interview on Bungie.net. The subject is Max Dyckhoff, better known in this community as mad.max, Bungie’s new AI Engineer. The interview goes over a bit of his past, his acclimation to Bungie Studios and what his new job entails.

One One Se7en goes multimedia today. (OMG, I’m infected.)

KrazyGamers wrote an article looking at why so many people hate Halo. If you wonder why, look no further than their closing line: “after all it’s true, any publicity is good publicity.”

So, every week, there’s a new ‘top 10 games played on Xbox Live’ list, and every week Halo 2 is at the top. Some folks are starting to wonder how long it’ll be before something else is number one. Most recent speculator – XboxAddict. Go read.

The Valley of the Forerunners: Part Two, the next installment of the Halo CE Chronicles, has been posted over at the HCEC website. A philosophic look at Blues music, some gorgeous scenery, and some new characters are all included – go give it a watch. Available (as usual) in WMP9, QuickTime, or streaming Flash.

Bryn Casey whipped up another slick image this weekend – he hasn’t come up with a title yet, but the action rocks. Check it out!

Stephen Loftus sent along another analytical article, this time with the help of Dojorkan (who took some awesome pictures). This one looks closely at the Covenant Boarding Craft – that remora-like vehicle which attaches itself to any enemy structure and allows the troops inside to burn through a hull or outer wall to gain access to the space within. Check it out!

3Suns pointed out quite a bit of cool content over at MLGPro.com; you can find a bunch of new photo galleries (new in that they weren’t there before – but the pics are from old events), a focus on Saiyan as Player of the Week, some cool pics from Synide’s journal showing the equipment they use for video capture during tournaments (one of the comments was “when the VoD stuff is hooked up, half the lights in the hotel go off” – I’d believe it), and lots and lots of new VoD content (the NYC championships are currently being rebroadcast). Swing by and indulge!

demus found a nice article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about parents who game with their kids. Halo gets a tiny mention. Good read!