Seventeen stories in the Fan Fiction section for you today… go read!

Halo Babies has instituted a new feature – Featured Artist. This month is Andrew-sama… go check out his work.

UNSCDF points out that his eponymous website has an article about the M6C pistol – go read.

Dropshock has released episode 6 – they discuss their writeup in Tips and Tricks magazine, they rant about free Xbox360s for celebrities, and they talk about the normal Bungie stuff. As usual, not safe for work. Just under an hour, 24 mb.

Birthdays

Let us have birthdays every day,
(I had the thought while I was shaving)
Because a birthday should be gay,
And full of grace and good behaving.
We can’t have cakes and candles bright,
And presents are beyond our giving,
But let lt us cherish with delight
The birthday way of lovely living.

For I have passed three-score and ten
And I can count upon my fingers
The years I hope to bide with men,
(Though by God’s grace one often lingers.)
So in the summers left to me,
Because I’m blest beyond my merit,
I hope with gratitude and glee
To sparkle with the birthday spirit.

Let me inform myself each day
Who’s proudmost on the natal roster;
If Washington or Henry Clay,
Or Eugene Field or Stephen Foster.
oh lots of famous folks I’ll find
Who more than measure to my rating,
And so thanksgivingly inclined
Their birthdays I’ll be celebrating.

For Oh I know the cheery glow
Of Anniversary rejoicing;
Let me reflect its radiance so
My daily gladness I’ll be voicing.
And though I’m stooped and silver-haired,
Let me with laughter make the hearth gay,
So by the gods I may be spared
Each year to hear: “Pop, Happy Birthday.”

Robert William Service
For our favorite webmaster!

Man, oh, man… sometimes things just get lost in the shuffle. Over the past week, Elnea’s created a bunch of new artwork, from a new avatar for a friend, to an image she never really wanted to make public (she says she can’t finish it), to an image that started life looking funny, but was nicely fixed when she flipped MC’s head around, to an image you can caption yourself. She’s doing quite a bit of work with her tablet these days… and it shows! Enjoy.

T-squared will be on MTV’s True Life: I’m a Professional Gamer this evening (11 pm) – read about it at MLGPro.com. Thanks, synide.

You may notice that the Katrina links on the right side of our main page have disappeared; these are gone because we’ve officially closed the books on the Blow Me Away charity auction. (It’s not that helping hurricane victims is any less important than it was yesterday – it’s that there are many, many good causes that need your help, and now that we’re not actively participating in one of them as an organization, it makes less sense for us to promote one over any others.) This auction was a fantastic success – we raised just under $11,000 for hurricane relief. Congratulations to EVERYONE involved! You can see the financial breakdown on this page. Two personal notes – I’d like to apologize to Phil Shiel, who is, at this point, the only buyer who hasn’t yet recieved his winnings; it’s nobody’s fault (turns out that shipping a nearly-life-sized statue of a gun-toting, armor-wearing figure across international borders is not as easy as it once was), but it’s still no fun to be waiting this long… and I’d like to point out to the rather large number of people who sent us mail that we were going to be ripped off, that most of the buyers had no eBay feedback and were using brand-new accounts… EVERY SINGLE AUCTION was won by someone who paid the price they’d agreed to pay. There were a number of hold-ups in payment – but in every case, it was PayPal being a bit… overzealous, not someone trying to rip us off. Overall, this was a really positive experience, and it gives me a warm feeling to think that we helped donate a five-figure check to folks who need help pretty badly… and all of it prize generation, selling, buying – it was all done by gamers.

Last night, Red vs Blue Episode 67, “Setting a High Bar”, was released for sponsors (yeah, it’s been a little while). The general public can find free copies on Monday, most likely. The two separate story arcs continue to wend their way through the twisted landscapes of… oh, never mind. It’s funny, go watch. Psychophant was the first to tell us.

Gamertag Radio has released their first annual Xbox Community Awards, a nearly hour-long ceremony which includes an interview with J Allard, a sneak preview of the Project Gotham Racing 3 soundtrack, and music by Tonedeff, Chemical Brothers and 88mph. We even won something – we took ‘Best Fansite Based on a Game’ (though it sounds like we were nearly beaten out by a ham sandwich). Go listen! The awards episode is in .mp3 format, and weighs in at 36.5 mb.

Congrats to Team3D – the Ogre brothers have won the Halo 2 Grand Final at the World Cyber Games in Singapore, beating Team EG from Canada! They’re going home with $20,000 because of this win. Full details can be found at the Team3D website – and thanks to Jeff Horn for the heads-up.

An article in today’s Boston Globe suggests that games won’t really take advantage of the Xbox360’s hardware for a while – and they use Halo 2 as an example of this phenomenon. (This isn’t really news, I don’t think – it’s common sense – but maybe folks just aren’t thinking about it enough.) Thanks, Hanchen Lu.

TeamXbox compared Halo 2 running on an Xbox360 through an S-Video cable to Halo 2 running on an Xbox through an S-Video cable – and they were pretty surprised to find that there’s a sizeable difference. Their results suggest that Halo 2 will look better running on an Xbox360, no matter WHAT you’re playing it on (well, I guess they didn’t test standard composite video). Nice! Thanks, Tempus Fugit.

Se7en One has put together an article, written in the style of a soldier’s journal, on the worms that make up the hunter. Any comments can be tossed into this forum thread. Odd stuff!

Z points out another vid over at Halo2Forum.com – Nokturnal has created a heavily effect-laden montage, more than 10 minutes long, weighing in at a massive 178 mb. What can I say?

Mintz pointed out that there’s a TON of new content over at Halo: Portable – if you’ve got a PSP, swing by and see what you can read on it. (The latest Weekly Update is even there.)

Weekly Update is up at Bungie.net, posted by some jet-setter or something. Xbox360 launch, DOA4 stuff, playlists. And an oldschool Mister Chief. Go read.

Stuntmutt unmasks another Halo 2 character in today’s One One Se7en… that guy should be pretty recognizable to anyone who visits our forums. If not… well, count yourself lucky.

Speaking of online stats… I received a very nice box from the good folks at CarnageStats yesterday – it was full of shirts! It doesn’t seem like they’re for sale yet over at their site – but you can be sure we’ll be giving some of these bad boys away in our next contest. w00t!

Ed Chipman, aka DevilsKnight666, has put together PHP Stats – a php-based stats displayer that takes output from QuerySpree and converts it into a web-based form. Give it a look!