Though for the time being, the links are bold and in-your-face, I know how easy it is to overlook stuff that’s been there for a while… even when it’s glowing. So here’s a news post to remind you. The Blow Me Away Charity Auction ends tomorrow – the first auction to finish (the Joyride figures) ends in one day and two hours from the writing of this note, and the last to finish (the I Love Bees signed commemorative DVD) is over an hour and a half after that. (There are roughly 5 minutes between auction endings, so there’s always time to jump to the next one if you get sniped.) Total bids are a bit over $9200 right now… but a few items are fantastic deals, and might go up before closing. (Shishka started an interesting thread on our forum recently, wondering why the totally unique Bungie art is selling for less than the signed posters; the thread holds some suggestions for answers, but I’d agree with him that for Bungiephiles, stuff like the Jam Board is hard to beat.) Also closing soon, but not QUITE as soon, is the voting on the 343 Guilt O’ Lantern pumpkin carving contest. 5000 of you have weighed in so far – but that leaves lots and lots and LOTS of Halo fans who haven’t spoken up. There’s no signin required, no email to fork over… all we’re looking for is your opinion on carved pumpkins. Look ’em over, label your top 5… voting closes Tuesday night, late, so there are still a couple of days to think about it.

Wonga. That Weasel has posted a note explaining that the Rockets on Prisoner Awards ceremony is now downloadable. It’s… pretty long. Almost an hour and a half long. Downloadable, in either WMP9 format (228 mb) or QuickTime format (291 mb). I tried to watch it… but my QuickTime player crashed. The forum post contains plenty of other links, including text versions of all the winners, if you missed them.

Bungie’s Weekly Update is posted – stuff on upcoming playlists, plus stuff pulled from user-contributed questions. And a really awful furry Mister Chief. Go read. (Thanks, Frankie. No, really. Thanks.)

We’ve been given permission by Stephen Cawood, author of Halo 2 Hacks, and his publisher, O’Reilly, to bring you a few excerpts from the book itself, in PDF format. (We’ve also added movies that Stephen and his editor, Brian Jepson, put together to illustrate these tidbits.) Look ’em over… if you like what you see, the book has 100 entries like these! (ObDisclosure: I co-wrote the forward to this book, along with Ducain, from High Impact Halo, and Grenadiac, from HaloMods.)

Broken Console Productions have posted The Squadron Episode 9 – the team has almost found a way out of Turf. WMP9 is up now (14.5 mb) – the QuickTime is on its way. Go watch!

Elnea’s been messing with her new Wacom tablet – the last few avatars she’s made have all been created with it. Check this one out – she found out that her dad visits RvB. (Remember that Elnea is a mom herself, in her 40s.) Ouch!

mnemesis, along with a bunch of helpers, has managed to get all but two Halo 2 level transcripts online at the Halo Story Page – only Sacred Icon and Quarantine Zone are missing. Go read both posts for more details, especially if you’d like to help out with the missing levels!

Stuntmutt, ever the cynic, points out that when talking about the upcoming Halo movie, what the fans want and what will actually happen might not be the same thing in today’s One One Se7en.

When I visited the Fan Fiction queue this morning, I was a little nervous – it was huge. Turned out, though, that much of it was spam, and some of it was porn. (Sorry – even if it’s on-topic, I’ve got to draw the line at porn.) At least two entries were folks attempting to get around the 750-word minimum by adding garbage at the start and finish of their piece. When all the extras were stripped away, we were left with 9 entries. Go read.

The Tied The Leader blog has quite a bit of fun reading at the moment… there’s a response to the article we mentioned yesterday, in which a female college student rails against Halo 2 for stealing her boyfriend; there’s a short note about a photoshop contest over at Fark, and there’s a great writeup of a LAN event put on by the 2old2play WEST Clan, in which much fun was had and money was raised for charity. Go read! (It’s interesting; that article about gaming vs relationships has spawned quite a bit of discussion; there was this thread on our forum yesterday, and a new one today.)

This week’s Halo Humpday Challenge pitted the Bungie guys against the Cayote Cavegirls – they lost 2 out of 3 (both teams agreed to call the third game a draw). Ouch! Good writeup, though. Frankie continues to hog credit (though at least he’s getting creative with his FIRST subject lines).

Podtacular has posted its weekly Tips show – this episode focuses on Beaver Creek. Go listen.

char pointed out an article over at Gamepro that looks at things that are wrong with First Person Shooters, in general; Halo is held up as an example of how NOT to get it wrong. Go read!

LegendaryMark wrote an article examining why so many players stick with Halo 2, even though the universe of multiplayer games continues to expand. Swing by halowiki.net to read it!

Over at Halo Babies, some of the DOA girls take shots at poor Spartan 458… meanies. Thanks, mrsmiley.

F13ND has posted the next installment of his ‘Noobs Guide’ over at Team3D – this one gives some tips on flanking, with the help of Saiyan. If you didn’t get this the first time around, this guide is NOT for noobs – it’s for anyone looking to improve their gameplay, by focusing on advanced strategy tips. (In fact… it can’t even be USED by noobs, since the descriptions and techniques that are suggested tend to be things that beginners would have no clue about.) That said – these are great reads. Go check this one out.

Looks like you can buy all the Series 4 action figures directly from the Bungie Store. (You can buy them from a lot of places – but the profit from the Bungie store goes towards the World Domination effort.) Thanks, LegendaryMark.

The South Dakota State University Collegian has an article on why Halo 2 might be losing you dates. Duh. (Of course, this doesn’t apply if your girlfriend plays Halo…)

Four new movies at Halo2Forum today – The Last Man Standing (12.7 mb) is a Halo 1 story summed up by its title, and there’s a montage trailer from Domain Productions (21 mb), a demo of a mod that turns Banshees in to X-Wing fighters (28.3 mb), and a montage/gameplay vid from OscarMayerNinja (73 mb), where games are broken into ‘missions’; there’s less cutting, and more fast-forwarding. All vids except the domain productions vid are in WMP9 format – that one is .AVI.

Normally, there’s enough content over the course of a week that the Tied The Leader Halo blog gets a single wrapup mention. We got mail from 3Suns, though, suggesting that a new article, ‘Open Letter to the Timothy‘, deserved a mention of its own. Upon reading, I’d agree. XerxdeeJ points out that not every young player deserves to be lumped in with the screaming ‘Timothys’ made famous by 2old2play – sometimes, having young ‘uns on your (older) team can be a good thing. Go read.