Today’s Bungie Weekly Update takes a close look at the new office space, with some very nice panoramic shots of the space and a list of nearby eateries (though I’m sure Bentllama is gonna kill Frankie for neglecting the Original Pancake House RIGHT NEXT DOOR). There’s also a pretty awesome Mister Chief Etch-a-Sketch. Go read!

Yesterday, Fireb0rn (creator of the critically-acclaimed Halo vids 117 and Talking Smack over Xbox Live) wrote to say he had a followup to 117 (which was the story of a single Spartan facing nearly insurmountable odds) ready to go, but that it was too big for the MPRRS. I re-encoded it for him, and submitted it this morning… and 7 hours later, it passed with flying colors. (I knew it would; it’s really, really well done.) The man has an eye for camera angles, and tells a mean story. This one’s big; 7 minutes long, 70+ mb (depending on flavor). Grab the one that works best for you. The QuickTime version is 73.2 mb, the WMP9 version is 69.2 mb. Enjoy! Update: there’ve been some reports that the WMP9 version was corrupt in some way; it worked for me here, but enough people had trouble that I re-encoded it. The new version is 76.4 mb, and was added a little after 10 am EST. Hopefully, this solves the original problems!

mejp44 noticed an article at TeamXbox about Wideload’s upcoming Halo-engined game, Stubbs the Zombie – they’ve added split-screen 2-player Coop. Now you can zombify Punchbowl… with a buddy!

Wow, I nearly missed this one – the headline doesn’t change much, so you have to pay close attention to dates. Over at Bungie.net, SketchFactor has posted an update on the Fight the Flood campaign – they’ve sold nearly 11,000 shirts, collecting more than $160,000 for the American Red Cross Katrina relief effort. Wow! Sketch says that while there are still plenty of shirts left, when these are gone, they aren’t printing more – go grab a piece of history, and in the process help out victims of Hurricane Katrina!

Stuntmutt takes issue with text embellishment of gamertags – read today’s One One Se7en for more details.

Over at the San Jose Mercury News, there’s an article looking at Halo 2 on Xbox Live (and Live in general), written by Dean Takahashi (last mentioned here 3 years ago, when his book on the plan behind the Xbox was released). Interesting read.

It’s been a few days since the Fan Fiction section was updated – 11 new pieces for you today. Go read.

The second H=MC2 podcast has been posted – Halo news roundup and commentary, plus an interview with Alex Winn, part of the Codex team. (It’s not a ‘live’ interview; Alex answered a series of pre-planned questions, so there’s no interaction with the hosts of the podcast – but it’s still a good listen; nice questions, nice answers.) The overall podcast is 1:08 long, and weighs in at 31 mb. Thanks to [HC]D-Man for the heads-up.

Just a followup on the second Briar’s Armor eBay auction (it ended yesterday) – the green suit sold for $2,076.99. Not bad!

Today’s Halo Babies comic was the runner-up in their Red vs Blue contest a while back; it was written by PBDemon (and drawn, as usual, by Gruntsbane). Go read!

Once again nearly Halo-free in its content (there is a small mention of some Halo 2 fans near the end), but Frankie’s put up part 2 of his Tokyo Game Show impressions article over at Bungie.net. Go see what’s coming! Thanks, Anton P. Nym.

Elnea‘s created a couple of new art pieces recently – the first was in memory of Subiha and Leigh, Red vs Blue community members killed and injured (respectively) recently, the second a colored (and humorously captioned) version of a sketch posted earlier. Enjoy!

Chris Bryan finished a short (12 second) hallway scene of wholly original work; the render took 37 hours to complete. (‘Wholly original’ means he built the Master Chief model himself; he has no tools for extracting the in-game model.) There’s no sound, but the video is simply gorgeous – amazing lighting… watch it for yourself. QuickTime format (2.3 mb) | WMP9 format (2.8 mb). (Comments can go in this thread he started last night.)

ofthehi77 stopped by to point out a video preview (6.5 mb, QuickTime format) of V.A.L.I.S., an upcoming HaloCE map that he and his brother DocOctavius have been working on – looks pretty fancy! Go watch.

Episode 9 of 2old2type, the podcast of the 2old2play crew, is now available for download (you can find it on iTunes, as well). 51 minutes long, 23.5 mb, it focuses on the Tokyo Game Show, and where Nintendo is going. (In fact, there seems to be very little Halo content at all… but we’ll let that go, this time.) Go listen.

The latest segment of ‘This Spartan Life‘ has been released – Episode 2, Module 2 is now available for download in QuickTime format. (WMP9 is coming later today sometime.) It’s 10 minutes long, and Damian talks to Frank Dellario and Matt Dominianni of the Ill Clan about the origins of machinima, the direction it might be headed, and the annoyance of Mr PoopyDoodoo. Thought-provoking dialogue and some great laughs. Go watch!

Z, over at Halo2Forum.com, pointed out a pair of threads with a total of four downloads; the first thread contains two full games captured by ExiT WouNDz member Itwasluck – Game 1 is a CTF Midship game against a variety of players, game 2 is a KOTH Beaver Creek match against some top pro players. (ExiT WouNDz won the second game by a large margin – even though they were outkilled pretty thoroughly. They kept their focus on the game’s goal, though – hill time – and they won because of it.) The second thread contains a pair of montage vids – both are short, I liked the first one better (though the music nearly gave me epileptic seizures). Everything is, of course, in WMP9 format. Go grab something.

I may need to change the title of this newspost, to comply with RSS feed rules… but you should go read the One One Se7en it covers anyway. And make sure your sound is on… Update: I did have to change the title. Bugger.

As many of you have noticed – the server that hosts our forum (as well as the Fan Fiction comments section, and the ClanHBO forums) has been having problems for a couple of days. Hopefully, these will be ironed out today – please be patient!

Dennis Powers wrote to point out that the final two episodes of season 2 of The Halo CE Chronicles have been posted to their video archive. The battle for the energy cannon wraps up in Episode 20… and the relationship between the commander and the station AI is elaborated in Episode 21. There are also some outtakes from the season in that final episode. (More detailed info can be found on the website.) As always, they’re available in WMP9, QuickTime, and streaming Flash formats – go grab what works for you!