Another piece of Tina Leyk art surfaces – this one was a birthday present for a friend – his furry avatar, clothed in spartan armor. Fun! Check it out on her fan art page.

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned Halo patches from the Boy Scout National Jamboree – thanks to contractor, from Red vs Blue, who had a complete set, you can see what all three looked like. Nice! Update: DOH! I forgot to actually link to them. Sorry.

If you head over to MLGPro.com, you’ll find lots of results from MLG Las Vegas – looks like TmG Zyos won the free-for-all and TmG (Trademark Gamers, the newest iteration of Str8 Rippin) is set up against IgameSpot in the finals for the Winners bracket. (Team 3D, coming off their Philly loss, went to a World Cyber Games event this weekend instead.) There’s tons more info – here’s a full list of tidbits. Thanks, 3Suns.

Chairleg Productions came out of – well, pretty much nowhere a couple of days ago with their well-received Tale of Two Countries. Today, they’re back, with another MPRRS-approved film, this one called ‘Nephrons – Minus Six’. It’s not yet Episode One, and indeed you will one day have the opportunity to meet a real-life Nephron… in the meantime, get acquainted with Jimmy, and the rest of the cast! WMP9 format (31 mb) or QuickTime format (28.4 mb).

MasterToad points out another Halo-related comic – the latest episode of Hypercombofinish looks at games in our future.

Patriarch917 has submitted what he thinks might be his final parody (at least for the time being) – he and his wife just had a second baby (check out the pic of Lily on his music page), and law school starts today. This one is called ‘A Sniper Shot Me‘, and is a parody of Audio Adrenaline’s Christian rock anthem ‘Some kind of Zombie’. 6.6 mb, in MP3 format. Check it out!

Midnight Carnage, of the Final Supremacy team, submitted Lost Stratosphere Episode 1 to our Movie Peer Review Rating System a couple of days ago – they liked it… a lot. Go grab The Fall of Eagle Base, the first chapter in a Cov vs Human conflict machinima, in either WMP9 (50.9 mb) or Quicktime (50.7 mb) formats.

Friday’s PvP pointed out one of the more annoying types of Halo players – thanks, Rota Jota.

This went live a few days ago, but the primary domain name hadn’t resolved when LordGideon pointed it out, so I decided to wait – then I forgot. Thanks to Manual, of PraetoriaGuard, for reminding me. Swing by Halo2Gametypes.com, a new website from the PraetoriaGuard clan (you can access their family of sites from their webring). This site is another storage repository for Halo 2 Gametypes (as the name might suggest) – the interface matches what you get when you’re setting up a gametype in Halo 2, and the existing types can be rated by visitors. Use it to inspire you!

The New York Times has an article on how life is more cushy than expected for some GIs in Iraq – and Halo figures prominently. (Free registration required – or use bugmenot.com) Thanks, OP4 Trajan.

Wonga. Took the day off yesterday… and the mailbox is flooded. Let’s see what we can get through. First up: ZKP writes to say that he and a group of friends are making a Halo mod for Age of Kings: The Conquerers. You can find basic info on their website – I’m sure more info will be forthcoming. Halo – it’s everywhere!

Episode 20 of the Codex, the final of the series, was released a few hours ago. It’s currently only available in QuickTime, but WMP9 should be coming later today. Thirteen and a half minutes long, this is a fitting end to a spectacular series – plenty of action, drama, suspense… great filming, great overall production values. Check it out! While you’re there, look around the site – it’s been overhauled. Each video has its own page now (with much more info than before), and there’s a new online store, selling t-shirts, and the Codex Soundtrack.

The folks at Broken Console have posted Episode 2 of their machinima series, The Squadron. You can grab it in either WMP9 or QuickTime formats at their website – roughly 15 mb, depending on the format. Continues the humor-with-a-storyline they started with episode one – go watch!

The most recent Weekly What’s Update over at Bungie.net is pretty short… but it looks at changes to be made in the next month or so to the XBL playlists. Some good stuff coming up – multiball, baby! Go read.

Today’s One One Se7en takes a poke (geddit? Poke?… eh.) at the whole Hot Coffee controversy swirling around the videogame industry at the moment. I’m so embarrassed.

Eep – been a little while since the Fan Fiction section was updated – there are 11 new pieces for you there (including the latest chapter in what I think is the longest-running serial fanfic on our site – the first installment was posted more than 31 months ago). Go read!

Arcadian Flame, of Chairleg Productions, has put together A Tale of Two Countries – an attempt to highlight some of the differences between the UK and the US. Chairleg uses (appropriately for this site) the Halo engine in this display. The Movie Peer Review Rating System passed this by a wide margin. You can grab a copy in WMP9 format (29.8 mb) or QuickTime format (27.1 mb) – and laugh all the way to the pub… er, I mean, the bar.

Another Games.net article – Ten Hugely Over-rated Games. (Neither this one, nor the FPS Weapons article we mentioned earlier, are new – this one was posted in late May, and the weapon article was posted in June. They’re simply new to this site.) Halo is rated #8 – ironic, since the same author believes its primary multiplayer weapon is the most kickass FPS weapon out there… Thanks once again, 3Suns (who also points out some well-thought-out comments on this article at GameTab).

MLGPro.com has posted an interview with Team 3D, the dominant force in professional Halo this year (well, up until MLG Philly, where they were taken down by Str8 Rippin). They talk about their loss in Philly, and why it happened. It’s an interesting read – 3D never comes out and says ‘yep, they played better than us’, there’s a lot of talk of ‘they set the pace of the game, which is different than what we’re used to, we should have stepped it up’ and ‘the gametypes were flawed, because they got the power weapon and we were stuck’. It’ll be interesting to see if Str8 Rippin can stay on top – if they do, 3D is going to have to come up with new reasons why. Thanks again, 3Suns.

Jason writes to point out the Eastview Halofest IV, a 4v4 Halo 2 tourney to be held at hte Eastview Christian Church, in Bloomington/Normal, IL on September 23rd. Registraiton is $10 per person, prizes to be awarded to the top team and the top FFA players. You must be 18 to enter. More details (and a signup sheet) can be found on the website.