Grey Wolf points out that the HBO Lekgolos has created its own webpage; we don’t normally mention site launches any more on the front page, but they ARE an HBO clan…

ICDedPpl found an auction on eBay for another one of those MASSIVE 7-foot-tall Master Chief statues used in European promotions. Shipping is from Switzerland, so if you’re in the US, count on it costing a fortune. Current bid is $610, and the reserve has not yet been met. 9+ hours left as of the time of this writing; if you’re interested, bid now!

Wow – I nearly missed this. c0ld vengeance put together an Excel spreadsheet containing every possible game variation for each gametype, broken out cleanly into easy-to-understand sections. For someone looking to create a website that allows fans to specify their own variants, this would make the workload MUCH smaller. (It’s great for ANYONE wanting to see what all the options are at a glance – but that was one particular use that stood out for me.) Update: c0ld submitted a new version, with a couple of mistakes corrected.

MrJukes has been creating some pretty darn cool jumping vids for the last couple of months – but occasionally, their popularity pulls them offline. In addition, they’ve only been available in WMP9 format, which means folks on slower-than-a-G5 Macs can’t really see them. We’ve rectified both of these issues with a full mirror of MrJukes’ Guilde to Trick Jumping site – including QuickTime versions of all movies. As he adds new material to the original site, we’ll update this mirror. Just trying to do our part to make cool resources available to all!

It’s Superbowl Sunday – and even Stuntmutt has gotten into the spirit with a special One One Se7en.

Hehe – a little tribute film from Mother’s Tooth… cute. Originally WMP9, 3.8 mb… now also QuickTime also, 3.6 mb. Modding can be fun.

Thanks once again to our forumgoers; Overridea grabbed another 7 Swahili sound snippets off of Outskirts, and rehema again translated; you can find all seven in our Dialogue Databank. These are much more what you’d expect to hear in a city under siege. (Nice pickup by Anton P. Nym, as well.) Good work, all!

Hehe – Scot Goodhart points out that if you belong to Friendster, you can link their Bungie stats in their Friendster profiles; just copy your XML link into the RSS feed in your profile. When folks view your profile, they’ll see your recent games! Geeky to the max – but hey, isn’t that what it’s all about, anyway?

Walshicus decided that the tablets from the Covenant Hall of Murals might look good in color – so he recreated the first one. We’ve added it to the Hall of Murals page, and will continue to update that with new colored versions as he creates them.

Toy stuff: littlebigman pointed out an interview with Joyride’s Managing Director Scott Corley – some interesting stuff about how the sculpting-to-marketing process works, and what happens when fans aren’t happy. LBM also mentioned that the Joyride website has been updated with Halo 2 Series 3 and 4 pics. In addition, prvtllchurch wrote to let us know that the ‘Special Edition Blue Brute’ is in at Gamecrazy – but he says it’s exactly like the original Brute. Go check for yourself!

I didn’t think I’d be here for this… but I am, so I’m posting it. The Weekly What’s Update has been posted over at B.net – and as you’d expect today, the top question has to do with a Halo movie. Bungie’s answer? “We don’t know nuthin’.” Other goodies involve what they had to do to keep your game stats, some shilling for the Matt Soell interview we mentioned recently, a ‘no plans’ answer for Halo 2 PC, a cheap shot at my home state (watch it, Frankie), a bunch of other stuff, and a Gorey-esque Mister Chief. Go read!

Dennis Powers wrote to let us know that he’s posted Episode 3 of his Halo CE Chronicles series – showing off the universe of Halo CE and exploring a more thoughtful side of the Halo experience. The Spartan manages to get lost… and scared. Luckily, the AI’s along to help. Sort of. 3:31 long, Flash format. Go watch!

Okay, folks have been looking at the translated Swahili quotes we posted this morning, and overall, it looks like rehema did a great job… but he made one small mistake. Everyone has accepted the Swahili proverbs which make up the bulk of the quotes – nobody’s really sure if they actually refer to anything in-game or not, but they’re having fun debating it – but one quote stands out, because it’s clearly NOT a proverb. It refers to Old Man Water (Mzee Maji)… or does it? What if the announcer had trouble with some common English consonant combinations, and that ‘ji’ was really an ‘rty’? I’d love to be able to take credit for noticing this… but a little Bungie bird did some whispering.

Looks like the coverage of Stubbs the Zombie, the first title from Wideload Games (expected next summer and based on the Halo engine, justifying its presence here) is heating up again. Alex Seropian talked to 1Up.com via AIM – nice tidbits about the enhancements they’ve added to the engine, things like stealth and multicharacter animation, plus general background on the company – thanks, wideloadgames.org. And our very own Miguel Chavez scored some choice content himself, and then shot it over to mnemesis for posting on Bungie Sightings. Lots and lots of good info, including 3 new screenshots. Go read!

I’m always amazed by how many people are now working on machinima projects, and how many of them are actually pretty good. I found a series called ‘Saving Private Cyan’ over at turtleturtleclan.net; Episode One is out now, Episode Two is coming this month. The voice acting could use some work… but the cinematography is quite good. Don’t kill their bandwidth downloading from them, though – get Episode One from us. It’s available in its original DivX format (25.1 mb) from bungie.org or mythica.org , or reencodings into QuickTime format (24.3 mb – bungie.org or mythica.org) and WMP9 format (25.4 mb – bungie.org or mythica.org).

Today’s One One Se7en takes a look at what you might do when you have a teammate that’s… not keeping up.

Oops – no Fan Fiction update since the weekend… there are 27 new pieces for you to read. (A few rejections, as well; if you submitted something and it’s not up, you should probably read the rules again.)

Halo Story Page got another update this morning; three theories see the light of day. What don’t we know about Miranda Keyes? What’s going on on High Charity? and who were the Forerunners, really? Go read.

Hmm… is disappointment a natural consequence of rational competition? Are we only happy when we win? nof looks at how the impersonal and implacable matchmaking system drives us to be who we don’t like. (Something to remember: matchmaking attempts to pit you against those of equal skill level. This means, if it’s working properly, that you’ll lose, on average, one out of every two games you play once you reach your true level. It also means that BEFORE you reach this true level, you’ll win much more often. Could it be this shift – expressed in business as The Peter Principle (“Managers will rise to the level of their own incompetence”) – that REALLY causes the unhappiness?)

Yesterday, we pointed out that Frankie had hinted that some of the Swahili announcements, audible on the Outskirts level, might contain material of interest to fans. Last night, rehema popped onto our forum, and with some file help from m32, was able to listen to the clips – and translate them. We’ve added all 7 unique clips that ZexGX found a few weeks ago, plus one new one posted by Armum Infirni last night, to our Dialogue Databank, along with the original Swahili transcriptions and rehema’s translations. Go take a look! Update: It looks like replay went the next step, and googled the translations… many are Swahili proverbs. It’s the Old Man Maji quote that intrigues me… it’s not a proverb, and there’s no clear tie to a Halo 2 plot point; what’s this about?