An interesting grab-bag of articles from around the net this morning:

• Yale Daily News – Halo 2 interfering with grades
• Stuff (NZ) – Halo is ‘about as close to a perfect game as you can get.’
• Winston-Salem (NC) Journal – Halo 2 is a must-have gift
• Austin360 – Big-Screen Halo 2 tourneys at the Alamo Drafthouse
• Washington Post – Op-Ed lamenting the rise of video games in general (and Halo 2 in particular) and their effect on study habits – thanks, Free at Last
• HowStuffWorks – Gift-Buying Guide lists Halo and Halo 2 as the ‘gift of obsession’ – thanks, Rip-Saw

Remember – if you run into articles that need a login to read, always try bugmenot.com first.

Pcsme found a truly retro Halo-themed logon screen for Windows users at WinCustomize. It’s so old, it’s new!

We’re getting closer and closer to clearing out the various art queues (though new data comes in every day). I just added twenty images to the Miscellaneous Art section – and there is some SPECTACULAR stuff in there. Go look! (One of my favorites is Paul Davies’ ‘Installation Unknown’, though quite a few other ones made me catch my breath.)

Nice – Mat Noguchi, Tools Programmer (and a whole lot more!) at Bungie, will be giving a talk at the 2005 Game Developer’s Conference, according to his blog. Thanks to Narcogen, at Rampancy.net, for noticing.

Bungie’s store is now selling Holiday cards – you can buy a set of 15 (5 each of the 2001 and 2003 cards, originally shown on their website, and 5 of the new 2004 cards) for $12.95. Wish your friend a Happy Carnage Season in style! Thanks, Rio258k

HaloTwoFreak points out that the Windows version of Konfabulator is now available; we’ve mentioned a number of Konfabulator widgets over the past couple of years, but until now, only MacOSX users could make use of them. Follow the link above to see what’s out there in terms of Halo-related widgets, and then grab your copy of Konfabulator to use them!

Red vs Blue Episode 45 is now out for Sponsors. Just under 5 minutes of hilarity… poor Donut. (Did you know you could make blood from orange juice?) If you’re not a sponsor, you’ll be able to grab this by Sunday or so. Thanks, the beaz.

CBSNews.com has put up a Video Game Holiday Buying Guide – and Halo 2 is on it. There’s also a nice little note explaining how parents, not interest groups, are ultimately responsible for the games their children play – ESRB’s rating system is there to help, but the final decision on whether or not to let kids play games like Halo 2 belongs to parents. What a refreshing view!

During the month leading up to the release of Halo 2, we had a ton of submissions for various art sections that I simply didn’t get to. I’ve cleared out 20 of the desktops (30, if you count variations) and added them to our Wallpaper section – there are still a couple of dozen images in the queue, but it’s much smaller than it was. More coming soon. In the meantime, check these out – there are some GREAT ones.

BOLL’s Halorama section has gotten an infusion of 15 new images; 8 multiplayer shots, 7 single player. There is almost no better way to get a good look at Bungie’s beautiful architecture!

Wonga. The Major League Gaming website has been totally overhauled for the 2005 season; there is a quarter of a million dollars on the line this year. There’s an article about point and prize breakdowns for those competing, details about upcoming content from Dolbex, and more! Check it all out.

ThinkGeek is gettin’ in on the Halo Lovin’ action – they’re selling a plain black T-shirt with ‘Master Chief’ (in a pseudo-Halo font) on it. It ain’t cheap, neither. Thanks, Jonas.

A week ago, Time Magazine published their list of Top 10 Games for 2004 – Halo was Number 7. Thanks to Excalibur for the magazine scans; you’ll find the article in our Press Scans section.

After taking a week off for Thanksgiving, Frankie is back with another Weekly What’s Update, a service in which Bungie answers questions posed by Halo 2 fans during the course of the week. One question asks about non-flaming ninjas – you can create your own using our new Multiplayer Emblem Generator (if you don’t like those colors, feel free to change them!) – another declares that the cliffhanger ending of Halo 2 was intentional (which is about as close to an admission that the next Halo is in the works as you’re going to get, I think). There are many others – discussion about clipping issues in multiplayer maps, answers about bugs and their fixes, explanations of obscure gaming references. The one thing I didn’t see (that I expected to) was a mention of the ‘Cable modem standby button cheat’ that made the rounds this week; maybe that’s coming. A great read – go check it out!

BOLL recently sent us a web-based interface for experimenting with the emblems you can choose for your XBL Halo 2 profile – and Bungie kindly allowed us to post it for you to use. (We needed to ask, since the image generated actually comes from their servers.) Go ahead and experiment – build your best avatar! (This isn’t the only one on the net right now – recently, Yaksha pointed out another one at the Sponsors vs Freeloaders site. Try them both!)

Captain Spark has posted another 33 dialogue snippets on his website. This is the third such release – if you missed the first two, don’t worry, we’ll be posting them soon in the upcoming Halo 2 Dialogue Databank. (These 33 will be available for the next week or so on CS’s website.)

1Up.com has begun collecting data for their Best Games of 2004 Awards – head over and vote. Halo 2 is up for Best Shooter, Best Online/Multiplayer, and Game of the Year. Thanks, Frankie.

Gearbox Software, EPG Servers, and Halo Maps have teamed up to present a pretty nice contest; create a 90 second video on the theme ‘Play Halo CE’, and win free dedicated server hosting for Halo CE and Gearbox schwag. The full details can be found over at the Halo Maps website. You’ve got December 31 to get your entry in – go read the rules and get started!