Sep7imus sent in a nice link to a story in today’s New York Times Circuits section. (Free registration required.) It’s a decent overview of the I Love Bees game, which ends today. If you’ve held off following this, this might be a nice door in.

Spill Magazine in Norway is giving away 4 tickets to the Norwegian launch party: visit this page, answer a pretty trivial question, you’re entered to win. (I think.) All info comes from Kabeer Nasir, since I don’t read Norwegian.

8 million people noticed that nilerogers.com put up a new clip from the Halo 2 soundtrack – this one’s called High Charity, and the snippet 1:19 long, 1.2 mb large. A little spooky, too. Great screen in the Listening Station flash presentation for it. someboy was first – but thanks, all! (5 to go!)

Rocketwidget noticed that last month’s XBN Halo 2 spread (one of two Halo-related articles in the magazine) is now online – full text is here, and all the new screenshots that are part of the story start here. We’ll still be putting the press scans up in the next week or two – but you cna get all the goodies (for this article, anyway) online right now!

We got a fun step-by-step from Devastator yesterday – he got hold of some pieces from the Nightmare Armor guys, and used them to make himself a nice costume. Give it a look!

Tim Bennett sent along a scan (166K) of some street press for the Sydney (Australia) Halo 2 launch party – looks like it’s gonna be fun! Update: a bit more on the event is here, at Aussie Xbox (thanks, Gossip).

Kornman has released a small application that can edit animations for Halo – go grab a copy from the Gearbox forums! Thanks, MasterGrief.

Finchmeister points out that the Walk of Game voting is over; they haven’t confirmed the vote yet, but you can see the current ranking on the website, and the two top winners in the Game/Character section are Halo and Master Chief. Looks like the last minute push might have helped! Unless something weird happens, Halo will live on as a customized, brushed-steel star on the floor of the Metreon in San Francisco. Way to go!

Speaking of comics, today’s Calvin and Halo looks at the crazy world of collectibles… and brings up a pretty good question.

Comic Oni sent along a link to a new comic strip he made for a Halo 2 clan – here’s hoping the Photobucket bandwidth holds out.

Gamespy put up an interview with Marty O’Donnell as part of their weeklong Halo 2 coverage – as always, Marty’s fun to read. Thanks, John Rivas. Update: Uriel reminded me that when multiple people are updating the site, sometimes things get posted twice. Sue me, I’m human.

It’s day four of Gamespy’s weeklong Halo 2 coverage, and today they’ve got an interview with Bungie’s resident maestro, Marty O’Donnell. Thanks to John Rivas for the heads-up.

IGN’s newest Halo 2 Countdown article looks at timezones, and how they affect who plays when. Plus some gratuitous prurient picture captions.

There’s a new series of commercials running on G4TV – promoting November 9 as Halo 2 Day at G4. They’re commercials, so I’m guessing they won’t mind the extra exposure… and the ad itself was put together by Red vs Blue, so I’m guessing the Halo community will enjoy them. ZiplocBodyBag and Cybrfrk captured and converted one of these (Grif and Simmons), and you can grab a QuickTime version from our server (3.1 mb). If we can get ahold of the Church/Sarge one (and any other ones that happen to be out there…), we’ll post those, too.

Jordan Montreuil (and half a dozen other people) pointed out a blurb from Gabe in today’s Penny Arcade news about some ads PA made for Microsoft about Halo 2. He couldn’t actually find the ads (and neither could I) – but keep an eye open for them!

Couple of giveaways to mention: Xboxcheats.com is giving away a copy of Halo 2 every day of November after November 9th (thanks, gizmoe)… and 92.3 KROCK (out of New York) is celebrating Halo 2 Week by giving away Halo 2. Details are in this news item, with online entry info here (thanks, Dan Chosich).

Major Nelson put up a small bit about the winners of the Halo 2 Backstage Pass competition – including a nice shot of the Halo 2-branded stretch Hummer used to haul them around. Looks like they’ll be having some fun tomorrow! Thanks, Cybrfrk.

Yesterday, Ding mentioned the John Stewart Halo plug – thanks to Jakedagreat, we’ve got a 1.9 mb QuickTime clip of the action. Check it out!

A number of people have pointed out this website, tied somehow to the Desktop Master Chief. (I at first believed that the music videos were totally fan-created – I still think they’re pretty amateurish, personally, but this seems to be an official site, so what do I know?) Some interesting stuff there, in any case.

Spud from Haloplanet wants to remind anyone who is jonesing for some Halo 2 discussion that they’ve been doing a hell of a job keeping their forums leak-free, and are justifiably proud of their efforts. If you’ve been looking for a place to discuss the Halo universe, but don’t want to get spoiled, give them a try! (If you’re a regular here, be polite – we don’t want to tarnish our impeccable reputation! ;-))