SketchFactor points out that the latest Wired Magazine (October) has a feature on some of the people behind Halo 2. They had to airbrush Marty to make him presentable, apparently. (My copy hasn’t arrived yet. I think it’s time to get on Wired’s case.) We will, of course, have a press scanned version of this when the November issue hits the shelves – but if you want to read it now, get thee to a newsstand!

Saint posts to say that the Library, his encyclopedia of all things Halo, has been updated again. (There’s still no search function, so you have to know what you’re looking for… but there’s a lot of stuff there.

Paul and KINGHALO! from halosecrets.com have put together a live-action promotional vid for Halo 2 – though I doubt it’s the sort of thing that Microsoft would ever actually sanction. It IS pretty funny, though. The 360×240 DivX-encoded .mp4 is up on our server; there’s a larger version on their own server, but there’s no guarantee the bandwidth will hold out. The small version is 4.5 mb, the large one is 11 mb. Go watch!

guS and Burnie, of Red vs Blue, have written up their visit to Bungie last month, wherein they came, got drunk, and played Halo 2 until 3 in the morning. Dang, that sounds like fun. (Oh, wait… I was there. Forgive me – I look like I haven’t slept in WEEKS in the one pic of theirs I’m in. Maybe I’m just dead, or something.) Anyway, go read. It’s a great writeup. Looks like PsycoJoe was the first on our forum to notice it.

A couple of trickster vids showed up on our forum last night… Madrox and Foxygrandpa posted A Tribute to Tricking Part 1 (stunts on Silent Cartographer and AotCR, mostly). And in another thread, Devin Olsen posted a bunch of stunts from 343GS. Both vids are about 18.5 mb, in WMP9 format. No QuickTimes this time around – sorry.

serpx posted a couple of links to nice Wallpapers he’s put up at DeviantArt. Silvery…

Today’s Calvin and Halo, from Blackstar, shows a disturbing side of 6-year-olds that unfortunately doesn’t go away with age.

BOLL has (once again) updated the HBO PAL; now you can export your settings, and reimport them on another machine (or even just another browser on the same machine). I’m pretty sure that tomorrow we’ll receive the update that gets HBO PAL to do your laundry for you.

A note on Bungie.net points out that the website will be offline at 1 pm pdt today (8 pm UTC) in order to add some code for the return of the 7th Column. By this afternoon, pacific time, you should be able to set up new Groups (previously Chapters) on that site!

Ross Mills notes that ‘Game’ stores in the UK have a deal running right now; if you pre-order Halo 2, and pay a minimum of £3 towards the purchase, you’ll receive a Halo 2 poster when you actually purchase the game. It’s not clear WHAT poster you get; it’s possible it’s one that was showing at E3, but then again, it’s possible that it’s not. If and when we find out more, we’ll pass along the info.

A couple of days ago, Andrew, from XboxOttawa, pointed out in our forum that today’s Ottawa Citizen newspaper would be running an article in its Tech section that covers machinima and several groups that use Halo to make it (including XboxOttawa). If you’re somewhere that that newspaper is available, grab a copy! (If you’re not, we’ll bring you a press scan after it’s off the shelves.)

GamesRadar has put up the full text of the October 2004 Halo 2 article in Edge Magazine. We’ll have a press scan for you in a couple of weeks, with all the pretty pictures as well, but the real meat is in the text – and that’s online now. Go read. (Thanks again, Rams.)

Gamespy has posted a Xbox Fall Preview Guide – and Halo 2 rates an ‘awesome’ (as usual). I can’t figure out how they ordered them – Halo 2 is referred to in the opening paragraph (“not all of the titles are as anticipated as a certain first-person juggernaut”) but shows up on page 4. Guess it doesn’t matter. Go read. Thanks to Rams, of HaloPlanet, for the heads-up. Update: TruneX points out that the order is dictated by release date. DOH!

New item in the Joyride arsenal – the Armory Series 1 Weapon Battle Pack. Rocket launcher, shotgun, sniper rifle, MD6 pistol, plasma pistol, and needler are all included – the pack retails for $9.95. If you’re ordering, you might want to drop in your requests for the first round of Halo 2 figures; they start shipping in about 3 weeks.

Boxer gets us word of today’s Adventures In Disaster in time to make the normal news; makes you feel bad for the poor grunty.

Hehe… Microsoft Watch, a site devoted to – well, watching Microsoft – recently pointed out a blog entry by a Microsoft employee who commented on the huge percentage of Microsoft employees who participated in the Beta program that ended recently… and speculated about what that might mean for Microsoft’s overall productivity in the days immediately following November 9. Way to go, Bungie – you’re dragging the entire planet down!

Wow. We cleared the Wallpaper queue. I can’t REMEMBER the last time I could say that. Check the Wallpaper Section for 10 new pieces (14, actually, if you count size variants), including a few really nice creations. Wow. I’d hate to say I was catching up… because you folks would just up the rate of submissions. Hmm… Update: Eep, we yanked one of the images, because it used (without permission) some artwork created by ANOTHER fan. (The original artist asked us to pull it.) If you decide to use artwork you find on the web for your submissions here, you really need to make sure you have permission of the original creator; we take a pretty dim view of IP appropriation. (In most cases, if you find it on HBO, there’s an email address associated with the original; if there isn’t, you can drop US a note, and we can pass the note along.) Thanks!

Wow. WhoKnew, a regular on the #hbo IRC channel and a member of Alpha Base, wanted a Plantronics headset so badly that he wrote a song about it, and submitted it to haloTV. They liked it (it’s the Video of the Week), and he got his headset. (So did 5 other people, but more randomly.) Nice! (WMP9 format, streaming.)

Captain Spark gave the Engineer model buried in Silent Cartographer some Elite AI and a plasma rifle (using Halo PC modding tools), and made a short movie. It’s hard to make a longer one, because the game tends to crash when you do this… but this one’s pretty cool. The links in his forum post are nearly certainly dead now (or will be soon) – so use the links in THIS post. Movie is available in both WMP9 and QuickTime format, under a meg each case.

Tankramp, over at HaloPlanet, suggested recently that Stuntmutt might be running out of new jokes for One One Se7en strips. The joke’s on Tankramp – Stuntmutt never HAD new jokes for One One Se7en. Today’s strip, however, does use humor to make a decent point about weapon ergonomics.