Light, light news day – how about some comics? There’s a new sprite-based strip up over at the newly-opened 7th Revolution, called Halo: On Vacation (be sure to look around a bit when you’re there), and Sector 7 has put up its next episode of The Marines – or should I say, has been taken over by ANOTHER internet phenomenon? Enjoy this Sunday!

The Fan Fiction queue had 6 stories in it – it now has none, because they’ve been posted. Go read.

Tempus Fugit notes that Microsoft will be showing off Halo 2 at the G|C Games Convention. All the information is in German and only available in printed form, but Halo 2 can be spotted in the press release transcribed here. The convention will be held in Leipzig, Germany in about two weeks.

Doug Fabrizio, aka StrangePurple (a frequent winner on the Halo competitive circuit) hung out with Bungie bigwigs in New York recently, and played some Halo 2 (and other games)… he’s written up his experience for the masses over on the MLGPro.com website. Thanks to Dolbex for the heads-up.

Bungie.net has posted a story explaining everything you need to do to be ready for Halo 2 this fall, from helping with excuses for getting off work to buying the right hardware to get online. (They’re not advocating breaking rules, just offering options.) Check it out! Thanks to Marcus for the first heads-up.

Frankie’s weekly update has popped up at VideoGames.co.nz. It’s a pretty long one this time, and with tons of nice tidbits and numbers- Gameplay animations are 95% complete, there’s 4.1 gigabytes of audio dialog assets, and… pocky? Sure, why not. Check it out!

Just a quick note – I’m going to be mostly out of touch for the next few days. I’ll do my best to catch up on off hours, and Count Zero MIGHT be able to fill in a bit… but if you submit content, and it doesn’t go up right away, don’t freak out, it just means we haven’t gotten there yet. Thanks!

cykage posted a vid made by Rippon, showing some… odd dancing styles. Brian Towne mirrored it at Mythica, so bandwidth shouldn’t be a problem. 22 mb, WMP9 format. There’s a QuickTime version, as well… because, well, we like Macs.

‘Ridley Rarzamee did some custom painting of his Blue Joyride Elite figure, and ended up with a pretty slick-looking Spec Ops Elite. Check it out!

It looks like London denizens will get a chance to play some Halo 2 next month, at the Gamestars Live event at the ExCeL facility. Tickets can be purchased from the Gamestars Live website, and the press release can be read at XboxRules.com (thanks, Walchicus). First notice of this came from Dark G, yesterday, though the information itself was nearly drowned out by the flamewar that erupted over the idea that the playable material might be single-player. Thanks also to broony, who pointed out an article at MyXbox. Details about WHAT will be playable don’t exist yet – but an educated guess would be the Zanzibar level.

Stuntmutt proves that metaphors are lost on the literal in today’s One One Se7en.

8 new stories for you in the Fan Fiction section. Go read…

Today’s Halo Babies strip finally reveals the face of the Baby that MC’s been trying to save. It may surprise you.

B ball master wrote gleefully to point out that The Gamesman (a New Zealand gameseller) is reporting that the November 9th release date for Halo 2 has been confirmed for New Zealand – which means that a kiwi will be the first consumer on the planet to officially get their hands on a copy.

Hehe – Roger Wilco seems to be as tired of a certain buzz-inducer as we are.

Want some Bungie schwag, but thought the Bungie Store was a little expensive? Looks like they’re moving – and having a fire sale on existing merchandise. Everything’s a few bucks off. Buy before August 31, though, because on that day the eCS/Bungie Store closes for good. Read the details on the front page. Thanks to Ross Mills for the first heads-up.

He’th Baskin really enjoyed the monk chanting in the Halo theme, but was frustrated that it was never by itself. So he mixed his own, 3:32, 4.8 mb mp3 version.

I have listened to as much Halo related music I could get my hands on but was always disappointed to find the monk chanting to be limited and always mixed with other instruments. So I set it upon myself to try and mix and match chant music from different Bungie tracks into a track of its own.

You can listen to it, too – we’re hosting it for him. Update: we’ve replaced the original with a new version that has less noise – he’th spent a couple of hours cleaning it up after release.

Wow, must be a day for exceptions. Back in March, we closed down the Guest Submissions section of One One Se7en – Stuntmutt himself created Guest Strip 100, and we said ‘no more’. Today, however, we’ve received a strip from Gruntsbane, the artist behind Halo Babies, and his Guest One One Se7en, a tribute to yesterday’s 200th strip, was too much fun to leave alone – so I’m reopening the Guest Section for this one last entry. Enjoy!

We don’t normally mention new websites on the front page any more – when we automated the Links section, the flood of new links (well over 100 of them) made that totally unfeasible – but there are always exceptions, and today we have one for you. CEAds, the Halo CE Promotion Project, is a website to show off the best and brightest of Halo CE and to help bring more Halo players to Halo CE. The ‘Why Play Halo CE’ page details what makes CE superior to PC, listing a good number of Halo CE’s new features. It’s still new, so content is sparse, but the idea is solid: Halo CE is the future of Halo on a PC, and more people should be playing it. This website will help show you why.

Today’s Calvin and Halo points out that some skills don’t translate well from virtual to real world…