So the big news of the morning is that Microsoft has made a small version of the Halo ad currently showing in Loews theatres available to the public. The astoundingly frustrating part of this is that the page is viewable ONLY on a PC – Macs can’t even see the teaser. This seems unreasonable, for content that was designed to be advertising in the first place. Even on a PC, the video is only available in a streaming format – and only, in fact, on Internet Explorer. Halo Orbit has made a downloadable version of this footage available – but it’s in asf format, and it’s a tad funky (the time data is wrong; Windows Media Player thinks it’s about 15 seconds shorter than it really is… it’ll play the whole thing, but the progress bar gets pinned at the end for the last third of the movie), and this screws up the program I’d normally use to convert this to a mac-friendly format. (It’s also not readable as is in the MacOSX version of WMP9.) Because of all this, I grabbed a local copy myself, from the MSN page; you can find it (2.1 mb, QuickTime format) on files.bungie.org. Here’s hoping a larger version, more cross-platform-compatible, will be released from on high.

WOW. Xavier, a newcomer to HBO, pointed out a new skin he created, based on some fantastic Tina Leyk artwork, posted at HaloMC.com. (There was some trouble earlier getting to that forum, so if you can’t see his post, he started from this picture, and ended up with this guy (a second pic is here). A local copy of the ppf is available here (145k). To apply this, grab a copy of Extion’s HHHT application (a local copy is here, 532k) and apply this ppf to your copy of bitmaps.map (in the MAPS folder). From here on out, any instance of a Spec-Ops Elite (they occur naturally on Two Betrayals, Keyes, and the Maw, and can be injected into any OTHER level) will now have this skin. I took a couple of pics (one | two) after the cafeteria on the Maw – they’re not great, but it was a way to see how easy it was to get this skin into the game. I gotta say… this rocks. All around.

Looks like the Bravo network is picking up One One Se7en next season.

Halo: Resolution posts the second half of its farewell teaser… the marines get a language lesson from a Cov Elite.

TotalVideoGames.com has a story today that Microsoft Game Studios has just confirmed that the Limited Edition version of Halo 2 WILL be sold in Europe. Given that Bungie confirmed this very fact 2 months ago, I’m struck by the alacrity of the Microsoft marketing juggernaut…

Today is the 5th anniversary of the MacWorld Trailer, the day that Halo was introduced to the world (and the planet reverberated with the clang of dropping jaws). And yesterday was, incidentally, the 5th anniversary of this domain name (halo.bungie.org) – the website had been up at that point for almost two months, but it had been reachable at blam.bungie.org; we changed names (and post formats) when Halo was officially announced. (Why the 1-day offset? It’s hard to tell this far down the road… but I think it’s a mistake. 🙂 ) The traditional gift for a 5-year anniversary is wood – I offer you the inside of my skull in celebration. We’ve come a long way, baby!

29 new pieces have been added to the Fan Fiction section today. It looked far worse when I stopped by to approve stories – but after I deleted 19 of the 20 copies of Elitehunter676’s submission, things weren’t quite so bad. (I can only hope it was a fit of epilepsy that caused him to submit 20 times… epilepsy is controllable with medication.) Hidden among today’s entries is the first submission for our collection of the Enkidu Fan Fiction Contest entries – Wado’s Dark Halo chapter is online. Again – anyone who wants to add their entry to this collection, simply submit it via the normal means, and then send me an email telling me that it’s part of the series. (Please tell me the NAME of the story, so I don’t have to guess which one’s yours.)

Cody Miller, who took first place on Truth and Reconciliation, also aced the Library for our Going Nowhere Fast contest. Beating his nearest competitor by 5 minutes (and the third place finisher by almost 25 minutes), he raced through this level of relentless destruction almost without stopping. The video is 153 mb large, and available (for now) via BitTorrent. (And because we haven’t mentioned it in a few days, here’s a BitTorrent download link – there are still folks who haven’t grabbed a client yet.)

Tina Leyk got stuck without power this afternoon – so she sat down with her Prisma pencils (and a pen) and sketched out a gorgeous Spec-Ops Elite. Check him out on her Fan Art page!

Betcha thought I forgot Calvin and Halo, didn’tcha? Calvin sort of wishes his mom forgot HIM…

On Sunday, Stuntmutt submitted a pretty funny One One Se7en for c0ld vengeance; today, he’s made good on the promise of that strip. Whatever else you might say about him… he follows through.

Dispraiser has posted Weekly Update 3 for Halogen, the C&C Generals total conversion, over on the Junkyard forums. New renders, discussion of vehicles, and a units list… give it a read!

MLGPro.com has interviewed Zyos, one of the top pro Halo gamers on the scene right now, about what it’s like to be a pro gamer. In addition, if you live in the Atlanta area, you can stop by the Lennox Mall Gamestop between 5 and 7 pm this Friday, and maybe get the chance to play him. (If you beat him, you get free admission to MLG Atlanta – 50k3, kicking off this weekend.) Go check it out!

Walshicus has updated his Halo Stellar Cartography submission to include data about every star on the map. Simply click on the map thumbnail to get started exploring. This, I think, is beginning to qualify as an obsession.

That Weasel Television, in conjunction with Mother’s Tooth and HaloRules.com, is launching its first all original, all exclusive, Halo series called “Grunts Are People Too!!!” Original music, grunty action, dead grunts. What more could you want? (Some episodes don’t seem to be uploaded yet, but give it time.)

Hmm. Looks like I forgot to update the Weekly Bungie Updates archive last week – but it’s now up-to-date. An awful lot of content in these past two updates… things are really coming along. See, for example, the progress on the lightmap farm – back in february, it was just getting built – now it’s a critical piece of the puzzle, so much so that a crash causes a loss of a day. Ouch!

Ducain has announced a new contest – The Three Towers. Put stuff on the Blue Beam towers, win cool schwag. How great is that?

If today’s One One Se7en makes no sense, you’re not reading Bungie’s Top Stories closely enough.

The cast Halo: Resolution are getting out… maybe.

Stefander points out the latest Zanzibar weekly update, over at Halomods – the energy sword is really coming along, and some other guns are being modeled. Take a look!