Red vs Blue has posted Episode 33, ‘An Audience of Dumb’, for sponsors; it’s rather large. (78.7 mb large, in QuickTime – it’s 7:45 long.) Some weird twists… and the nastiest Mexican Sasquatch music this side of Oaxaca. Thanks go to KP for noticing.

And rounding out the day’s comics, Tina Leyk takes a shot at what is probably Cortana’s stupidest piece of dialogue in the entire game, in a new Fur-Lo comic. (If it’s hard to find on the page, here’s a direct link, maybe it’ll get me to finish coding the search stuff.)

Stuntmutt, unwilling to let the MC go an entire week without corn, explains those curled-up grunts in today’s One One Se7en.

Nineteen pieces in the Fan Fiction update today; more than a couple are poems, and six are part of a series. See what you can get through before the next one!

I hear today’s Halo: Resolution is based on a true story.

Halo Babies gets onto a real plot – look out!

k, l, m – airline or mysterious writing?

Doug Zartman, the very first paid Bungie employee, spent some time chatting with Frankie before he left to join Alex Seropian and crew over at Wideload Games… and man, did he give up some choice Bungie tidbits. Though I think the origin of the Bungie name was going a bit too far… now the cops are gonna be after his new (old?) boss. Again. Go read. And say thank you to gd.

Ever wonder where Bungie came up with the idea for the 7th Column community site? Well, Frankie sat down with the primary stooge- erm, mastermind, Max Hoberman, and got the lowdown, which he then wrote up into a story for Bungie.net. Then he attached a great interview with Miguel Chavez, Bungie’s Number One Fan and the Master of BS… and the combination makes a great read. Just in time for next week’s Fanfest IX (dang, they’re starting to look like Superbowls or something), get nostalgic and see where the Bungie fanfest got its roots! Thanks to Zig-Zag for noticing.

Darksage has written a quick review of the HEK over at Halo-Source; certainly wins the ‘first out of the gate’ award. Take a look. Update: Seems it’s been moved – you can find it here, now.

New Subzero Rivalries comic over at Evilburger.net – thanks to MarkHawk for the heads-up.

Wonga. See what happens when Bungie yanks their unofficial RSS feed? Lazy bums like me miss important updates. Yesterday, Roger Wolfson, Bungie’s test lead for Halo PC, posted a nice FAQ in the Maw forum related to Halo CE and where it fits in the grand scheme of things. It spells out who’s responsible for what, from here on out, and gives some pointers on where to look for more info. Go read it! (Achronos posted this on Bungie.net’s front page, but I was too busy eating jellybeans to notice. Mmm… jellybeans.)

Calvin points out one of the downsides to playing your kid in Halo in today’s Calvin and Halo.

Sep7imus noticed an article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the video game industry – and it features Halo 2 prominently. We don’t have a copy of this, and it’s not online yet, but if you see the WSJ, look for it!

We’ve compiled all the working links from this Gearbox forum thread and the lists at Cortana.org, and added in a few that we’ve found elsewhere, and created a Halo Custom Edition | Halo Editing Kit Mirrors page. We’ll do our best to keep this updated; if you run across a link to these files that isn’t on our list, feel free to drop us a line.

SEspider noticed a Halo DesktopX Theme; if you have DesktopX, check this out!

One of the big ‘gotcha’s so far with the HEK is the lack of ability, out of the box, to export new data from 3ds max into a format that the HEK tools can read. The HEK comes with a version of the Blitzkrieg exporter (the file that does the translation work) that works with 3ds max v5.x. Yesterday, Gearbox released exporters for 3ds max 3 and 4; you can find these at Cortana.org on either the Quick Downloads page or the Tool File Downloads page. However, there are still two groups left out; those using the newest 3ds max 6 (Gearbox has said they’re willing to consider creating a plugin if the demand is high enough, and a thread has been started on the Gearbox forums to provide evidence of this demand), and those without the cash to buy a copy of 3ds max at all. Last year, Gearbox said they’d do their best to create an exporter for gmax, discreet’s free 3ds max-derived creation tool, but there’s been no word of that recently. However, all is not lost; Xzzy, a longtime Bungie fan and a prominent creator of HaloPC tools, posted a note last night that suggested that he’s not too far from creating the plugin himself. (He’s out of town for the next week, so it won’t happen right away, but he sounds pretty optimistic about the possibilities.) In the meantime, baldactor, a mod on the Gearbox forums, has posted a thread with info on how to get hold of a 30 day trial of 3ds max 5, for those who WANT Max, don’t already have it, and can’t find anything but 6 right now. Whew! Does that sum up the mess at this point? Update: I missed this thread; Scott Velasquez of Gearbox says he’ll be ‘looking into adding 3DSMax 6 support in the near future…’ Good news!

We received word today from Marc Tardif of Gearbox Software about the ability to distribute the HEK Tutorial. Some European sites were asking whether they were translatable, and others wanted to know whether the color scheme of the pages could be altered. (White on black can be hard on some eyes.) The answer to all of these questions is yes:

The more people who get it the better. I think getting it translated is an excellent idea. My hope is that this document will become a base for more user-created tutorials.

I haven’t removed the frames yet – but I DID whip up an HBO-themed version (minor image changes and a new style sheet) – you can see it here. For any sites interested in using the cleaned-up html as a base for translation – you can grab it here, in zipped format; drop in the two image folders, and you’re good to go. (The tutorial is included with the HEK download, so if you grabbed that, you already have these folders. If you need them as a separate download, drop us a note; we’ll see if we can find the bandwidth for it.) And if you DO write a new tutorial that folks might find useful, send it along; we’ll probably host it for you!

Interesting – Kris Kristensen, the director/producer of a film called ‘Inheritance’, is appealing to the Halo fanbase for a show of support. It seems some distributors are reluctant to take this film, because there are no ‘stars’ – so Kristensen is asking that folks who know about Jen Taylor, the voice of Cortana and a star of the film, to sign this petition, affirming that there’s an audience for this. The forum post has links to film trailers, so go take a look!

Halo50k3 is ON, baby. Dolbex has posted an info page with hotel and registration info – go read it, and reserve your pillow-top mattresses with down pillows today!