Psyrixx has put up a basic replacement to our HBO-XBL Gamertag database over at The Psyjnir Complex; it contains only your real name, your gamertag, and a handle – not HBO-specific, but any online handle you use, I suppose. (No listing of games, but then, it was the difficulty in maintaining that listing that put OUR list offline, so I don’t blame him at all.) If you want people who only know you on web forums to be able to find you on XBL, add yourself to this list!

SancheztheLlama writes to point out Nerdstock 2004, a Halo tournament taking place near Chicago on June 26th. Details, including cost and basic prize info, can be found on the web page.

Stuntmutt points out that there are pics of the Series 5 action figures over at ToyWiz.com – at least two are new to me. The Gold Elite has a new head design, and the Silver MC with a purple shotgun looks positively Barbie-like. (The red grunt is also mislabeled as orange – the orange grunt will be out in Wave 4.) Fun fun fun!

DrPeggs pointed out a collection of jokes told using Halo action figures – entertaining stuff. Take a look!

One One Se7en asks a question that’s puzzled me since I first started playing Halo…

Man… it’s getting worse and worse. Halo: Resolution points out some nasty injuries I seem to have sustained a couple of weeks ago. Sounds painful…

Very cool – The Toronto Star has put Red vs Blue on their front page (following the lead of the Wall Street Journal, recently). It’s also on their website, right now. It’s a pretty nicely written article, even. (Would have been nice if they’d gotten Jason Saldana’s last name right, but…) Give it a read! Thanks to Geemaan for the heads-up.

broony points out that not only did SketchFactor talk to Xbox.com… Tom Gioconda, aka Achronos, did, too. He discusses the growth of the team, the advantages of the new site over the old, and talks a little about how the site will be used in the future. He can’t get into details… but it’s clear that Bungie is looking forward to taking advantage to their access to backend data:

For now, let’s just say that Bungie.net will be an integral part of the Halo 2 Xbox Live experience and leave at that.

If you’re a Bungie fan, and you don’t yet have a B.net account… what are you waiting for? Update: Wouldn’t you know it? My timing is impeccable. A couple of days ago, Frankie pointed out that Xbox.com would be down for a 24 hour period, beginning at 6 am PST today, to get new features for Xbox Live. That was… 38 minutes before this note was originally posted. (They were a bit late; it went down less than a minute after I posted.) Apologies – you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to read this (and the interview with Sketch, as well). Thanks to Ross Mills for reminding me.

Nice find by gd – Xbox.com has interviewed Brian Jarrard (aka SketchFactor) about the new Bungie.net. Brian discusses where he thinks the community is going, and how Bungie can help it get there. Give it a read!

Yippee – halosn.bungie.org is back online – many, many thanks to Deimosâ„¢ for making this happen! This machine takes a hefty load off HBO prime and halosm… but the most noticeable change is going to be that the Fan Fiction section is back up. In fact, there were 20 pieces waiting in the queue, submitted before the box died last week – here they are now:

• Earth under siege, by Chief17
• Halo 2 Part 2, Cornered, by BlueChief
• Operation: Stingray Ch. 3: –Survival of the Smartest–, by Nick Kang
• Stand Ye Ground!, by Burny
• The Other Threat, by Conrad Lauf
• Vengeance From The Sky, by Conrad Lauf
• Makin’ It Real (Comedy) Part 2 of 2, by CoLd BlooDed
• Attack on some Human Ship (a comedy), by Nick Kang
• Halo: A Comedy 2, by Tom Murphy
• Project Egon – Chapter 1, by Richard Watson
• The Battle For Gu’re’lah, by Conrad Lauf
• Casualties of War Part IV, by Tom Murphy
• Earth Reawakened Part I, by DeathSquadTrooper
• Halo:The Sacrifice, by gr8ness
• The Battle For Ka’ Miah’Lin, by Conrad Lauf
• Lone Sniper, by someone that you dont know
• The Deadly Mist, by MadJackal
• The Trade Off, by Horror
• The Chronicle of Squad Omega: Chapter III, by Dark-NiTe
• Trapped Part Two : The Two Plans, by Daniel Rennerr

Enjoy!

The Wallpaper queue, as well, was way, way behind. I didn’t do any sorting on this; right now, I’m posting the oldest 20 desktops that made our basic guidelines. (I tossed a couple that were simply too basic to warrant addition – sorry folks.) These 20 are now available in the Wallpaper section. Some are quite good. (The queue contains more than 40 remaining – we’ll be doing updates like this every couple of days until they’re all up.)

I’d like to preface this post with a huge thank-you to the folks who have submitted content to us and have waited patiently for it to appear; the past couple of months have been pretty rough in that respect. Today marks the beginning of a turning point, I hope… I’m hoping to have the Miscellaneous Art and Wallpaper queues cleared by this time next week. (I can’t release all the backlog at once; there’s simply too much of it, we couldn’t handle the load.) I was going through the Misc Art queue this morning, and I noticed that while there were dozens of pieces, a few stood out; they were more than modifications of existing screenshots or hastily drawn sketches, they were pieces that showed the care taken to create them, and the love of the game that inspired them. (This is NOT to say that the remaining pieces are a waste of time, or are shoddily done – it’s just that with this big of a pool, I didn’t want the outstanding pieces to be buried.) I’m therefore breaking with tradition and posting what I consider to be the 10 most impressive Miscellaneous Art pieces in the queue, rather than going in chronological order (as we usually do). From this point forward, we’ll revert to our normal pattern… but right now, I wanted to show off these 10 pieces. Enjoy.

Today’s Calvin and Halo explains why mothers should never be allowed on the point team of an invasion force. You can’t have them sending the soldiers to their rooms…

So… way back in February, the Halo Story page mentioned a clue tossed out by Eric Trautmann about stuff he hid in Halo: First Strike. Periodically, over the past 2 and a half months, folks have offered up guesses about what he might have been talking about… and he has invariably answered ‘Cold’. Until now. Exogenesis ran into him at a public gathering, and finagled a bit more information from him… and it was enough for Anton P. Nym to give the first guess that received a ‘Warm’ response from Eric. Way to go, guys! That should be enough for the more rabid fans out there to nail down what Eric was hinting at…

Took a little while, because I’m learning PHP slowly… but the News By Day feature is back; hitting those arrows next to the date will once again let you view older news one day at a time. Apologies for the delay. Next up… Fan Fiction. (I hope.)

Couple of interesting, totally unrelated newsbits over at Battleground: Halo this weekend; I’m finally catching up. They’ve started a Weekly Update for Homefront, the Battlefield: Vietnam mod, and the first one is a doozy (lots of cool pictures). They also link to a couple of threads on the Gearbox Forums (this one and this one) containing writeups and pictures from this weekend’s 5th Anniversary Gearbox party. (No real Halo content there, but interesting to put some faces to names…)

One One Se7en asks a very good question today… I’m thinking, someone might have stumbled on the secret behind the Halo 2 delay!

Evilness is occuring on Halo: Resolution – I’d hope that this sort of thing never REALLY happens…

Okay, I’m not 100% positive it’s bug-free… but it SEEMS to work. I’ve recoded the search function that accesses our news database for php; the biggest unknown is the cookie transfer between the main site (halo.bungie.org) and the machine that now handles the search function (nikon.bungie.org). It SHOULD work, in most cases, but it’s quite possible there are exceptions. Nevertheless, it’s orders of magnitude faster, and far more solid, as well; give it a whirl. (The News By Day function that’s been down since Subnova went offline last week should be back up and running, using this new system, in the next day or two.)