The Gamesome Mac, a Mac-centric internet radio site, will be interviewing Peter Tamte, head of Destineer, and Marty O’Donnell, audio director for Bungie, about Mac Halo (among other things) this Monday, at 6pm Pacific time (9pm Eastern, 2 am Tuesday UTC). It’ll be a two hour show… stop by for streaming quicktime!

MDH has posted a mod for the Halo PC demo, over at Halo Center. It replaces the Banshee with a Scorpion tank, and makes a lot of the guns stronger. It’s a 5.4 mb download.

It seems that IGN is reposting all the wallpapers you can find on Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation site. Not sure why you wouldn’t just go to the source… but enough people are pointing it out to us that I thought I’d point it out to others.

Stuntmutt’s Sunday One One Se7en strip today shows why it’s a good thing he’s not competing in the Plinth of Art contest… he’d sweep it. Or we’d hang him. I can’t figure out which.

MR-T pointed out an interesting thread over at HaloMods – some fun MC renders, suitable for Wallpaper. Check ’em out!

Wow. Yesterday was spent at a Halo lanfest in New York, hosted by the gracious Miguel Chavez at the Selkirk Gallery in Manhattan. I’m sure there’ll be some writeups soon, and nukedude got some pretty good video… but there’s a game I want to point out: it was team oddball, rockets, on Hang em High, with one ball and 15 minutes needed to win. The kill numbers were ASTOUNDING. Here was the screen I was playing on (40k) – and I’m adding this one because Jynx, the high kills guy, didn’t have enough balltime to make the first one. I’ll be slowly working my way through piled-up mail and forum stuff over the course of the day, in between Christmas preparations and dealing with the new snow… but I wanted to say that even though I didn’t get home until after 3:30… it was a blast. An absolute blast.

Captain Spark sent along what might be considered a sequel to a rather… interesting piece we posted last year. 975K, mp3 format. We take no responsibility for any side effects, including blindness.

Today’s Guest One One Se7en comes from 343GS, and might be considered to contain spoilers for the book Halo: First Strike. Of course, those considering that are… well, a bit overzealous. No novels were spoiled in the creation of this strip.

Just a quick update – about 500 people signed the Grunt Plushy petition since we posted a note yesterday… that’s good, but not good enough. If you haven’t signed, please do. Takes a few seconds, that’s all. If you’re worried about adding your email address because of fear of spam, their privacy policy clearly states that email addresses will not be used for solicitation purposes or sold to third parties. Let’s get this dream to be a reality!

13 pieces for you today in the Fan Fiction section:

• The Fallen: Halo 2- Chapter 6 Section 3: Claiming Territory, by Hikaru-119
• Task Force 168: The Silent Justice-Chapter One, by Blue Jaguar
• Closing with the Enemy Chapter 7 The Convoy, by monitor101
• A Conclusive History of the United Nations Space Command: Chapter One: Beginnings, by witelancer
• A Conclusive History of the United Nations Space Command: Chapter Two: The Colonial Period, by witelancer
• The Final War: Battle for Installation 02 [4:3], by Awacar
• Afternoon’s Twilight, by Mainevent
• Earth’s Destruction Chapter 6: Flying Solo Part One: Midair Melee, by Sentinel
• legion of Honor – part 1: Holding Si Bhet, by Brocktree
• I Feel Tired -MC Rap-, by AmokTheClown
• His Last Mission(Add on to Appocalypse), by FF Echo
• Shadow Ops II: Chapter Two, by Agent Shade
• The Fallen: Finding MJOLNIR, by The_Feared

Remember, folks – this is Halo Fan Fiction. Please don’t post other stuff – no matter HOW good your intentions. Thanks.

In violation of all normal release policies (yes, they think this is important), Gearbox has released a patch at 9 pm (their time) on a Friday night – which means they’re gonna be working through the weekend to be sure this is okay. This patch is an attempt to fix the crashes many users have experienced since upgrading from 1.02. It’s roughly 4 mb, and is available via auto-update right now. Warning: This update will kill all your saved checkpoints. Players can still jump to the levels they’ve opened but any in-level saves are going to be lost.

The Cananimators are at it again. Just goes to show you… there’s no class requirement for employment at Bungie. They’ll let ANYONE in, provided they have useful skills.

Very cool. SketchFactor has posted scans of a couple of Holiday cards Bungie’s sent out in their Gallery. (The one labeled 2001 actually went out in BOTH 2000 and 2001, but who’s counting?) These are great fun… take a look.

Gossip sent in another IMG link – this time, they’ve reviewed Mac Halo. They gave it a 9.25/10 – higher than most sites have been reviewing Halo PC. The reviewer was playing on a Dual 2GHz G5, so it’s not gonna be of a lot of use to folks with computers closer to the minimum specs, in terms of judging how it’ll run for them… but overall, it looks like Westlake did a fantastic job with the port. 12 screenshots, with framerates listed in the corners.

Halo gets a mention in today’s Ctrl+Alt+Del comic – pretty funny. Thanks to rendar for noticing.

You say you’re itchin’ for another contest? You say the last few didn’t challenge you? You say you want a REAL puzzle? Well, pardner, we got some forum regulars that would like to talk to you. c0ld vengeance, BOLL, MorningStar, and Skavenger have put their heads together to come up with the HBO Xmas Puzzle Carnage quiz. It involves many mini-puzzles, spread out over 7 pages, with the navigation between pages a puzzle in itself! There are some cool prizes to be won, so check out the forum post; make sure you understand the rules, and get cracking!

Inside Mac Games has posted a new Halo desktop, created by Brad Custer, in honor of Mac Halo’s release. It comes in an ASTOUNDING variety of sizes. Check it out! (Credit goes to Gossip for noticing it.)

ActionTrip is running a PC Game of the Year poll on their front page; Halo currently has 5% of the vote (putting it in 10th place). Methinks it might be hard to get a lot of votes at the moment… but if you think they’ll work through the 1.03 glitches, go bump up the numbers!

There’s a new EchoFourNineteen comic over at 343GS.com (downloads section) – I’d tell you about it, but I forgot. Thanks to Zergling_minor for the heads-up.

We received word from a few people last night that they’d gotten confirmation that their copies of Mac Halo were en route… and this morning, we received a press release confirming this from MacSoft. Woohoo!