Whoa. Mark discovered a note about the rebuilding of Project Phoenix, over at GameDreamZ – if this is accurate, Phoenix will appear for the Xbox Next console (the second-generation Xbox), being reworked by FASA and the old Oni team. (They used the obligatory ‘rising from the ashes’ line in the writeup…)

Bravehamster writes about a major lanfest being set up for New Year’s Eve in Santa Maria, CA (about 3 hours north of LA on the California coast). They’re shooting for 90 players, and want the thing to run from noon on December 31 through noon on January 1. Admission is $25, and all the pizza and soda you can eat and drink are included. Check out the Central Coast Frag Fest website for more details!

halo.leetgamers.org is offline for a bit; read this forum post for details why. Thanks, Blade.

Battleground: Halo newsman Tankramp has been Spotlighted over at the Junkyard; go read about what makes him tick. Thanks to Mhaddy for the heads-up.

So here’s the thing. A few months back, we started receiving Guest strips for One One Se7en, created by fans of the Stuntmutt creation. We filled in the days of the week not covered by the main strip – but they were coming in faster than we could post them. Today, the wait time for new submissions is well over two months – and this has begun to cause problems. (Many of the submitted strips are topical, and the jokes are somewhat muted if shown past their expiration dates.) We’ve decided to open a One One Se7en Archive.

What is this? Well, think of it as overflow space. The Archive will be updated once a month or so – guaranteeing that no strip languishes longer than a month before being presented to the public. Strips will be identified by author, submission date, and a thumbnail… but archived strips will NOT make it into the normal One One Se7en (daily) queue. Whether your submission goes into the Guest rotation or the Archive is up to you; the trade-offs are a front-page mention and ‘official’ standing, versus (potentially) faster post times. Some strips will be placed in the Archive automatically; any strip posted on our forum from this point forward will be archived, instead of Guest-queued. If the Guest queue is longer than the next archive date, a topical strip will be placed in the archive. If a strip is submitted on a topic that’s already been over-mined (in Stuntmutt’s words), we’ll archive it, instead of queueing it. And the submitter can CHOOSE to be placed in the archive, by specifying it when they submit.

We’d like to offer all currently-queued Guest strip submitters the chance to be posted in the first Archive posting, which will happen this Monday, November 24. (After that, Archive updates will happen on the 7th of the month, or thereabouts.) If you’ve submitted a strip that hasn’t been posted, and would like the opportunity to enter this new section instead of waiting for the Guest queue to reach you, drop us a line (yes, we’ve created a new email address for this).

Unsanity, a company devoted to tweaking the user interface of Mac OSX, has announced ShapeShifter, a product that will allow you to add ‘themes’ to your interface. One of the first themes released (in fact, installed with the program) is called Eylo (rhymes with Halo) – and a quick look at the theme shows why. Check it out! (Thanks, Mig.)

Bizarre… there’s a site out there devoted to stories about stupid things people do online. Halo PC is one of the covered games, which is what makes this Halo news… There’s no really easy way to search for Halo PC stories (or at least I didn’t find one), but I gotta say, the few I did read were all whinefests. Still, some people like reading that sort of thing (or writing it)… thanks to Uberblue for the heads-up.

Stuntmutt uses today’s One One Se7en to point out one reason Gearbox might have left the new weapons out of Campaign in Halo PC… Marathon fans are probably thinking “Smells like Napalm” right about now.

Tweakfactor.com has posted a Halo Tweak Guide, designed to help you get the most out of your video hardware. Check it out for that extra framerate boost! Thanks to Blue’s News (via Ash) for the heads-up.

For the second day in a row, Finn has taken a healthy bite out of the Halo Story page mailbag; there’s a sizeable update today. (He also addresses concerns that Story page submissions might be used for purposes other than the edification of Story page readers…)

Halo: Resolution takes a shot (hehe) at the needler as a weapon; check out today’s strip.

15 pieces for you today in the Fan Fiction update:

• Athenienses-II: Chapter 2: Plasma Tanks, by ZackDark
• Appocalypse-Sector4, by FF Echo
• Closing with the Enemy Chapter 2 Covenant Attack, by monitor101
• Closing with the Enemy Chapter 3 Death on the Front, by monitor101
• Neverland: A New Home, by SOS.Odin
• Merick’s Journal’s, Episode II: Streaker’s Annonomous, by John Kitchen
• Another (Part 1), by Mr Bill Jr V
• Another (Part 2), by Mr Bill Jr V
• Lan Battle Chapter 2 Jesse’s Plan , by Blue Angel
• Fight for New Tatley (Chapter 2: Alien Ambush), by CoLd BlooDed
• Balo: The Pillar of Yearning (Chapter 1), by Sergeant B
• A Series of Wierd Events – Sequel, Part Two, by Hunter_Killer
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 12, by S7N
• Halo the Aftershocks, by Nestor Nazario
• The Forerunner: Prologue, by Steele

A steady flow, no?

Mafioso writes to point out that l337 Guide has gotten an entirely new look. Check ’em out.

We’d like to say goodbye to a strong member of the Halo community; CobaltNova has closed its doors, permanently. In the words of Emil, its founder, “we had a pleasant community, decent website, with nice plans for the future that had to be closed down for the foreseeable future because life interfered.” We’re gonna miss you… (Thanks to gwdpto, who was the first to point this out to us.)

We’ve received another piece of Halo-inspired music. This one is the Halo 2 Trailer Music, with a hip hop beat. It’s 2:13 long, just under 2 mb in size, and the author, chaostheory, had this to say:

I am an avid hip hop producer and I noticed the music in the background of the H2 preview was about the right sample speed to loop and mess around with. I absolutely adore Halo, beaten on legendary a few times and play MP regularly so I thought I’d make a halo beat. With the music form the movie, combined with a few vocal grunt samples and the like, I put this together. The drums aren’t outstanding and I could have chopped the sample better but it was kind of a rush job….you be the judge.

He’d love feedback; if you have any comments, drop ’em off in our forum!

In a suprise move, we’re clearing out the Wallpaper queue, as well, posting 8 new desktop images (11, if you count variants). Some pretty cool ones… check ’em out!

It’s been a couple of weeks since we updated the Miscellaneous Art section – we’ve got 16 pieces for you today, many of which are comics of one kind or another. Thanks to all the submitters for their patience!

Just in time to reinforce my assertion that someone messed up in the Best of the Best voting, c0ld vengeance’s take on the HBO Halo PC servers is there to make you smile. One One Se7en – social commentary with a grin.

Another Halo Story page update – this time, in response to a forum thread. (Okay, probably not. But the timing was pretty damn good.) Go read.

Back at the end of October, @ndrew submitted a new entry for a contest that we closed 18 months ago. Yes, his run for the Maw 700 is too late for prize contention… but it’s a pretty darn good run (he finished with 2:45.26, faster than any of the actual entries we got). Despite the fact that the music chosen for the run made my ears bleed, this movie shows how cleanly this run can be done. 15.2 mb, in QuickTime format, for a 4 minute movie hosted at files.bungie.org. Check it out! (To save everyone a lot of stress, let me state here and now that we’re not going to accept any more of these; some people see a post like this and say “I can do better!” – and they can. But our bandwidth isn’t infinite, and though I liked this run, we don’t need to see it again and again and again and again, just to shave another few seconds off that record… thanks.)