Long weekend, no posting – so you’ve got 14 Fan Fiction pieces to get through:

• Operation Sunlight Part 3: Black, by Gruntkiller
• Divinity (Halo 2: Chapter 5), by Shadowrunner
• A World Apart Prologue, by Dark Spartan
• Favor the Bold (chapter 1), by Loki_25
• Last Hope For Outpost Bravo: Part 1, by Spartan5000
• Halo: The Scythe of Death Part Five, by LordofDestruction
• Halo Zero 2 /p4/ An Old Friend, by nicholas
• Halo Zero /p5/ Interrogating Private Sanders, by nicholas
• Creation: part 2, by Zack Hodges
• Chapter 2, by BlackValkyire
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 7, by S7N
• A John Before Halo: Prelude and Chapter 1, by J-117
• Halo- A Comedy, by Lanerd
• On A Pale Horse: Enough Dead Heroes, by Silent Hunter

Go to it!

Ben Torrence writes to tell us about GameLords, a new console gaming center in San Diego – they’re hosting a Halo tournament on August 2, 2003. Entry fee is $5, game is solo Slayer to 25 kills. Top 16 players get t-shirts, top 8 get free time on their equipment, and the winner will get a Steel Battalion set. Gameplay is all on 65″ Mitsubishi HDTVs. Check ’em out for more info – and stop by on the 2nd!

Thanks to Ross Mills and oddworld18, for reminding us that the Underground Online exclusive Halo PC screenshots we mentioned a couple of weeks ago had not been added to the Screenshots database yet. Oversight rectified.

Gah. Stuntmutt went to the effort of creating a second Sunday Strip for One One Se7en… and I almost forgot to post it while it was still Sunday! I think I finally understand something that’s been bugging me for years…

Very nice find by Eclarap, of Halo-Game… the entry in Random House’s database for Halo: First Strike (the next Halo novel, again by Eric Nylund) has been updated with what looks to be real cover art. (On the off chance it’s NOT real, a local copy has been added here.) Nice!

In what would appear to be some kind of cruel plot to raise our readers’ expectations, Finn has updated the Story page yet again! But, never fear, I’m sure we’ll be back to our slacker ways in no time. 🙂

In less than 5 hours, the Chelsea Studio Gallery, at 515 W. 19th St. in New York City, will open its doors for the Pillar of Art gallery showing. Come by and see the submitted artwork, displayed in this lovely little gallery – the public is welcome until probably around 6 pm. (After that point, the artwork will come down, tables will go up, and a LANfest will be taking place – unfortunately, attendance for this segment is NOT open to the public, simply for space reasons.) We’ll also have examples of the signed Lorraine McLees artwork that will be given to all entrants, as well as the little red MC (96k jpeg) that will be sent to Geoff Chang for his Battle Rifle entry. If you’re in the New York area, swing by and say hello! (All of HBO’s staff except for the Story Page boys will be there, as well, so updates will be rather sparse for the rest of the day.) Pictures will be taken, of course, and a Gallery showing page will be added to the Pillar of Art site at some point in the near future. Update: Miguel Chavez sent along a few shots of the setup work yesterday – they’ve been put up at the PoA site. More to come!

From November 2000 through January 2002, HBO received a number of Fan Fiction submissions from Chris Cox. Much of what he wrote was submitted before our Comments section was online… but what DID get commented on was generally liked. I’d always wondered why the submissions stopped, with no word from Chris – and now I know. A couple of days ago, we received mail from Steve Cox, Chris’ father… who stumbled on his son’s stories accidentally. Chris chose to take his own life on March 21, 2002, less than 2 months after his last submission here. As his father points out, Chris will live on for family and loved ones through pictures, memories, and the work he’s created – like these stories. (There’s a memorial page for him at the family’s website.)

Dave Writz writes to point out a Halogamers.com-sponsored tournament, in Rice Lake, WI, in late August. There’s not that much info at the website yet (give it a couple of days), but there is a flyer that will be posted around the area; looks like they’re shooting for 32 4-man teams. Check it out!

Seeing as the Fourth was a holiday, yesterday’s One One Se7en didn’t get announced until right now – still, technically, at the home of the poster (if not via the timesystem in use at this website) the Fourth… If you have to ask what Babality is, you didn’t get the title of this strip, either. At least the POOF is relevant for today (or yesterday, as the case may be).

In a daring daylight raid on the Halo Story Page, mnemesis, perhaps one of the hardest working people in the b.org family, provides still more meat for your eat- er, reading pleasure. Check it out!

Today is the Fourth of July, a pretty major holiday here in the US. My family and I are declaring independence from the wired world – we’re going to spend the day on the beach. We recommend you do the same – even if you live elsewhere in the world!

Wow. A couple of months late for our Pillar of Art contest (gallery showing tomorrow!)… but it’s a killer piece of work. Chris Bryan has submitted a picture of a rifle he built; solid wood body, laser sight scope, co2 powered pellet gun – it’s even the same scale as the actual 3d gun model! He’s now off to work on the suit…

7 Fan Fiction stories for you today:

• Buried Treasure, by Frensa Geran
• Chapter 3: The Battle Of Cairo, by Nightblade
• Chapter 4: Weapons of Mass Destruction, by Nightblade
• Covenant Invasion Part 1 (Changed), by Hunter_Killer & Elfster
• Foresaken Forefathers Part VII- Knowledge Gained is Knowledge Earned, by Havok and AlphaBravo343
• HALO 2: Earth’s Reclaimer (part eins), by Brian vms
• On A Pale Horse: Silent Assasin, by Silent Hunter

Seems like the Series glitches are worked out… fingers crossed!

It’s Red vs Blue night… sort of. Over on Bungie.net, there’s an interview with the team – and it’s a great read. If you’re curious about how some of the shots were pulled off, or how much sleep Buzby’s gotten in the past couple of months… you’ll enjoy this. Then, because tomorrow is a holiday, and the guys don’t wanna be around this weekend, they’ve posted this week’s episode (which is actually the special episode they made for E3 this year, not a normal story episode) on their site 1-3 days early (depending on what kind of visitor you are). Unfortunately… their main movie server seems to have died, which means you can’t actually get it now. 🙁 All we can say is… keep trying, it’s a pretty funny episode. Update: BitTorrent works. See their site for details.

Matt Ogonowski asked JoyRide directly about the availability of the Halo Action Figures… and the response he got from thier customer service department read, in part:

They will begin release in mid-July.

A bit sooner than Bungie’s forecasting… but Bungie’s always been a bit conservative. Nice to know!

Bad news… but sometimes knowing is better than not knowing. Due to circumstances beyond EVERYONE’s control, Mythica.org, the site that provides the bulk of our movie hosting bandwidth, will remain offline for at least another week. We’re doing the best we can… but sometimes, there’s just someone out to get you. As soon as we know anything more definite, we’ll be sure to pass it along. What this means to you, the site viewer: many movies, hosted EXCLUSIVELY at mythica, are unreachable for the next while. (They WILL become available again at some point, one way or another.) For movie creators – the queue for incoming movies is already considerable (due to the fact that Mythica’s been offline already for two weeks), and it’s only going to get longer. If you have your own hosting, we’re happy to put up a news item about your movie… but if you need hosting, you’re just going to have to wait; best-case scenario is maybe 3 weeks at this point. (That is – a movie coming in today would have to wait 3 weeks before we could post it, if Mythica comes back up next week.) If the outage continues for longer than a week, obviously the queue length will grow. I wish I had a better answer for you all… but bandwidth is expensive, and Mythica was providing, on average, maybe 50 GB/day for us. Unless someone else steps up to the plate and is willing to host movies… we’re stuck. 🙁

Desktop submissions were pretty varied in the past couple of days… you’ll find 15 screens (plus a couple of variations) in our Wallpaper section. See what suits your fancy!

Well, it turns out I made some mistakes in the new Fan Fiction submission code – but only one user was badly burned. I think I’ve fixed things – but in the meantime, here are 11 pieces submitted in the past day or so.

• A Marine Named Peters: Saving Private Johnson, by GLADIATRRR3000
• Halo:After the Ring, the War Goes on, by Master of Halo
• The Road to Combat Zone 4, by The Scribe
• On A Pale Horse: New Mombasa, by Silent Hunter
• Special Ops: Captured, by Nightblade
• The Fall of Fate: Freedom(8), by ‘Nosolee
• Covenant Invasion! Part Seven, by Hunter_Killer
• Rise and Fall of the Flood Chapter 1, by BlackValkyire
• Special Ops Chapter 2: The Rescue, by Nightblade
• All Roads Lead To Sol…Despite What The Map Says: Chapter 6, by S7N
• Shadow Spartans, Chapter Two: The Story, by Agent Shade and Arinoth Koby

Again – if you run into trouble, PLEASE send in a bug report; I can’t fix what I don’t know about. Thanks!

You might remember a small movie from a group called FTC – it showed some pretty classy shooting. Well, they’ve whipped up another small movie, The Tunnel Trap (it’s 4.7 mb, just under 2 minutes long, in DivX format) that’s simply hilarious. Take a look – and feel free to comment in this forum thread.