In what has to have been the most collosal act of stupidity I’ve perpetrated in months, I managed to delete not only my current copy of my mail directory… but the most recent backup, as well. Last backup before this one: March 16. That means if you mailed something to halo@bungie.org with an attachment, or a personal note to me that hasn’t yet received a reply… it’s gone forever. I have no way of recovering it. You’re welcome to resend attachments, or notes that needed replies; there’s not much I can do from this end, without your help. Moral of the story: Don’t swap disks. Ever.

You know you’ve made it when they start copying you. Red vs Blue has gotten quite a bit of positive press recently, and rightly so – they’re doing wonderful things with the art of Halo engine moviemaking. And now… they’ve spawned a tribute group; Salmon vs Teal. We should make it clear that these guys have nothing but the highest respect for the RvB crew… they just want to show it with a parody series. The first installment is up now; it’s available in two formats, a large (720×480, 12.3 mb, QT) and a medium (400×300, 5.4 mb, QT). Grab the one your bandwidth allows. You can comment on the project in this forum thread. Update: Both versions of this film have been mirrored by That Weasel Television – always great to have extra bandwidth!

We’ve mentioned the Counter-Strike skin made by Strykerwolf a few times since it was released to the net over a year ago… but it looks like it’s getting more press now. LeAtHeRnEcK points out that it’s been made Skin of the Day over at CS-Nation… check it out!

Cybrfrk has posted 106 pics from E3 on his website. Some have been seen before (on the b.org E3 coverage page) but many, many of them are new. Check ’em out!

Some of Stuntmutt’s One One Se7en episodes are turned in early, but involve topical (at the time of creation) subjects; I worried a bit that the joke would be lost by the time the strip was aired. Today’s strip is a perfect example… it involves the Megg easter egg, which was found over a month ago. Luckily, however, it showed up on our forum again this weekend… fortuitous. Take a look – it should make you grin.

Back on May 13, we mentioned a non-shakeycam movie being distributed by Gamespot; it was 9.7 mb, in .MOV format. (It’s basically a highlight reel, but it’s direct feed.) It was (is) a free download, but you have to register with Gamespot to get it. Well, that same movie, in a smaller form (320×240, 3.4 mb, MPEG) is now available WITHOUT the Gamespot watermark, over at GamesRadarUK. Thanks to 3Suns for the heads-up!

Gantry points out that episode 211 of the show ‘Filter’ on G4Tv (next airing this Thursday, 3:30 pm) covers the Most Anticipated Games of E3 – and Halo 2 is number 1. Watch it if you’ve got it! (If you just can’t get enough of G4’s Halo 2 coverage, they’ve also got an episode of Pulse covering E3 (in which Halo 2 figures prominently) showing Tuesday morning at 3 am…)

Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews of the Junkyard writes to let us know that their Halo 2 section is now online. Content is sparse (because info about the game is sparse), but it will be filled out as the situation warrants. Check it out!

We posted a series of desktops on Saturday; 6 of them were variations on an existing wallpaper, done by a completely different person, who wasn’t consulted about (and doesn’t approve of) having his art modified. We’ve yanked the 6 offending pieces. Just a heads-up.

I HATE using the front page this way – and I won’t, any more. To whoever uploaded a 125 mb archive to our ftp area this evening (upload finished a bit before 7 pm EDT), without an email address, we’ll simply toss this. (It doesn’t have to be made public – but we need it in order to contact you about your submission.) If anyone has any suggestions on how to make this clearer to uploaders in general, I’m all ears.

Twelve pieces for you in the Fan Fiction section today:

• Chapter 4: Rescue, by Vinny
• Stowaway Part 2 (3 of 3), by Dispraiser
• Tides of the Accolade [Part 01], by Argonox
• ONI Black Ops Part Ten, by Havok
• Beta Halo: On Earth’s Doorstep, by SPARTAN 053
• Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: Part II; The Gambit, by pj-NYkr90
• Above and Beyond the Call of Duty: Part III; Turncoat, by pj-NYkr90
• When Games Collide: The Tournament of the Century , by Brent Carmichael
• Beginings , by Sterfrye36
• Rebirth – Shadow’s Chapter 3 – Entrance, by Knightmare, Archangel’s Blade, Spartan 451 and Shadow
• Shadows, by Gude Riter
• Uncertain Danger [Part 01], by Argonox

Go read ’em – and accept apologies for a slow news weekend. (It’s not that the news is slow, it’s that family obligations are pretty high.)

Under the wire… there are 20 new desktops for you today – but half of them are variations. Enforcer turned in 6 images, in 16 variations. (On top of that, we got 4 OTHER submissions.) Check out the whole mess in our Wallpaper section! Update: The total has been reduced by 6 – see this post for details.

Mom, he’s doing it again…

Red vs Blue Episode 8 is now up for sponsors (thanks, Ross). If you watched episode 7, you knew this one was gonna be sad… but man, for a sad episode, it’s hilarious. If you don’t wanna pay ’em any money, you’ll have to wait until Sunday to grab this… but $5 gets you access now. ($10 gets you access to the hi-res version… it’s worth it.)

…missed it by THAT MUCH. One One Se7en’s Friday episode was ready to go, but I didn’t make it home to post it. Go read it now.

Thanks to Eric Jury, who pointed out that the Wayback Machine had an archive of the Acquisition FAQ we mentioned yesterday. I’d checked there… but only on earlier dates (closer to the time of the actual reporting). My mistake. To ensure that it doesn’t get lost again (and so that URLs listed can be made to work again), we’ve archived a copy locally. It’s Bungie History, after all. Interestingly enough… the information about Take 2’s rights to the Halo engine aren’t mentioned. I’m not sure exactly WHERE that information was originally published.

A week and a half ago, Warbow posted a few very nice shots of the limited-edition Master Chief action figure given away at the fanfest. For some unknown reason, I neglected to ever mention this to the wider front-page audience. Consider it mentioned.

Blackstar is setting up a lanfest in Andover, MA this summer – on a massive, massive screen. (See this forum post for some details.) Attendance is pretty limited… but you can (at the very least) watch the new promo vid for the event. Just under a minute long, 9.1 mb, QuickTime format. I think I saw footage of me dying in there… The Matrix flavor is great, and the vid’s got me pumped up for the day! Update: we seem to be significantly slowing down blackstarproductions.net, so we’ve tossed a copy of this vid up at Mythica.org. Grab whichever copy works faster for you!

Recently, Westlake updated its Project Status page; The OS 9 status for Halo Mac went from ‘Undecided’ to ‘No’. The Mac version of Halo, then, will be OSX only. Thanks to mnemesis for the heads-up.

I’d like to apologize for the holdup in announcing the winners in the recently concluded Pillar of Art contest. An unfortunate set of circumstances: real-life work pressures, judge schedules, and most importantly, awaiting a return package from Bungie of some of the pieces we had the extreme pleasure of showing at the recent E3 Bungie Fanfest… these all conspired to postpone the judgement. 🙁

If you were one of the lucky ones and got your piece on display at the Fanfest, you should feel good about yourself because alot of folks at the ‘fest were drooling at the paintings!

Within the next week or so, a truck should pull up at my doorstep with the handful of pieces that were shown in LA and things should be back on track. Although I can’t comment on the individual pieces, I will say this: Some of you folks are absolutely outstanding artists. And your love of the game showed through and through. Louis Wu can attest that a few of the entries literally made my jaw drop. 🙂