Miguel Chavez has written up a stunning recap of Brian Morden’s memorial service last month, over at Bungie Sightings. Read it, if only to see what a relationship primarily built through the internet can generate.

Hehe- Warbow turns in Calvin and Halo number 5. Snowmen! (Spoilers, of a sort, for Halo virgins.)

Three new images for you in our Miscellaneous Art collection today…

Pretty cool desktop image from Dave Driggs – it’s not completely Halo-related (it’s based on Bungie’s 7th Column website), but it’s close enough for government work. (Well, and I like it a lot.) You’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

7 new Fan Fiction pieces for you today:

• The Battle for Rackma VI: Part 3, by gwinnalex
• Fallen Angel 8: The Final Jihad, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• Halo Zero part 6- Return of 343, by nicholas
• Escaping the Autumn, by Glenny
• Chapter 4.5-Hunt for the Index (The Real one.), by Ultra Sonic 007
• MARINES: Operation 2, by Matt Anderson
• Battle For Chippanicas Gorge Part 2, by Austin Peters

If you don’t see something you submitted, check your email. If you STILL can’t figure out what’s going on, make sure your submission met the fiction guidelines.

For the second time in three days, the Halo Story page has been updated. Finn AND mnemesis working? What is the world coming to? Go read.

Break Point points out another site – his Halo Amateur League, set up for XboxConnect tournaments. Take a look if you’re into online gaming!

John Yates points out a pretty funny little film over at G4Tv. It’s called Happy Halo Days, and was obviously made for the Christmas season – but this is the first we’ve heard of it. It’s in streaming Windows Media format; I couldn’t find any tools that actually saved this puppy. Check it out!

th3gh05t points out that MTV is going to be showing an episode of ‘True Life’ called ‘I am a gamer’. It looks at the life of videogame players. Showtime is 10pm. If there are Halo sightings, we’ll let you know.

stoopkid90 writes to let us know of two new Halo sites, Halo4u and Halo Reamped. We’ve added ’em to our Links page.

Pretty hefty-sized Fan Fiction update this evening:

• Chapter 4-Hunt for the Index, by Ultra Sonic 007
• Halo: Reunion from Destruction Part 5 of 5, by Frensa Geran
• The Traumatised Marine (bitesize part 1), (bitesize part 2), and (final bitesize part 3), by Traumatised Marine
• Chapter 3.5-The REAL Incursion, by Ultra Sonic 007
• The Battle for Rackma VI, by gwinnalex
• Chapter 5 A New Enemy, by monitor101
• 6 Way War Ch. 3: Bloodshed continues…, by Demosthenes
• Operation One: Basic, by Matt Anderson
• ES01 – Eternal Sunder (part 01): Prologue , by Wado
• Sarge’s Story: Stacker, by Jamirus99
• A New Beginning Part Two, by Bryce
• Battle at Chppanicas Gorge, by Austin Peters
• Legend Hunting Part Six, by Dispraiser

The bugs continue to be worked out of the system. If you run into trouble submitting a story, please send email, explaining EXACTLY what you did, and EXACTLY what error you got. With your help, we’ll weed out the last few stragglers!

Cybrfrk captured a fleeting glimpse of an Elite action figure in progress that showed up on the Bungie webcam today. (More pictures in this forum thread.)

Yesterday, Slashdot posted an interview with Larry Niven (creator of Ringworld, and this pseudonym I use). Halo gets a tiny mention, and there’s a small subthread leading off from it related to the game. Thanks to Ghôlsbane for the heads-up on this one – although he sent word yesterday, it took a forum post by Adam Daniel to get me off my duff and writing.

Okay, I’m probably gonna get some flak for this one, because of all the movies we’ve declined to host recently… but hear me out. Rory Hartley and Bill Copeland put together a movie they called ‘Blood Gulch Ballet.’ It’s three and a half minutes of Blood Gulch gameplay, set to classical music. (I recognize the piece, but can’t name it.) It weighs in at 15.4 mb; it’s smaller than it was when it was submitted, but I didn’t reduce the quality very much. (It wasn’t great to begin with.) What tipped the balance for me were three things:

• There are some really nice moves in here
• We haven’t posted movies recently, so Mythica’s not heavily loaded
• It was dedicated to Brian Morden (sue me, I’m sentimental)

Grab the QuickTime-encoded movie at Mythica.org, or the Psyjnir Complex Hotline server. Update: Thanks to Ninja on Fire and Stuntmutt, who both pointed out that the music is Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’. (Appropriate, no?) If you’re ever in Portland, Oregon, look for Rimsky-Korsakoffee’s, the best coffee house in the northwest. (I miss it.)

Six new desktops for you, too, in our Wallpaper section. Some rockin’ good stuff in there…

Once again, the art queue has built, a little bit. Here are five pictures submitted to the Miscellaneous Art section over the past few days… Update: Gah, missed one. It’s from almost 2 weeks ago, even.

Following up on yesterday’s news glut on the Halo 2 ‘delay’, JPSartre points out that CNN Headline News is currently running a piece on how Halo is being pushed back. (It’s titled ‘Hello Halo’.) Let’s hope the coverage of the actual GAME is this big…

The Halo50K Tournament is fast approaching (less than seven weeks away now), and in an attempt to clarify who’s coming and who’s just talking, the deadline on the $75/person ($300/team) entry fee is March 22 – after that date, the fee goes up to $360/team. Get your money in soon!

æ­µsic.ign.com has put up an article about a panel of musicians that convened to discuss the importance of melody in video game music. Apparently, there were some major audio/video problems – but some interesting discussion was still reported. Marty O’Donnell was among the group (which is why it’s getting a writeup here), and he had some several comments about the purpose melody serves in a video game:

“But you don’t want to keep repeating that over and over again, you want to have it play, but you want to have it always played in some place that people go ‘Oh yeah, that’s Halo ‘ And to me there’s nothing more valuable to brand a game than to have some sort of melody that is instantly connected with it and it’s in everybody’s head.”

Read it soon, since it’ll likely be behind the IGN Insider barrier before too long. (Thanks to Doggone for the heads-up.)

Pretty cool – TechTV has an article (and an associated video) about videogame playing on US military submarines. The funny thing about the video – though everyone talks generally about ‘videogames’, and ‘playing games’, the 5 or 6 clips of actual gameplay are all…yup, you guessed it, Halo. Not another game in sight. Thanks to Tirion (shameless Psyjnir fanboi) for the heads-up.