Came in yesterday… but we couldn’t post it. Xerxes, of Halo Orbit, writes to say that a translation of the Halo 2 FAQ posted recently on Bungie.net has now been translated into German. For non-english speakers, this might be a better choice…

Four new art pieces – two nice composites by gizella Varga, an all-too-true strip by dogsounds, and a gorgeous rendering of AotCR. Check ’em all out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Bungie.net comes back to life… and the updates are too numerous to mention. Go read about ’em. Short synopsis – Achronos rocks.

For those interested, the Brian Morden Fund page has been updated. Brian’s parents wrote an obituary for him on our forum – we’ve added it to the page.

Apologies for the 18 hours of downtime – HBO is back up and running again. I can’t guarantee it won’t go down again – but I CAN guarantee that the cause for this recent outage will never, ever happen again. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

THR8807 has found an interesting trick on a PC mod site: How to give an Xbox controller a standard USB connector. The process is not for the faint of heart, and requires completely disassembling the controller. But maybe now we can settle all the controller-vs-mouse arguments…

Back to Halo: a few days ago, SketchFactor, Bungie’s newest member of the Online Team, wrote a Halo 2 FAQ over on Bungie.net. It covers a substantial number of subjects, and contains lots of good info we can point to – always nice to have an official source on this sort of thing. Several people emailed us or posted this information to our forum, but as far as I can tell, Felix was first.

I, too, will miss Brian Morden – he epitomized, to me, the strength of human spirit and the power of faith. That a teenager could keep up the courage to fight so long, and so hard, against a disease that simply wouldn’t give up reminds me that we’re stronger than we look – and I’ll always owe Brian for showing me that grace and humor don’t have to disappear in the face of personal horror. I spent most of yesterday on a plane, and was sleeping when Brian passed away this morning – but in lieu of a 21-gun salute, I’d like to offer a high-quality recording of Brian’s single spoken line in the Halo script. (Thanks to Marty O’Donnell for providing this.)

The Autumn! She’s been hit! (QT format, 76k)

If you’re interested, you should also read poena.dare’s eloquent tribute to Brian, over at Bungie Sightings.

It is with a heavy heart that we here at BORG announce that Brian Morden, aka Ar-Isildur, died at 5:55AM. He was 19 years old. His younger brother, Jamin, posted a note on our forum telling us the sad news. Please reply with good thoughts.

I and a few others have actually met Brian in person, and I feel privileged to have been in the company of someone that was both a lover and a fighter. Brian shocked his doctors by fighting the cancer that was eating through his body to the bitter end. Yet through out it all, his love for his friends and family never faltered, and we never failed to give it right back to him.

You didn’t have to meet him in person to see what a great guy he is. Just do a search through the forum’s archive for his posts. You will see that we have lost a warm and decent human being.

For the man that popularized “<3", it is only fitting that he stayed with his family and friends through Valentine's Day. Brian was no fool.

There will be more from us here at BORG. Count on it.

– Miguel

As below, the American International Toy Fair started today, and pictures of the Halo figures on display are already hitting the web. There’s a nice collection at Figures.com, including several Halo figures on this and the next few pages (use the “2”, “3”, and “4” links at the bottom). Thanks to Spartan ][ for noticing this.

According to Team Xbox, the upcoming Halo action figures will be shown at the 100th annual American International Toy Fair in New York, starting… tomorrow. (Anyone who actually makes it to the fair… TAKE PICTURES!) The fair runs through Wednesday, February 19. Thanks to Strato for the heads-up.

Upon request from the publisher, we’ve removed all Electronic Gaming Monthly articles from our Press Scans section. We apologize to EGM for violating their copyright (we were under the impression that we had at least a tacit okay for this, based on communications with EGM personnel), and we apologize to anyone inconvenienced by the removal of this information.

Bungie’s superstar intern Skip Weasel gets into the holiday spirit with a guide to love on Bungie.net. Neither Bungie Studios nor Bungie.org are responsible for the consequences if you choose to take his advice.

A few days ago, Åstro dropped into our forum to suggest that he was trying to speed-run Halo again. He was shooting for a 90 minute full runthrough, on Legendary. Yesterday, we got mail from Rory Hartley and Bill Copeland, a pair in Calgary, Canada that have done a full run-through on Easy:

Pillar of Autumn	5:45		343 Guilty Spark	8:48
Halo	15:28		The Library	15:34
Truth & Reconciliation	14:45		Two Betrayals	13:48
Silent Cartographer	10:02		Keyes	10:00
Assault on the Control Room	11:40		The Maw	9:52

Total time there: 110 minutes, 52 seconds. (I’d guess this means Åstro’s estimate might be a little optimistic…) Rory and Bill weren’t counting beginning and ending cutscenes, and they skipped all skippable cutscenes. (It’s unclear what rules Åstro and company are playing by.) Could this be the start of some friendly competition?

In what is clearly one of the most bizarre interviews Bungie.net has yet published, Matt Soell interviews the Disembodied Soul. The beauty of this one is, you can reproduce it yourself! (Ask Matt’s questions, you’ll get the same answers.) For long-time Bungie fans, learning about some of the Soul’s girlfriends might be the highlight of this one… The Soul, unfortunately, is clearly behind the times:

Question:	What do you know about Halo?
The soul says:	I’m a soul, not a psychiatrist. Ask me a question about one of Bungie’s games. That’s what I was enslaved to answer.

Go figure…

In an attempt to show up Lorraine R. McLees, Stosh has put up a Valentines-themed comic of his own. (Give it up, Stosh.) Don’t forget the site itself… I think he’s just bitter cause he got beat by a girl. (Two, if you count Lorraine.) Update: DOH! Wrong comic. (No wonder I had troubles with it…) Try this one. (I still give the round to Lorraine, though. This one’s pretty funny… but the Halo Babies can’t be beat.)

Another Brian Morden update from SilverBrin – the news isn’t great, but the power of positive thinking is astounding. We have nothing but love for you, Isi…

Last fall, a dozen or so website maintainers in the Xbox community were invited to Microsoft’s headquarters for XBL Bootcamp, a two-day infofest on Xbox Live (then a month or so from release). Yesterday, the marketing team that organized that event, AEG, sent out some pretty nice Valentine’s Day boxes… you can see a couple of pics in this forum post. Mmm… the chocolate is GOOD!

Whoknew writes to let us know he’s added a mirror for Valet Parking, a movie we mentioned about a month ago. In these days of tight bandwidth (mythica is still down), it’s good to know there are volunteers out there!

Whoa – he’s right. opie301 noticed that the Halo Story page was updated at the beginning of this week – I missed it entirely. It’s not a big one, but it’s another piece of the puzzle…