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…

A serious collection of artwork for you, finally – 10 images, ranging from pen sketches of battle scenes to a visual apology for a fan fiction joke. The highlight, for me, I think, is the Silent Cartographer render. Check ’em all out in the Miscellaneous Art section.

Finally clearing out some of the backlogged artwork – first up, two desktops in our Wallpaper section.

Proving once again that ingenuity and perseverance will eventually solve most problems, Frogblast performs a Halo trick shown to be possible only yesterday – and this time, there are no hacks involved. This trick contains spoilers, for the 6 of you who are still avoiding them. For the rest of you, watch this and giggle maniacally.

There’s an interesting article over at Publisher’s Weekly about the emerging market for video game tie-in books. They’re more than a gimmick (as the article makes clear), and they’re a reasonable source of income, as well:

Sales for Halo and Resident Evil sell about a third of what the biggest science fiction titles, like those by Terry Goodkind or Robert Jordan, do, while second-tier titles, such as Orson Scott Card’s novels or the Dune series, sell only twice as much.

I wouldn’t have considered Card as ‘second-tier’… but maybe he is, from a sales standpoint. In any case, swing by and read the piece! Thanks to Eric Trautmann for the heads-up.

mnemesis and cybrfrk both sent in links to articles about the Xbox Greatest Hits program (one at Yahoo, one at CNN) – the gist is that MS is slashing prices on some Xbox games. The reason it’s Halo news, however, is because Halo is NOT being included in the ‘Platinum Hits’ program – according to Ed Bland, a sales director at MS, it’s still doing very well at $49, so they’re keeping it there. Way to go, Halo!

…Wow. I mean… wow. Update: upon consideration, I feel I should point out that at least two of these movies have pretty serious spoilers for REAL tricksters – they show things that might ruin one of the last remaining ‘big’ tricks left to do. Don’t watch them if you’re intent on doing this trick on an unhacked box. (Frogblast makes it clear which movies these are – this note is simply an attempt to help you resist the temptation.)

The last Fan Fiction update for a couple of weeks:

• The Awakening, Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, by Bloodcider
• Survival Grounds Part 3, by mattˆ
• And Raise Your Head With Pride! Part 2 , by Arthur Wellesly
• HALO: The Marine Chronicles, by Gunnery Sergeant
• HALO: Missing In Action – Chapter 9 and HALO: The Assembly, by Hikaru-119
• Halo: Reunion from Destruction Part 1, by Frensa Geran
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus 3, by moniter101
• Fallen Angel: Part 7, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• Green Plants and Dinner, by Dispraiser
• Changes, by Mark Boone
• Under the sergeant’s cap (revised) Chapters 1-7, by Traumatised Marine

There is almost 500k worth of text here to read – and the last update was 72 hours ago. Two of these stories (The Marine Chronicles and Under the sergeant’s cap) are over 150k EACH – beware if you’re on a slow connection. When the Fan Fiction section reopens, there’ll be some new ideas for you all. (Thanks to all who’ve written – there have been some great suggestions, and you’ve given me lots to think about.)

Holy Magillicutty! Valentines goodies at B.net. Woohoo! (This one rocks.)

First Fan Fiction… now movies. Brian Towne writes to say that the mythica.org server is having disk troubles… it might be a few days before it’s up and running again. The movie queue has just been delayed again… Please be patient.

ATTENTION – ALL FAN FIC WRITERS: Effective immediately, and for the period of two weeks, the Fan Fiction section is closed for submissions. (There are 16 stories in the queue right now – those will be posted in the near future.) Any stories that arrive between now and 00:00 UTC, February 26, 2003, will be ignored. They will not be posted after that point – I do NOT have the resources to keep track of submissions during this timeframe. Some MAJOR changes need to be instituted; there is simply too much material coming in, and most of it, frankly, is crap. I’m getting demoralized formatting it. Suggestions are welcome, and I’ll do some thinking as well. That is all.

Lorraine Reyes-McLees illustrates the recent Pentathlon article as only she can… poor Jason.

A long time ago, vector40 wrote a guide for Fan Fiction authors on filetypes, and what you should think about when submitting fiction here. It was hosted at Zenith, a site devoted to Fan Fiction authors that has since gone under – but vec has dredged up the piece for the edification of current writers. Worth a read, if you’re submitting stories to us.

HomeLAN has a Q&A with Chris Huisman, product manager for Joyride Studios (the guys that are making the Halo collectibles) posted. They’re shooting for a July release for these products, and from the interview it sounds like there’ll be plenty of detail to the figurines… but I wanna know… who’s this guy? (The linked image at the top of the article is HUGE – 2.2 mb, and almost 3000×2000 pixels. Nice view of three models!)

Two new pieces at Bungie.net – A rundown of the Bungie Pentathlon 2003 (the Bungie Pentathlon is an annual beat-the-hell-out-of-your-coworkers event at Bungie), and a new Soapbox article from Matt Soell—the first in over a year—on what, exactly, the Bungie Way is all about. Both worth reading – nice to see Matt’s writing for the public again.

Steve Messinger writes to let us know of another Halo Team Championship tournament. (We mentioned their last event a few months ago.) This one is taking place on March 22nd, in East Lansing, MI. Entry fee is $10/person, and the field is limited to 50 teams. Microsoft is helping to sponsor the event, and there are over $4,000 in cash and prizes. Take a look if you’re in the upper midwest!

Self Righteous has picked up a couple more mirrors (and a thumbs-up from moviemaker Dan Chosich), so we’ve put together a full mirror list. If you haven’t grabbed it… it’s only 13.7 mb! Thanks to Dinky, of HaloJuggaloProductions, and That Weasel, of That Weasel Television, for the bandwidth.