A pair of great sketches from Tina – originally done with coloring pencils (sorry, Tina, I’m American, can’t use the British spelling without twinging 🙂 ) and pen, with a little photoshop help. (Spoilers, for those still keeping track.) You’ll find ’em in our Miscellaneous Art section.

Wanna get a copy of the next Halo book (Halo: The Flood) for free? The MOSHPIT, a 7th Column chapter at Bungie.net, is giving one away – just drop by their website and add your name to the giveaway database. They’ll pick a winner at random on April 1, and ship a copy to that lucky person the day the book becomes available! (MOSHPIT Membership is welcome, but not required, for this contest.)

A bunch of mirrors have come online for both Halo Hackin’ Fun 2 (released a couple of days ago) and Heffalumps and Woozles (released last night). I’ve set up mirror pages for both – follow the links above to grab your copy. Thanks to all the bandwidth providers – you guys make all this possible!

More information about Halo Novel #2 at Ballantine:

The Human-Covenant War, a desperate struggle for humankind’s very survival, has reached its boiling point on the mysterious, ring world called Halo. But the fierce Covenant warriors, the mightiest alien military force known, are not the only peril lying in wait.

As the fortress world of Reach and its brave defenders were bombarded to rubble, a single cruiser fled the carnage with the battle’s only human survivors-Captain Keyes, his crew of a few hundred Marines, and the last remaining SPARTAN super-soldier, the Master Chief.

With the cruiser’s artificial intelligence, Cortana, concealed in his battle armor, the Master Chief crash lands on Halo in the midst of a massive Covenant occupation. Curiously, the alien soldiers appear to be searching for something hidden on the ring. Built by a long-dead race, Halo harbors many deadly secrets, but one overshadows them all. Now the Master Chief must lead the scattered troops in a brutal race to unravel Halo’s darkest mystery-and unleash its greatest source of power. . . .

Heh – one of the topics that’s come up a lot recently on our forum is whether the Forerunners are actually gone or not – this text suggests they are, but is it just random copy written by someone who doesn’t look as closely at the story as some of our visitors? (Thanks to Aaron Charles for noticing the new copy.)

Okay… we’ve got another Hacking vid for you. This one is called ‘Heffalumps and Woozles’, and was created by HUNTR-KILLR. (Okay, he shouldn’t be blamed for the name. That’s my fault – it’s full of such fancy that the name just seemed to fit.) This one’s a monster; 11 and a half minutes long, 33 megs, in QT format. There’s no sound at all, and segments are broken up by a second or two of black space, so keep your eyes open. There are more cool things than you can shake a honey pot at! Think of this one as a library of what might be. Right now, it’s ONLY at Mythica.org – we’d love mirrors. (I’m currently uploading it to the psyjnir.com hotline server, but I’m only getting about 6k/sec… gonna be an hour or more.) The next movie after this one won’t be a hacking vid – we’ve had a Blood Gulch action flick in the queue for FAR too long. (Sorry, Mobius.) Oh – and Dinky, of HaloJuggaloProductions, sent along a link for Dozi’s SECOND hacking fun film – you can grab it here, if mythica is too overloaded with this current film. Thanks, Dinky! Update: Frogblast, in his infinite kindness (and despite the pain), has provided mirrors for both ‘Heffalumps‘, and the recent Halo Hackin’ Fun 2. We <3 you, Froggie…

Mmm… pie. (Thanks, Razorback.)

Couple of updates on yesterday’s news… The guys running Sector.7 have bought a domain name, www.sector7-halo.com, and will be moving there shortly. (Currently, it’s just a placeholder page.) And the editorial by poena.dare on hacking and what it means to the Bungie community has generated a host of interesting comments, including several from Bungie employees. Go read.

Three new Art tidbits – a nice satire piece, a boot logo for Win2K, and a cute exercise pic. Check ’em all out in our Miscellaneous Art section.

In the last couple of days, we’ve gotten a couple of banner submissions, from Andrew Austin and Fuzzy – you can find both of them in our Banners section.

poena.dare is putting together an interview of Brannon Boren, a consultant at Microsoft who’s been intricately involved in the creation of the ‘Halo Bible’, the collection of information about the Halo universe that all Halo content creators (official ones – book authors, folks writing the stories for the games) use to keep their facts straight. If you have anything you’d like to ask Brannon, send your question along to p.d – he’ll add it to the list. (No promises on answers, of course – Brannon isn’t going to violate any secrets he’s been entrusted with… but it can’t hurt to ask!) Update: the window for questions is now closed. Thanks to all who contributed!

Here’s the first of several Hacking movies we have for your perusal. This is another one from Dozi, the guy who made the first one – again, sound is pretty rough. (Much rougher than the first one, as a matter of fact. There’s a static rumble throughout the entire movie.) You’re watching it for the action, however, not the sound. 🙂 Things shown in this film: bumping a jackal, some hilarious high jumps, bumping marines, grunts, and hunters, and more fun jumps. It’s 2:23 long, and 9.3 megs big, in QuickTime format. You can grab it at Mythica.org. (Some of the ones in the queue contain many more tricks – if you’re limiting yourself, this isn’t the best one to grab.) Update: MereCatFish writes to point out that blam.forerunners.org has mirrored this. (He also points out that the main site has been updated.) We love mirrors!

To all the folks asking questions about modding your xbox, and hacking Halo: while we here at HBO think the results are pretty cool, this is a Halo site, not an Xbox modding site. We do not provide any information on how to mod your Xbox or how to hack Halo, nor will we in the future. There are plenty of places to get this sort of information, if you’re interested – if you can’t find them without our help, you probably shouldn’t be looking. (I’m adding this information to our FAQ, as well.)

Famine to feast. Within a day of the release of the Halo mod information, we’ve received 4 NEW hack-related movies (and there’s still one non-hack related film in the queue). There’s well over half an hour of unreleased footage at this point… we’ll start releasing some of it in the morning, but please, please, please – don’t send any more right now. 🙂 Look for an update in about 8 hours. (It’ll be doled out a movie at a time, every couple of days – we simply don’t have the bandwidth for anything else.)

Today’s Fan Fiction:

• Two Betrayals, parts 1/2, by Raiyden
• Random, by Bloodcider
• Fallen Angel, part 6, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• The Battle For Sigma Octanus, part 1, by moniter101
• ONI Black Operations, part 1, by Jaywhit10
• Survival Grounds parts 1-2, by mattˆ
• Wrong or Right, part 2, by Harley
• Project Shadow Spartan, part 1, by Shadow Spartan

If you find yourself locked out of the section – blame your friends or yourself, not me. I don’t have time to clean up after you guys. (Don’t bother sending me excuses…)

poena.dare, latest miscreant to be assimilated by b.org, has written a very, very nice editorial over at Bungie Sightings, on the subject of Halo hacking, and what it means to the community. Definitely worth a read.

This came in a few days ago – I managed to miss it. 🙁 Sparks writes that a new website, Sector.7, has come online. It’s not fully fleshed out yet, but there’s more content all the time. They plan to move to a purchased domain (and away from the banners/popups) as soon as they get more visitors. Take a look!

I know, it’s been building up for a few days. Sorry about that. There are 10 (count ’em, 10) new desktops in the Wallpaper section today – check ’em out. Fan Fiction coming sometime later, I hope.

For those folks who couldn’t get the DivX-encoded .avi or the QuickTime version of the HaloHackinFun movie to work, Cybrfrk has re-encoded in WMP 9 format. It’s quite a bit smaller, too – 9.5 mb. You can grab it at his site, or snag a copy from Mythica. Anyone else wanting to mirror this, we’re thrilled – drop us a line with a link and we’ll add you to the mirror list!

Almost forgot: Eclarap, of the French site Halo-Game, wrote this last night about the Halo mod app:

By the way, we were able to make it work on our PAL, but only by downloading a NTSC version : so it doesn’t normally work here – might be useful to warn all Europeans from HBO in your news.

Worth knowing, if you’re using a PAL box…

5 new entries in the Miscellaneous Art section for you today – some pretty fun stuff. Take a look!