Not Halo-related… but it’s community-related, and pretty important. Check out SilverBrin’s post about forum regular *Ar-Isildur, and send along a card!

Fan Fiction backlog is now ALSO cleared out:

• Under the sergeant’s cap, part 2, by Traumatised Marine
• Fallen Angel, part 4, by Gruntkiller/Covert
• Covenant Theater, part 1, by Alex Ross
• Dark Halo, part 1, by Wado
• In the Beginning, by HaloFanMan
• When Worlds Collide 2, by Gasmask

Interesting range of timbres today…

Homelan Fed interviewed Randy Pitchford, of Gearbox Software, yesterday. For the most part, it’s a discussion of Counter-Strike… but there are a few positive Halo tidbits, as well:

HomeLAN – What can you tell us about the status and progress of Halo for the PC at this point?

Randy Pitchford – Halo is going great. We’ll be talking a lot about it soon. Playing Halo with a mouse and keyboard has been an awakening experience. The idea of playing Halo’s multiplayer modes over the internet is equally exciting. Working on Halo has been teaching us much and has been a perfect match for our strategy that builds towards Gearbox’s future.

Go check out the whole interview! (Thanks to Nick Danger for the heads-up.)

Pistol Poppers has put together a little movie called ‘Valet Parking‘ showing what not to do with your warthog. 3:41, 6.1 mb, wmv format. We’ve decided we don’t have the space for it, so if the link it’s on is unavailable, you’ll have to wait for the bandwidth restrictions to be lifted to grab it.

Eep – this should have gone up yesterday, I’m getting sloppy. Dispraiser writes that he’s created a site to host his fan fiction pieces – you can check out Dispraiser’s Fandom for stories, artwork, and rants. (The stories you can still get here, too, but the artwork is unique to that site.)

We’ve got six new desktops for you (some in multiple sizes), which finally clears out the artwork backlog. Go visit the Wallpaper section! It’s not posted yet, but in the next day or so, there’ll be a new Artwork Posting Guidelines page up to address the currently growing issue of flooding. There are lots and lots of you who are snagging a screenshot off of Bungie.net, slapping some text on it, and sending it in as a Wallpaper or Miscellaneous Art submission. In the past, we’ve been really lenient in our rules… but the collections are getting too big. We’re going to start turning away more artwork, in an effort to keep the overall quality of displayed pieces higher. Hopefully, the guidelines will help you decide if that cartoon you’ve made, with a thought balloon pasted onto a stock image of Cortana, is worth mailing in or not. (If you’d uploaded art in the last few days, and it hasn’t been posted yet, chances are it fell under the new rules… you’re welcome to send a followup message, but please don’t resend the piece. Thanks!)

Yet another Halo 2 Box Art entry… this one from Mr. Lolly Pop Man.

Gah – sometimes, the updates get away from you. While you’re all waiting for me to clear out the art queues, the fiction queues, the screenshot queue… go watch this movie. Figh7erbo1 is a short (1:39) piece set to Avril Lavigne’s Sk8ter Boi… nice timing. 6 mb, in QT format, from chris_roc.

Roland Scarlett writes to say that Halo World (which we mentioned about a week ago) has been adding content at a rapid clip. Most sections are fleshed out now. There are a couple of games on the site – one is a variant of Bungie’s Extreme Closeups, and the other is called ‘Guess The Spot’, where you’re given a screenshot with a number of blanked-out areas, and you need to choose the correct one to answer the question. (No fair cheating by looking at the originals!) Watch for a few broken links in the top nav bar. (Barring some MAJOR changes, this will be the last post we make about this site with a progress update.)

c0ld vengeance’s Halo 2 Cover Art challenge ended a few days ago – he’s now posted his results. For the Front Cover Only section, he gave the award to Ninjas on Fire. For the Front and Back Cover section, Ed Murphy took home the honors. (Check the forum post for more details and justification.) In addition, we’ve added 6 MORE entries that have come in; this subsection of the site will remain as a permanent fixture, and all Halo 2 cover art sumbitted in the future will go here. (It’s unlikely that I’ll move the existing entries from the Miscellaneous Art section, because it would break too many existing links… but I might find a way around the problem some day.)

Attempting to BEGIN to clear out the Artwork backlog… first up, Miscellaneous Art. We’ve got a new Halo mini-game, a very nice exchange medium, and a misplaced Halo Box Art entry. You’ll find ’em all in the Miscellaneous Art section.

Okay, so if you’re stripping your field piece and washing the bits in denatured alcohol, and you fall asleep and your head lands in the cleaning bowl, and lightning hits what you disgorge as it comes flying out of your mouth and torques it, by some freaky cosmic coincidence, into human-looking words… this is what might result. (Be nice to Scav – he hasn’t been the same since the Yellow Banshee incident.)

After two disappointing attempts, Team Overkill makes the iGames Winter Season Regionals in the 3rd Qualifying round. Read the details on their website. Congrats, guys!

Ever wish you could get your hands on a set of those Spartan II dogtags that were being distributed in Japan? Well, thanks to Nekomusume, now you can. She’s got one extra set she’s auctioning off on eBay… starting bid is just under $36, and you’ve got almost a week to decide.

Athol Productions has put together a new gameplay movie for your viewing pleasure. 5:30 long, around 20 megs big, it’s gameplay on a number of levels… with a few oddities thrown in. Nice timing, and an interesting combination of musical styles. Folks offended by gay jokes probably shouldn’t download this. You can find it at Mythica.org (in both DivX-encoded .avi format, 19.2 mb, and Sorenson-encoded QuickTime format, 21.6 mb), and at Pez’s FTP server (both formats as well). Other mirrors are always welcome. Enjoy!

Barring a few pieces that were too short, and one that never fully uploaded, the Fan Fiction backlog from this week has been cleared.

• The Long Ride Home 12, by Joshua Barreto
• Starship Daybreak Part 1 (revised) and Part 2, by Domitri Giovanni
• A New Year’s Day, Chapter 7, by Guilty Spark
• Starjacked Part 3, by Dispraiser
• Force 81 Part III, by NobleWard
• Shadows of Archon II (part 34), by el_halo_diablo/Wado
• 5 Way War Part III, by Demosthenes
• Protecting What’s Yours. Part 1, by hornet34
• Liberation Part IX, by Hoju
• Sarges Platoon, Chapter 3, by Bobby Lucas
• The Empire (Episode-1), by Jon Michael Marlowe
• Through a UNSC soldiers eyes: Death, by Harley
• Under the sergeant’s cap (chapter 1), by Traumatised Marine

Get to reading! (Artwork/movies coming soon.) Update: Guilty Spark re-uploaded Chapter 8 of his New Year’s Day saga, so that’s up now, too.

Shame, shame. Two pretty neat pieces of Bungie-related trivia occurred recently… and we have to read about them from bungie.org’s newest staffer, poena.dare. Scoopin’ the old-timers! The important one is that Alex and Laura Seropian (and their new baby girl, Amelia Eve), were featured in Parent magazine recently. The second one is actually more embarrassing, from a scoop point-of-view… bungie.org turned 4 last Tuesday, and we forgot! Welcome aboard, p.d…. and remember, the next time you scoop an old-timer, we’re taking your thumbs.

There were a couple of late entries in the Halo 2 Cover Art Contest – this contest is now officially closed, so please don’t send us any more entries. You can see the two new versions on the contest page, though – Mr. Yun’s is in the top row, second from the left, and Doggone’s is the first double-sided entry. Don’t forget to vote!

Bungie’s Tru7h and Reconciliation website has put up Chapter 9—Keyes—of its Legendary Walkthrough – spoiler goodness and 26 new screenshots! Go check it out… NOW! (The inclusion of shot 19 also means our Easter Egg page is going to be updated in the near future…)

A few days ago, we posted a note about a ‘Photo Story’ Microsoft had put together about Halo 2. Some of you could watch it, others couldn’t. Thanks to Stuntmutt and Djoey154, we now have pictures of all the slides… check ’em out in our Miscellaneous section.