After two weeks of downtime, The Junkyard is back up and running… gotta love those ‘quick’ server moves. We feel for ya, Mhaddy! Swing by and say hello…

For anyone who’s totally out of it, today marks two major points in the Xbox lifespan; it’s the one-year anniversary of its debut (and, of course, the one-year anniversary of Halo – yes, it was RELEASED before the 15th last year, but you couldn’t PLAY it before the 15th, except in special circumstances) and it’s the launch date of Xbox Live (which will be fully supported by Halo 2 next year). Happy Birthday!

One last batch of photos came in last night – you’ll find it on our Live Party Launch coverage page. More pictures (with minimal identifiers, as well) can be found over at Xbox.com. It’ll be interesting to see how many Xboxes make it on to various TV shows after this… (Thanks to wheeler, Frogblast, and Team Overkill for help in identifying some of the pics. We’re still a half-dozen short, though.)

Another batch of XBL Launch Party pics have gone up (the last of the evening, for me; anything that comes in now goes up in the morning), but identification of these people needs someone more celebrity-savvy than I am. If you can identify the folks in these pics, please, drop us a line!

Microsoft is holding a massive shindig at an undisclosed location this evening to celebrate tomorrow’s Xbox Live launch. We can’t tell you where it is… but we can show you some pics. A photographer will be sending in pictures regularly this evening… I might be asleep for some of it, but we’ll put ’em up as we get ’em. For now, check out the pre-party stuff on our Xbox Live Launch Party coverage page.

Got some cool ideas for a 7th Column theme, but never found the time to implement them? Never been a better time – Bungie’s running a Theme contest. Prizes are cash to be spent at the Bungie Store, so turn on your creativity, whip out your editing program, and get theming! Full details are in the story.

Heh – Xbox Live is launched officially TOMORROW… and already there’s a web page up that shows you how to split the audio signal so that your friend, visiting your house and playing as a guest, can join in the verbal fun. Not sure how happy MS will be about this (they’re kinda hoping that the Guest accounts will convince people to buy their own XBL account, since the guests don’t get audio, normally)… but all the parts are off-the-shelf (and require no physical modification of any MS-supplied hardware). Radio Shack part numbers are included. Thanks to kiro69, who posted this to the Marty Army Chapter of the 7th Column. Update: Mr. Poke discovered a 3/32″ splitter at Radio Shack, obviating the need for a couple of adapters recommended in this article. As for part number 274-948, and you’ll save about $6 in extra parts.

Thursday’s Fan Fiction:

• Fafnir Part Eight, by KnightmareWolf
• Through a Soldiers Eye, by [E}{G] Bioblob

You’ll find, if you read straight from the fiction page (instead of from these links) that Fafnir part 8 has been broken up into two chunks – this is a necessary evil of our databasing system. The two listings (chunk 1 and chunk 2) will show the same content; the only place it’s actually broken up is if you read the series as a whole. (One of these days, I’ll clean up the code so that this won’t happen.)

Forum wordsmith Hedgemony has taken on the daunting task of compiling a full list of all the dialogue spoken by NPCs in Halo. This has been attempted before (PanZer set up a database in his 7th Column Chapter which currently has over 780 entries in it, though many are duplicates), but never quite so systematically. Marty O’Donnell chimed in with useful information about the scope of the project, and ways to improve the odds of hearing new dialogue. As of about 12 hours ago, Hedge was up to just under 500 entries, categorized; I’m posting this here to encourage him to take this as far as possible, and to offer a home for the final product. Let him know what you think!

Ripsaw has dropped off a black-and-white desktop for our Wallpaper collection. Take a look.

In the Miscellaneous Art collection today, an image originally posted on our forum showing J-Lo’s latest suitor, and three dark options for boot image replacement for Jaguar. Check ’em out!

Fan Fiction:

• The Marine’s Prayer, by Gasmask
• Shadows of Archon II, part 27, by Wado

Read, Grasshopper…

Åstro the Space Duck has thrown down the gauntlet on our forum, and laid out rules for ‘Halo Done Quick’, an informal tournament in which players try to beat the various levels in the shortest amount of time. Chime in with your own suggestions, and if this gets off the ground, maybe we’ll even offer prizes. (No promises, yet.)

Thanks to manicm, who pointed out a new Halo review at Videogame Talk. It’s written from the perspective of a movie watcher… but the reviewer really enjoyed the game. We’ve added it to our Reviews Database.

Warbow has finally settled on a flag design (there were threads on our forum here and here in recent days), and has submitted his final product to our Miscellaneous Art section. Take a look!

Tim Cordova has dropped off another Halo 2 composite for your desktop – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section.

Wow. Justin Durban, who turned in a pretty cool reworking of the Halo theme about 6 weeks ago, has spoken again. Justin says:

Its hard to describe this one is like. I guess you’ll just have to hear it. Basically the theme comes in and out and is even modified to a point. Perhaps Marty will do the same with his score.

It starts quietly, and builds to a beautiful finale – this is three and a half minutes of beauty. It weighs in at just under 5 megs… if you’re a fan of the Halo 2 theme, you should grab this piece. (You can check out more of Justin’s work at Edgen Animations, if you like what you hear.)

A pair of Fan Fiction stories for you this evening:

• This is Suicide: Chapter 1, by Neile Pederson
• His Last Breath, by Gasmask

Enjoy!

Forum regular Roger Wilco has been playing with 3D toys again. Read about the movie-in-(very-slow-)progress on our forum.

And the hiring goes on. Bungie is now calling for a Physics Programmer, for the new project the former Phoenix team is working on. Go read about it, and send in a resume if you fit the bill!