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!

It’s not often any more that new behavior pops up in Halo. Ritalin, on our forum, discovered some that is pretty hard to explain. He was playing on the Maw, and found a spawn site for sentinels. I did some experimenting, and learned something odd; in this one particular location, the position of the player determines the stability of the sentinels! Get too close to them, and they’ll explode. There is nowhere else in the game that I’ve ever encountered this behavior – in many places, you can run right into them, with no ill effects. Here, though… step in their path (or even close to it) and they simply explode. Anyone have any suggestions as to why this might happen? Discuss the possibilities in the forum thread!

Mark Faruolo dropped off a sketch of the Halo cover art – you can find it in our Miscellaneous Art section.

One of the biggest complaints we have here is that uploading a file is quite difficult. We’ve finally made it easier. If you’ll check our navbar, there’s a new link in the ‘Admin’ section – HTTP uploads. If you’re having trouble using the FTP uploads link, try this; it works much better for browser uploads. If you run into trouble… please let us know!

Thanks to Pez and vector40, we’ve added a few mirrors for the Haliens movies, in both .wmv and .mov formats now. Check out the mirrors list… and feel free to add your server to it!

The ACM Microsoft Michigan Halo Tournament took place last Thursday. Over 100 players came together for the largest team event to date… and Team PS walked away with the prize. Check out the website for details on the individual rounds, plus pics, prize listings, and more! Thanks to Steve Messinger for the heads-up.

Sunday Fan Fiction for you:

• The Admiral Chapter 1 Part 1 and Part 2, by Dyn
• Justification, Part 3, by Rixor
• I want to be a Spartan…, by assman
• Titan, Part 7, by Jaywhit10
• Halo 2: A New Hope, Part 2, by Sephiroth

Get to reading! [Side note for Fan Fiction authors: we received two unpleasant notes in the last couple of days – one was rude, the other downright offensive. Both came from authors who were angry that they had received spam because their email address was posted with a story. (One received a virus, apparently.) Nothing says you have to have your email address posted with your story. If you do not tell us not to post it, though, we will, since it seems that most authors WANT feedback. Know this, though: if you choose to send us nasty mail blaming us for messages you receive because your address is posted, we’ll pull all your stories, and refuse to accept new ones. I don’t need that sort of abuse; you don’t pay me enough for it. Thanks.]

It’s not perfect, but it’s certainly watchable. Thanks to the work of Cybrfrk and customsex, and a little help from Apple and Sorenson, we’ve got a decent version of the recent Haliens movie for you in QuickTime format. Anyone who had trouble with the .wmv version… this puppy’s for you. Currently, it’s only at Mythica.org and the Psyjnir.com hotline server, but we’d LOVE to compile a bigger mirror list; feel free to host it and tell us about it. This bad boy is 36.7 mb, 8 minutes, 320×240 (pretty close to the original). Have I said thanks to Cybrfrk and customsex yet? Go get it!

Whew – a productive Saturday morning! In between recycling, and kid-shuttling, I’ve managed to bring the Movies, Interviews, and (most importantly) Miscellaneous databases up to date! Boy, does that feel good. More than 2 dozen miscellaneous items have been added, along with half-a-dozen interviews and about that many movies. Enjoy! (Time to clean the windows.)

Vector40 has let us know that Rampancy.net is providing a mirror for Crocodile Bungie’s Speed video – we’ve added it to the Mirrors list. We’re still working on the Haliens format issue…