Well, almost buried in the 100-odd posts of the most amusing flamewar to happen on our forum in a long time, Anonymous Coward has posted the first four paragraphs of what he calls ‘Work in progress…‘. I’m gonna hold off adding it immediately to the Fan Fiction section, in the hopes that he’ll add to it first – but it’s a pretty nice start, go read it!

Seems there’s a new Halo site out there – The Coalition of the Ring. Check ’em out.

Woohoo! Our first mention in a fan’s wallpaper (I think). Dinosurfer has sent along ‘Joyride’ for your perusement – you’ll find it in our Wallpaper section. Nice and clean…

arcarsenal dropped us a line to let us know that Halo made Rolling Stone magazine – it’s just a tiny blurb, describing Halo as a ‘long-awaited 3d shooter’ on the Xbox, and displaying the flying jeep screenshot recently released… but hey, mainstream press is mainstream press!

Ryan ‘Mhaddy’ Matthews writes to say the Junkyard is finally back up – and will be posting one new exclusive item per day for the next two weeks. Dunno how many of those will be Halo-related… but stop by and take a look!

Thanks to Iden, who pointed out to us that Xbox.com has an article describing a team meeting a couple of months ago in which the first prototypes of a real, working Xbox were demoed… and the statement that

Progress has been great since then and we’re poised to deliver the first kits to game developers before E3.

If so, it looks like lucky E3-goers will get to see Halo running at full speed in a couple of weeks… woohoo! We’ll be there… will you?

Early last week, we got a Fan Fiction submission with a subject line of ‘stupid fanfic I wrote’. Wirehead figured, if the AUTHOR thinks it’s stupid, how good could it be? It got resubmitted a couple of days ago, with an altered subject line, and I found it this morning. Moral of the story – don’t tell us your work sucks – we’ll believe you. 🙂 That said, go read our latest Fan Fiction, ‘Ambush!’.

We’ve added a couple of new wallpapers that have been sitting for a bit in our uploads directory – there’s one from Scythe, and one from B-Sharp. Check ’em out!

Picky informs us that he’s put a couple of Halo WinAmp skins up for grabs here – to get them, you’ll have to log in to the MSN network, but they should be up at WinAmp.com as soon as they’re reviewed.

Thanks to Ph.D., who pointed out a new Halo preview at Gamespot – there’s not really any new info there, it seems to be a pre-E3 prep piece, but press is press, right? (Well, don’t tell that to Daily Radar, who went under yesterday…)

Dink!… despite the infusion of 16 new members, the Halo SETI Marines lost a position in the Battle of the Teams, dropping out of the top 50 for the first time in almost a year. Ouch! Part of the blame can be placed on the four deserters, who, between them, pulled almost 2000 units out of the Halo coffers… but a big part of the problem is the low crunching action of the majority of the team. (Don’t blame DarthFlounder – he’s pulled within 121 units of the top spot…) The rest of you… turn that SETI screensaver back on! To see how YOU are doing, check the 14 day stats page.

Woohoo – the mail guy’s back! For all those who wrote in the past week and a half, and expected a reply, I’ll be getting to them in the next day or two. Meanwhile, I’ve added Friday’s Weekly Halo Update to the Halo Update Database; the word of the week is Cortana. How long did it take the Halo team to bring her to life?

Fan art, fan fiction, and now fan music. Bjorn sent us a link to an MP3 he created for Halo. The name of the song is “After the Storm” and you can find it at: http://www.mp3.com/Sleepwalker. Go take a listen. Pax.

blam.psyjnir.com goes live according to Sapwood. Take a look. Pax.

Halo “Sci-Fi epic with all the right moves”. Menalaus Khan lets us know that Gamespot have a High-Tech Games article in which Halo is mentioned. Go check it out. Pax.

Bungie Sightings puts up the hi-res Halo scans from Next Generation magazine. Go get them before they are pulled again. BS also has info on next month’s Bungie Fanfest V.

Halo interview. IGN Xbox interviews Bungie’s John Howard and Joseph Staten. Thanks to Massa for the heads up. Here’s a piece:

IGN Xbox: Because the guys at IGN PC threatened us with death if we didn’t ask, what’s up with the PC version? Will they see it before the Covenant invades earth?

JS: Given that it will be hundreds of years before the first Covenant recon picket stumbles across our most distant colony world–yes, absolutely! Oh man, we’re all pushing so hard to get the XBOX version out on time, we really have zero time to think actively about the PC and Mac versions. But they’re always in the back of our minds. You know: “hmm…how should I do ‘x’ so itÕ¬l be relatively easy to implement on the PC/Mac?” Tell the IGN PC guys to keep the faith, and we’ll get back to you, OK?

Whoa… looks like (if I’m reading it right) Tyson Green, AKA Ferrex, of Rampancy.net, has been hired away by Bungie for who knows what… I think he just took the job to get out of Canada, but you never can tell. Congrats, Ferrex! (Don’t let this stop you from reading this week’s Halo Update from Matt, mind you.)

Thanks to Matt Soell, who didn’t hold our feet to the fire TOO long for Marty’s update last week – he sent us this week’s update as scheduled. And it’s a tasty one. So tasty, in fact, that I logged in from a place where I have to PAY by the minute for my internet access to bring it to you. (Yeah, yeah, you Brits, stop your whining.) Crux would have posted it, but he was eating fish, or something. In any case, go read about a model for Cortana, a whole bunch of stuff that brings on Marathon flashbacks, better AI, and more multiplayer art. What are you waiting for? This is costing me! (It’ll make it into the Halo Update Database in the next day or two.)

Dgenohunter of the french clan HELL website (yes we remember it well) enlarged one of the Bungie webcam pics of Bernie and says he thinks he can see the famous Halo jeep. Of course we went to source of all image enhancements “Crux” who said he could see two jeeps. Altar wine folks… altar wine. 😉