So yesterday I posted a little clip from ‘Deference for Darkness’, one of the most gorgeous tunes on the ODST soundtrack, because a riff in it had reminded me of the 90’s song ‘Macarena’. Most readers were amused, but a couple suggested they couldn’t hear the resemblance. If you’re one of those… Postman has your back. He actually overlaid the clip on the Spanish song… and now I’m scared.(Louis Wu 14:39:27 UTC)

thebruce0 (the guy behind The Haunted Apiary) noticed some interesting graphics during his search through the streets of New Mombasa. (I’m not marking this with a spoiler tag, because I’m guessing it’s more of an easter egg than a story spoiler.) It looks like Braille… but it’s not. If you read through his posts, you’ll see that he’s looked at (and discarded) a few other potential code options… can you figure out what this is? (Louis Wu 14:34:20 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy has a couple of things for you this morning – there’s her standard Friday Caption Fun (the new image is lolcat-grade)… and there’s a birthday greeting to an old (in software years) friend. Go read!(Louis Wu 14:32:15 UTC)

Wesley Burket pointed out a thread on Bungie.net being used by folks finding ODST discs to be unreadable by their 360. If you’re in this boat, swing by!(Louis Wu 14:29:12 UTC)

Yesterday was Thursday, so there’s a new Breaking In article on Bungie.net – this week, it’s Senior Animator Tom Saville – he passed on a promising career in werewolf training to work for Bungie, so go see how he got there!(Louis Wu 14:11:15 UTC)

There are seven new stories for you this week in the Fan Fiction section – give ’em a read! (And don’t forget to check out the Feet First Into Hell Contest winners announced a couple of days ago, if you haven’t already…)(Louis Wu 14:06:57 UTC)

We neglected to mention an article posted yesterday afternoon on Bungie.net: ‘Link Up with the B.net’ seemed, at first glance, to be aimed at newcomers who wanted to tie their in-game experience in to Bungie.net’s amazing stat tracking system. It didn’t really seem like ‘news’ for the average HBO reader. A closer read, however, shows that this does include information that’s of wider interest.

• There’s a collection of tips for completing the various Vidmaster Achievements (as of yesterday, just over 4,000 people had completed them and collected their Recon armor)
• There’s a mini-primer on Bungie Pro, and the mention of a new, not-quite-implemented feature coming soon: you’ll be able to render a segment of a Firefight video simply by indicating the timestamps of your start and stop spots. This is amazingly cool, given that without it, you’d need an AWFUL lot of render points to grab Firefight footage (since Firefight has no ‘clip’ capabilities).
• The stats integration is, indeed, covered in the article – check it out for basic details and links to more in-depth explanations.

Definitely worth a read!(Louis Wu 13:31:03 UTC)

NeoGAF regular GhaleonEB pointed out that yesterday afternoon, a pretty cool milestone was hit, according to Bungie.net’s stats: Players (All Time): 15,000,231. Wow!(Louis Wu 13:20:06 UTC)

Nearly missed this – the Double XP Weekend Playlist is called ‘Prepare to Drop’, and it’s an “ODST-inspired” list. 4v4 social list, with lots of magnums and SMGs. Potentially interesting VIP mode… check it out!(Louis Wu 22:35:38 UTC)