Kermit put together a pretty cool pano of some Corvettes over New Alexandria – check it!(Louis Wu 14:35:48 UTC)

Dennis Powers has returned with another installment of the Halo CE Chronicles; this time, Fearless (in comic form) is the story of the UNSC Frearless, investigating the disappearance of a survey ship. Chapter 1 is online now.(Louis Wu 14:33:30 UTC)

Jefferson let us know about Human or Demon, a French machinima project (with english subtitles) about an Elite squad that meets its match in some humans who don’t fit the mold. Nearly 14 minutes.(Louis Wu 14:30:16 UTC)

Kaidon stopped in with new pics of a Jetpack Blast base diorama he built for a friend’s McFarlane jetpack-equipped figure. My jaw dropped.(Louis Wu 14:27:18 UTC)

Pierre Tartaix sent word that TGO GMBH has released What a Night! – a Halo 3-based machinima that goes for the 50’s Film Noir vibe. Things get a little… odd near the end. Interesting piece of work!(Louis Wu 14:18:53 UTC)

Dani noticed that the current Reach playlists, which haven’t been online since Bungie took their Playlist page down in early August, have a temporary home in the Waypoint forums, and will have a regular page on the Waypoint website soon. It’s not a complete page (doesn’t contain a list of maps, for example) – but it’s quite a bit more info than we’ve had for a month.(Louis Wu 14:05:28 UTC)

Minnesota Public Radio’s Top Score has kicked off their second season with an interview with Marty O’Donnell – Part 1 is online now. (Thanks to GregO’Connor-Read for the heads-up, and to Hedgemony for kicking off a forum thread for comment.) It’s a fascinating discussion; Marty’s given at least his share of interviews over the years, but he’s really, really good at talking about this stuff, and there’s always something new to hear. Part 2 of this interview is coming next week.(Louis Wu 13:59:35 UTC)

A little while ago, Urban Reflex wondered whether there was a collection of the Reach radio conversations online, in mp3 format. The answer seemed to be ‘no’ – so UR took it upon himself to build that collection. (This is my favorite kind of fan creation – the kind where someone says “I really want X” and when X doesn’t exist, they MAKE it.) If you’ve ever gone looking for these transmissions yourself, you know that some are awfully hard to understand – lots of static, occasionally too much background noise, in at least one case the radio itself is in a soft kill zone (giving you 10 seconds at a time to listen). Urban Reflex persevered, however, and MacGyver10 tossed in some amazing skills as a noise-removal specialist… and the resulting collection can now be browsed, with full transcripts, in our Reach Radio Transmissions section. Special thanks to Urk and Robt McLees, for a few location names we couldn’t get on our own.(Louis Wu 19:53:14 UTC)

Physics Remastered is back with a tutorial showing how to get into the Ice Cave on The Package. (I’m amused by the fact that it STARTS with what might be the hardest glitch to activate in the game.) Pretty cool, if you can pull it off! Thanks, Carnage A51.(Louis Wu 17:55:04 UTC)

Rockslider continues to mess with Assault on the Control Room – this time, he’s showing how you can get a few extra marines (and a ‘hog) early in the level – he’s discussed it before, but it’s fleshed out now (and video is always nice). Go check out Bad Cyborg!(Louis Wu 17:41:14 UTC)

Feeling like you need a little more challenge in your life? HaloChallenges.com has got your back. The latest challenge is ‘Hammer Time’, a Grifball-based challenge (do it by yourself!) with multiple levels – Mythic looks… well, mythic. If that doesn’t float your boat, Redemption has reposted last year’s Firestream challenge, to celebrate Firestream’s birthday today – it’s all about the LAAG on the back of your Warthog. Go read about ’em both – and then get to playing! (HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FIRESTREAM!)(Louis Wu 16:46:49 UTC)

1Up.com has an interview with Frank O’Connor about where Halo has been – and where it’s going. Frank reminisces about his early experiences with Halo (as a member of the press, and a fan), talks about Halo Anniversary, the Reach Title Update, and then moves into Halo 4 a little bit. Interesting read!(Louis Wu 15:43:26 UTC)

Firestorm12 sent word that War (or War) Issue #4 is now online – what I got from this is that advisors are bad. (Louis Wu 15:43:10 UTC)

Crab noticed an article at Kotaku discussing the departure of Ryan Payton from the Halo 4 team – it sounds like he wanted to head off in a pretty radical direction, and couldn’t sell this to the rest of the team. (IGN did a fine job of completely misinterpreting his statements; the subheader for their version of the story reads ‘Ryan Payton leaves 343 Industries, saying the game had become a “crazy endeavour”.’ This is EXACTLY opposite to what Payton actually said, which was his idea of building a fundamentally different Halo was a crazy endeavor, and because he hadn’t built enough credibility to see this through, he felt that leaving was a better choice.) It’s definitely a big shift – but it sounds positive, for both sides. (Louis Wu 14:50:06 UTC)

robofin117 pointed out that Red vs Blue Season 9 Episode 11 is now up for general consumption – the two storylines are beginning to come together! (And Lopez might be the brightest soldier in the Gulch. Which would be sad.)(Louis Wu 14:44:48 UTC)

zukan discovered a talk that Michael Zak and Vic DeLeon gave at IDGA Montreal, in May 2008 – it’s nearly an hour and a half long, and it focuses on Halo 3 Flood levels, and how programming and art tie together in the making of the game. It’s fascinating – and though we’ve seen some of the talk assets before, this is the first time I’ve actually seen the talk. Nice! (Louis Wu 14:43:32 UTC)

TDSpiral is starting college, so he’s probably done with Halo-related fan art… but he’s going out with a bang. Check out Red Rocky Goodbye. (And wish him luck in his next stage!)(Louis Wu 14:42:41 UTC)

Hedgemony is back with Part 5 of his Halo: SPD Flash story – and it’s a doozy! I’m loving this. Go check out all 17 pages! (Louis Wu 14:42:14 UTC)

Over at NeoGAF, Sean P. found a Reddit post where someone managed to grab ALL the ghosts on Halo 2’s Delta Halo level, and line them up nicely on the bridge. (I wouldn’t be surprised if this had been done before – but it’s pretty cool to look at.)(Louis Wu 14:41:41 UTC)

Heh – I missed this a week ago when it went online… but it’s still funny. Well, unless you’re being spawnkilled in an Objective game…(Louis Wu 19:34:09 UTC)