TriBlox’s Voho stopped in with news about Halo: Out With a Whimper, the fan-made sidescroller – the engine’s been rewritten, and everything is “better than ever”. You read all the nitty-gritty details at Mod DB!(Louis Wu 05:00:36 UTC)

Looks like The Mona Lisa Part 4 is up now, both on Halo Waypoint’s website and on Waypoint on Xbox Live… things are getting pretty tense! Thanks, General Vagueness. (Louis Wu 04:54:26 UTC)

SonGoharotto continues his rewrite of the Halo storyline; if you’ll remember, he’s integrating later canon material into the first game’s tale. He’s up to 343 Guilty Spark. This is a pretty interesting project, and it looks like he’s well on his way to finishing it! (Louis Wu 04:53:02 UTC)

RC Master provided a nice wrapup of recent goings-on over at High Speed Halo:

• Dark Devastation whipped through Reach’s New Alexandria in Mythic mode in 12:12 at the end of last week.
• RC Master took down ODST’s Kikowani Station with nearly 550,000 points on Legendary.
• zusaij set the new speed record for ODST’s Tayari Plaza on Normal – 2:03.
• Then he did the same for ODST’s Uplift Reserve, on Easy – 2:24.
• KroKus beat Reach’s Winter Contingency on Heroic in 8:48.
• Finally, GevarM96 and GewehrM48 flew through Reach’s Tip of the Spear on Easy in just 7:02.

This last run debuts a new format for videos – just one screen at a time, flipping back and forth between players based on who’s doing the most interesting stuff. They’re looking for feedback on the change – swing by their forum and talk to them!(Louis Wu 14:22:33 UTC)

Homeboyd903 and friends are maintaining a thread at Bungie.net that contains all the community maps that are now, or have ever been, in Reach Matchmaking. If you want a chance to look over these maps without being shot at, swing by and grab copies! Great resource. (Louis Wu 12:36:47 UTC)

Jimmy Jangles has put together a nice collection of Reach Concept art from a variety of sources – it’s a great roundup! Go look. (Louis Wu 12:33:37 UTC)

FyreWulff reminds you that this weekend there’s a Super Jackpot potential in the Action Sack playlist; if you play, you have the chance to win a bonus 11,000 cR jackpot added to your Slot Machine total at the end of the game. It’s supposed to be limited to once per day per person… but we’ve got multiple reports of multiple wins from yesterday. Go give it a shot! (FyreWulff is also keeping track of Super Jackpot weekends on his website, so you can watch how the offers change.) (Louis Wu 12:30:10 UTC)

Has urk left a man-sized hole in your heart? Dani from Forward Unto Dawn stepped up to the BWU plate with his “Bungled Weekly Update,” a fantastic read with plenty of info and a hilariously boring Blame Ghaleon. Please, sir, I want some more.(Hitmonchan 23:59:50 UTC)

ElzarTheBam put together his first montage – pretty nice clips and composition! It’s up on YouTube, but there’s been some wonkiness with the soundtrack (first it was on, then it was turned off, then it came back on again), so we put up local copies of the video. You can watch it online, or download QuickTime/WMP9 versions.(Louis Wu 21:02:01 UTC)

Wow. That’s one heck of a stool.(Louis Wu 19:24:28 UTC)

GHOSTKILL sent word that Fails of the Weak #34 is now live – that last clip is really, really weird. Check it out!(Louis Wu 19:11:00 UTC)

Ray Reece pointed out a recent episode of the webcomic The Underfold – looks like the artist would have been happy with a slightly more upbeat ending to Halo: Reach…(Louis Wu 16:28:05 UTC)

Pretty intriguing find by Willeth over at NeoGAF – Bungie invited Penny Arcade back for a ping pong rematch… and Jonty Barnes wore a shirt with a pretty intriguing logo on it. Does this tell you anything about Bungie’s newest project?(Louis Wu 15:42:34 UTC)

Sl’askia pointed out that Achievement HORSE #23 is now live. I think both Jack and Geoff are getting a bit tired of these… I’m not sure how long the series will continue. Some of these maps, however, look pretty cool!(Louis Wu 15:16:58 UTC)

Jordan117 noticed a pretty interesting page over at the website of graphic designer Sean Haas – it’s a look at the signs found in Reach, with commentary on their design. (He looks at many, many fewer signs than Stephen Loftus has – but he includes discussion and connections, which is intriguing.)(Louis Wu 15:14:29 UTC)

Goose Checka let us know that signups for GrifballHub’s Good Games League are now open – swing by their site for full details. There’s even a highlight reel!(Louis Wu 15:10:39 UTC)

Last month, I mentioned that Jason Evans had completed some Master Chief sculpts in cold-cast bronze, and sometime earlier, I mentioned that he was interested in selling them to help him pay for the mold. They really seemed pretty cool to me – so I bought a pair. One is for me – it goes on one of my Halo shelves. The other will be given away in an upcoming HBO contest/giveaway. (I have no idea when; I’d first have to come up with a plan for the contest itself.) I took a few shots of this bad boy out in front of our newly-sprouted flowers – because what’s more warriorlike than a flowered background? If you can’t wait until we actually give the second one away, swing by Jason’s gallery here at HBO – there’s an email link that will let you get ahold of him directly, and you can buy one right now.
(Louis Wu 18:31:57 UTC)