Fans of Halobabies will be amused by this somewhat surreal account of [url=http://www.halobabies.net/archive/05/01/19/master_chiefs_new_york_adventure/]Master Chief's Adventures in New York City.[/url] It's a photo diary of a tiny Spartan's wild ride in the big city. And it's 88% mental.

Check it out [url=http://www.halobabies.net/archive/05/01/19/master_chiefs_new_york_adventure/]here[/url] and don't forget to click the links to see the pics.

So, the Webmaster got into the server closet again. His latest victim was The Voting Booth forum. It appears to have corrupted data in it. We are in the process of fixing the issue, but it might take a while.

All other forums are fine, however, only The Voting Booth is affected. There is no ETA on the fix yet, but we hope to get it fixed soon.

Incubus, the famous popular music ensemble, are putting their necks on the chopping block as part of the Xbox Live, "Game With Fame" series. You can win the chance to play against the musical contributor to the Halo 2 soundtrack [url=http://www.enjoyincubus.com/xboxgamewithfame/]right here[/url] as well as a bunch of other prizes, including an Xbox and Incubus DVDs!

Get over there and [url=http://www.enjoyincubus.com/xboxgamewithfame/]enter to win[/url]. And sorry, you have to be a legal US resident over the age of 13 to win.

Cake or pie? Needler or SMG? Shishka or Andrew? Our [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/topics.aspx?forumID=8]voting booth[/url] is wide open and you'll find it packed full of useful data, including the world's favorite weapon combos, multiplayer levels and even player models. Go check out the [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/topics.aspx?forumID=8]Voting Booth[/url] and vote for your favorites.

And remember, democracy rules. With a fist of iron!

Give your dull desktop a makeover with these stylin new Halo 2 [url=/Games/Halo2/Gallery.aspx?Gallery=Wallpaper&page=2]Wallpapers[/url] created by AGDTinMan, our in-house Director of Desktop Beautification.

It's "Wallpaper Thursday" here at Bungie.net! Ok, so there's not really an official day or anything, we just happen to have a few new wallpapers and it's a Thursday. In any case, these new images are awesome and no true Halo fan should be without them. You can get these new desktop wallpapers along with plenty of others over at the [url=/Games/Halo2/Gallery.aspx?Gallery=Wallpaper&page=2]Halo 2 Wallpaper Gallery.[/url] AGDTinMan has actually created a cornucopia of wallpapers, and we'll be bringing you more visual goodness next week. Rumor also has it that he's working on a special Group theme that's very pink and not recommended for those prone to siezures from flashing lights. Stay tuned.

Legendary print pub, GamePro is hosting its annual Reader's Choice Awards, where GamePro readers get the chance to agree or disagree with the editor's picks. You can vote too, but you will have to sign up (which is free) [url=http://www.gamepro.com/rca/]so go vote for your favorite sci-fi action shooter now![/url]

There may be other categories too, but you know, vote for Halo 2!

Members of the [url=/7thColumn/]7th Column[/url] will be happy to hear that we just added four new themes for you to jazz up your group homepages. Even better, forum goers can now choose to use their Halo 2 Live emblem as their avatar if they desire. Woot!

[b]THEMES[/b] For a while now, members of the 7th Column have had a mere 3 themes to use to customize the look of their groups homepage. Well, thanks to some artistic and dedicated Bungie.net members, you now have a few more options. The first new theme is "Halo Babies", created by HaloBabies.net co-founder and lead artist, "Grunstbane." Next we have "Xbox", creatively named for it's graphic stylings based on our beloved console. This theme comes courtesy of Mr. Smiley, longtime Bungie.net member and founder of the popular "MSXL" chapter. "Myth" is a throwback theme to Bungie's old fantasy RTS game and was created by "Psyched." Lastly, we have the uber old school "Terminal" theme which captures the high tech goodness of the computer terminals found throughout Marathon. This was created by "Sir Fragula." Thanks to all of these guys for their great themes. And, thanks to everyone who has made an attempt at creating themes. While we have received many submissions, our standards are pretty high so unfortunately not many make it through our art department. If you'd like to create a theme for use on the 7th Column, you can download the theme builder and read more about it [url=http://www.bungie.net/7thColumn/page.aspx?section=Groups&subsection=main&page=themes]HERE.[/url] [b]AVATARS[/b] Ever since we rolled out the Halo 2 stats section on Bungie.net and allowed players to show off their actual emblems from Xbox Live, people have been pleading that we make these same emblems available as avatars in our forums. Your wish has been granted. Visit the "My Settings" page and then select the "Avatar" tab. At the top of the page, you'll have an option to use your Halo 2 emblem.

Bungie.net's lead Forum Ninja and supporter of all things 7th Column is celebrating his 21st birthday today. As a special birthday treat, let's all refrain from spamming and posting off topic posts for the day. We can resume in full force tomorrow.

Our pal Stosh has been around Bungie.net since well before I joined this team. As the head of Chapter Founders, Stosh has helped many people around the world take advantage of the 7th Column and help expand our community. He's put in countless hours of his time on our site, moderating our forums, answering questions, and insulting people. Today, we salute you Mr. Stosh. Hopefully the Webmaster will continue to be the only Bungie.net staffer who overindulges in the sauce. Though, spending so much time wading through the posts on our forums is enough to drive anyone over the edge. Good luck.

UK game retailer, the appropriately named "Game" auctioned one of its nearly-life size Master Chief retail statues for charity - the very worthy charity of aiding Tsunami victims. The auction did of course take place on [url=http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4249&item=5947776675&rd=1#ebayphotohosting]eBay[/url].

Check out where the bidding got up to [url=http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4249&item=5947776675&rd=1#ebayphotohosting]right here.[/url]

Dave Szulborski has authored a book called [url=http://www.immersivegaming.com/about.html]This is Not a Game,[/url] detailing the phenomenon of Alternate Reality Gaming, a good example of which was the ilovebees.com phenomenon of last year, which was allegedly related to a little game called Halo 2.

You can read an extract of the book [url=http://www.immersivegaming.com/about.html]here [/url]and get some insight into the often baffling ARG scene.

Teamxbox, who beat us in the Humpday Challenge last week and are therefore jerks, have published the results of their [url=http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/1008/TeamXbox-2004-Readers-Choice-Awards/p1/]2004 reader's Choice Awards[/url] and Halo 2 won a couple.

But you can read the results for yourself [url=http://features.teamxbox.com/xbox/1008/TeamXbox-2004-Readers-Choice-Awards/p1/]right here.[/url] And we don't really think the TXB guys are jerks. Much.

Bungie community partner, [url=http://nikon.bungie.org/about.html]Halo.Bungie.Org[/url] also known as HBO, has posted a mini FAQ about its own FAQ. Kind of. You can find out answers to some oft-asked questions about this glorious community site right [url=http://nikon.bungie.org/about.html]here.[/url]

Tidbits include Louis Wu's real age and origin, but not his real name. Oh and it's pronounced Loo-Wee, not Loo-Wiss.

Reiginko writes:

You know that sweet contest the moderators are holding in recognition of Marathon's 10th birthday? No? Well, okay, anyway, you have an extension, which is lucky considering you didn't even know it existed in the first place!

On the 21st of December 1994, Marathon was released to the world, which was never the same again. To some people. Anyway, on the 21st of December 2004, with very little fanfare, the 10th Anniversary Marathon Contest was released to the world, which pretty much stayed the same this time to everyone. The original deadline of the contest was the 11th of January, however, in light of the fact that only about four people realised that there actually [i]was[/i] a contest going on, the contest is being extended to [b]February 9[/b]. You can find a lot more information about this contest in [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=1479208&postRepeater1-p=1]this[/url] forum post. - Reiginko

Over the last few days, Halo 2 stats have been slow and missing information occassionally. A bunch of bad things happened at the same time to cause this, but the good news is that most is repaired. However, there is a lingering issue with the RSS stat feed, so we have turned that off until we can nail down that problem.

We apologize for the downtime, but the RSS feed has suddenly started crushing our web services servers. We're looking into the problem, and it should be up again soon.

Today you may have noticed lots of strange things on bungie.net. These included "Internal Server Errors," vanishing stats, "Web Exceptions," and general slowness. We've been working the problem all day, and things have gotten better, but we're still closing out the last of the problems, so you'll still see some occasional sputters until we get it fixed, hopefully by day's end

So, that means you can stop emailing us about it - we know your stats have vanished on bungie.net. Rest assured that you haven't lost anything. It is just a case of the web servers having difficulty accessing the data.

Halo 2 was voted game of the year and shooter of the year by the readers of 1UP.com, for which we are very grateful. Lots of other awesome games won awards too and you can read about them [url=http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3137663&did=1]here![/url]

What are you waiting for? Go check out [url=http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3137663&did=1]1up.com's Best of 2004![/url]

After a period of investigation, we’ve discovered what caused the rankings in the Rumble Pit matchmaking playlist to be reset on January 1st. We have isolated the problem and we can revert player rankings to the point before they were reset.

After some discussion, we decided that this would benefit more players than it hurts, but rankings achieved since Jan 1 will be reset to either their status on December 31, or for brand new players, simply reset to level 1. This server update will take place at 2am PST tomorrow morning, in order to minimize disruption to the service. During this period, stats for those Rumble Pit matches will be unavailable. We realize this process will cause some aggravation – especially for players who’ve been working since Jan 1 to regain their ranking, but we feel far more players will benefit than suffer. For those who are annoyed, we genuinely apologize. Fixing the rankings should also alleviate the mismatches that inexperienced players have had to suffer through.

Bungie is aware that rankings on Rumble Pit in Halo 2 were reset on January 1st. We can tell you this was an error and not a deliberate reset. However, we are still investigating the cause and possible solutions. We apologize for the inconvenience and irritation caused and we will make every effort to provide more data and explanation as we further investigate the problem.

Again, watch this space for more details.