For those who don't have Finale PrintMusic, I've added PDF and MIDI files to the entries for Covenant Dance, Follow Our Brothers, and To Kill A Demon.

Hardy Lebel, the multiplayer designer of Halo 1 who also worked on Halo 2 and Oni, has set up a new games development studio in Seattle called Tyrant with Anders Hejdenberg, who worked on Battlefield 2 as its lead designer.

The seven-man studio currently has listed as its only project something identified only as "ESP".

Comic website Earth's Greatest interviewed Eric Trautmann about his comic Checkmate. Trautmann previously worked at Microsoft and was involved with Halo and the Halo novels written by Eric Nylund.

Asked about working on Halo, this is what he had to say:

Another Halo sheet music submission from MJCrascal21; this time it's Halo 1's Covenant Dance (with percussion). Audio file to come soon.

Awhile back I took a post about a Halo themed shoe and spun it into a theory about why Bungie and Microsoft might have parted so amicably: because while Bungie gets the freedom to expand into a studio large enough to do more than one project and not just Halo games, Microsoft gets to retain the Halo intellectual property to capitalize on any way they can.

Of course, it turned out the shoe wasn't official-- it was just a one-off by a fan.

Now the other shoe has dropped.

The admin of uber community file hosting service Mythica.org has posted a note that the Useruploads service, which allowed Halo fans to host files for free, is ceasing in February of this year due to high costs and a lack of time and interest. A shame to see such a wonderful service go, but given the huge amount of bandwidth required for such a site, it is understandable that it could not have continued forever.

Newsweek columnist N'Gai Croal interviewed Bungie's Joe Staten about the Halo 3, Halo 2, and the Halo movie back in August of 2007. The first part is online now.

In response to a reader request from heuertag I've reworked the sheet music page to work like the forgemap database, the gamertag database, and the movies database. Now you can search and sort the sheet music entries just like you can on those other pages.

HaloBabies just recently announced the new Halo comic Larry The Marine, which I neglected to mention at the time and richly deserves it.

Second Foundation, home of the Halo community podcast The Riot, is holding its 2007 community awards. Voting will be open until midnight GMT on January 13.

In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly was nominated under "Biggest Community Contributor (Individual)" but I'm up against Louis Wu so if I don't win, no hard feelings. Then again, if you want to vote for me, don't let me stand in your way.