Chapters Seeking Members

I've compiled a list of the various chapters that are actively recruiting members:

Western US

• Front Range Company 7 (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/382) is seeking members in the Boulder, CO area, while Akkula's Soldiers (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/82) is looking for members near Fort Collins, and Remedy (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/435) is looking for recruits in the Denver/Metro area.
• BayAreaHaloPlayingGroup (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/17) is looking for members in, well, the Bay Area, California.
• ZPGh (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/267) is seeking members in the Provo, Utah area.
• Scoobs Nightmare (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/451) is seeking members in Beaverton, Oregon.
• Seattle Area KidsAllowed (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/413) is seeking members under age 18 in the Seattle, Washington area.

Eastern US

• PA Myth Addicts, Inc. (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/301) is desperately seeking members in the York, Pennsylvania area.
• Retinel Church (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/275) of Holden, Maine is seeking members.
• Utfoo (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/111) is seeking members in the Pittsburgh area. They also called dibs on creating the giant Ling-ling statue.
• Gonzo and Crew (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/416) is looking for members in the Richmond, Virginia area.
• Nepenthe: Seekonk (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/376), a local close knit group of players, is entertaining membership requests from the Seekonk, Massachussetts area. Metrowest Halo Group (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/136) is also looking for members in Massachusetts.

Southern US

• Halo Inc. (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/345) is looking for members near Brownwood, Texas.
• The Game (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/139) is seeking 2 more members in the Little Rock, Arkansas area.
• Hot, Flaming Death (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/303) is looking for members in the Alexandria, Louisiana area.
• Central Flordia Halo (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/396) is looking for members in, you guessed it, Central Florida.
• Halo Atlanta Lan Org. (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/150) is looking for members in the Atlanta, Georgia area.

Central US

• A Halo Person (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/438) is seeking members in the Chicagoland area.
  
• HALO Fighters (/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/fanclub/107) is looking for members in the Rosemount, Minnesota area.

Flood Revealed

Halo.bungie.org has posted a great new feature: a guide to the Flood (http://halo.bungie.org/flood)! Louis Wu made a recent visit to our offices, and apparently made off with some classified shots thanks to inside help. Candyman!

7th Column Motto Poll Round 2

Two mottos were obvious winners in the last Bungie.net poll, We're everywhere! and Tru7h. Carnage. Bungie. However, we've received additional submissions since the poll went live, and since there's no consensus here we thought it'd be interesting to throw these new contenders in the ring. Let us know what you think ... is there a clear winner?

Bug Fixes: News, Overview

Just made the following fixes that I've been putting off for way too long:

• I've fixed a bug that was causing the news submission count to not show up in the navigation bar for group staff. Be sure to check for new submissions, I suspect many of you have stories waiting in the queue.
• I've also fixed an annoying cache bug where news on your front page wasn't getting updated when you edited or deleted stories. Whew!
• Finally, I've fixed a long-standing bug with the group overview. Your member count should now update immediately when you accept new members and when members leave your group.

Marathon:Resurrection Tournament

The Liandri Depot is hosting a Marathon: Resurrection tournament. Marathon:Resurrection, for those of you that don't know, is an Unreal Tournament mod that meticulously re-creates Bungie's Marathon in a true 3-D game engine. And more importantly, playable over the internet by Macs and PCs alike.
From the site:

Team Unphorgiven is pleased to announce its first official Marathon:Resurrection tournament. It has been a long and tedious process to make this venture possible, that is..real Marathon multiplayer experience over the Internet. It's great to waste your friend to bits across the room and hear them scream in frustration while trying to re-spawn, but doing it across the world has its benefits..such as doing it 'commando' if you know what I mean...
Entries will start to be taken through the form below from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29. The tournament will start on Feb. 6th. Games will be played on weekdays after 6pm PST. Please use the form below to indicate your preferred time of play below in _PST_ time as well as indicate the time difference in the appropriate field. Weekend games may be scheduled depending on the number of entries.

Entrants may register at http://fileball.net/ut/tourney.wow
Download Marathon: Resurrection at http://resurrection.bungie.org/index.html

Bug Fix: Messaging

That auto reply quoting I added was causing problems for some people trying to reply to messages, so I've disabled it. If you were experiencing problems with the messaging system give it another shot.

You Stole My Poll!

I didn't, Stosh from Mob of Angry Peasants did. He suggested moving the poll for chapters so it resides below the navigation bar, thus freeing up more room for databases in the sidebar. I liked the idea so much I made the change. What would be really cool is if you could determine the position for yourself. Perhaps we'll add this ability a little down the road.

The 7th Column For Dummies

One out of five respondents in our last poll indicated that they don't know what the 7th Column is all about. Frogblast just reminded me we have a page that explains at /perlbin/blam.pl?file=/site/2/site/fanclub/about_fanclub.html. Who put that there? Please read up on our mission statement before you vote in the poll.

Vote For Our Motto

We've gone through all the 7th Column motto submissions and chosen our favorites. Now we'd like to hear what you think! Please vote for your favorite motto in the poll on the front Bungie.net page. (Remember, vote for the motto you'd feel comfortable wearing on the back of a T-shirt!)

Motto? What You Say?

Organdonor sent me a message asking what happened to the 7th Column motto suggestions people sent in. I thought I'd respond here, for everyone. We actually got a good number of submissions but the Online team was unable to agree on a single one. Now that we've got this poll feature let me go back over the list, pull out the favorites, and we'll put the question to you, Bungie's army. If you have suggestions you'd like considered this is your last chance, click on my name and message 'em to me!

New Poll Up

Whoops, I meant to put up a post when our new poll went live. This poll is just a little test to see how many of our Bungie.net readers have joined a 7th Column Chapter, how many haven't, and how many have never heard of the 7th Column. Please vote if you haven't done so already.

Myth: TFL Compilation CD

The Myth Village and Marius.net are reporting that Grounds for Assault 2, a CD compilation of Myth: The Fallen Lords maps, editors, films, music, tutorials, updates, and more, is available for just shipping and handling costs. Visit this post http://www.mariusnet.com/forum/index.cgi?read=1695 at Marius.net for more information.

Public News and Your Chapter

In an effort to make the 7th Column more accessible to new players and to foster better communication between members we've made the default for all news posts "visible to the public." You can still make private posts, but we encourage you to be as open as possible with your news and happenings.

Bungie Pentathlon Results!

Although it took a tiebreaker round of Trivia Pursuit and a clutch answer by resident know-it-all Marty, in the end, it was the Online Cinematesticles that had what it takes to win it all. The Halo Left Brain was next in line, schooling everyone who dared to play against them in multiplayer Halo (which was everyone else). The Phoenix team came in third. And the Halo Right Brain... well, I'm not sure, but I think they actually mangaged to get 5th place, right behind whoever made the sandwiches for lunch.

New Halo content

More good stuff from Bungie. We added a new page full of Covenant craft to the concept art section. We also posted a wad of outtakes to the voice actors section this afternoon. Enjoy!

Improved Chapter Directory

I've just implemented a little change to the Seventh Column chapter directory. Some chapters have the word "The" to start out their name, like The Marty Army. Those chapters are no longer listed under "T". For example, The Marty Army is listed under "M" now. This should make looking for a chapter a little easier.

Butcher Chat Transcript

GetIntoTheGame.com (http://www.getintothegame.com) has posted a transcript of the chat with Chris Butcher, Halo's AI programmer. It's a good read, with a lot of thoughtful questions and insightful answers. If you weren't able to make it to the event be sure to read this.

New Feature: Did You Know?

Ah yes, I almost forgot. There's one more new feature on the 7th Column main page. Below the navigation bar there's now something called "Did You Know...?" This is where we'll add interesting tidbits and facts about this web site and about the fan club ... assuming we remember to update it! We'll try though, so check back and check often!

New Feature: Most Active Chapter

We've added a new feature to the 7th Column main page that should help you locate the most active fanclub chapters. Right below the New Clubs list on the right there's now a list of the 10 most active chapters. Even better, when you browse the directory, chapters that have had activity within the last 48 hours will have their names displayed bigger and bolder than those that haven't. A lot of you have requested similar features; hopefully this will help make it easier to keep on top of happenings in the 7th Column.

New Feature: QuickPoll

We once had a polling feature on Bungie.net. It has returned, only bigger and badder. We're actually doing a live beta test with the poll to your left, below the navigation bar. Once we're confident in the code we're going to do something very, very cool -- each chapter is going to get the ability to create its own polls!
In the meantime please cast your vote for who you think is going to win this Friday's Bungie Pentathlon. For those of you unfamiliar with this Bungie tradition, let me explain: every winter the various Bungie teams compete in five events. This year we're playing Halo, DoA3, Fusion Frenzy, Hitz, and an old classic, Spades. Go Online Cinematesticle! Anyway, I gots to go practice with my team. Oh yeah, a few more things....

Speaking of Interviews...

Halo.bungie.org reminded us that http://www.getintothegame.com is hosting a chat with Halo's AI programmer, Chris Butcher, today at 4pm CST.

Disappearing Events

I've seen this bug several times, but so far we haven't been able to determine the cause. Sometimes events will simply disappear from the Upcoming Events list in a chapter's sidebar but remain visible on the Events page. Wacky. We suspect it may be a cacheing problem, but we're not sure. We've added debugging code that may help track it down, but we have to wait until it shows up again. If this happens to you please message me and let me know about it. Until then hang in there, we're on the case.

Membership Drive

The total number of members in the 7th Column is well below what it should be. Most of this is our fault, as we've never actively promoted it. We're going to start being more aggressive here, trying to get the word out on the street. We'd like you to do the same. If you've got friends, brothers, sisters, mothers that play Halo or that should be playing Halo then let them know about the 7th Column, and convince them to join up. The more members in the fan club the more The Man will turn a blind eye to our nefarious plans.

Halo Story Page Launched

After a great deal of preparation Bungie.org has finally launched their Halo story page at http://halo.bungie.org/story. This site is structured to walk in the footsteps of Hamish Sinclair's famous Marathon Story page. Fan submitted theories about the nature of Halo's plot have already begun to trickle in. If you're interested in your fellow fans' thoughts on Halo's backstory then head on over and check it out.