Assassin's Creed : Freshly Baked Footage

These fresh-out-of-the-oven-home-made-videos will expire and should be thrown into the compost bin by August 20th. Why? Because after then you won't be eligible to enter your own video to win great prizes for creating an Assassin's Creed teaser video. No Ubisoft is not giving out game footage for these videos, but they are doing one better. You have to create video that incorporates at least one of the following ideas :
1)Planning, assassination, escape.
2)Social stealth - using crowd as a means of disguise or escape.
3)Assassination in public and in close proximity to the victim.
4)Assassination of historical figures.
5)Conspiracy surrounding historical assassination.
Seems easy enough? Thats doubtful. You need 4 different release forms for every aspect of your film. One for appearances, another for location, yet another for property ownership, and yet still another for music used within the film. This limits it down to about a horrible film due to the lack of music most people will be able to actually use. Shame. I wanted to use something, a bit, more popular and more likely to be used in every other video. Something like Headstrong by Trapt, or even Blow Me Away by Breaking Benjamin. On the brightside, this weeds out the noobish competition and leaves more room for great hopeful videos. The real attraction is of course the prizes. The grand prize is larger than life itself and quite amazing: a $10,000 cash prize, an Xbox 360^TM video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, your short film will be included in the limited edition release of the Assassin's Creed^TM video game, a copy of the game, and your short film will be aired on IFC Network. Second prize while not as flashy will include: a $2,500 cash prize, an Xbox 360^TM system, your short film will be included in the limited edition release of the Assassin's Creed^TM video game, a copy of the game, and your short film will be aired on IFC Network. Now that is worth the pain of making this. So grab your camera, some editing software and a crack team to fill out all that paperwork for you.

AdjutantReflex : Death of the Array

On a side note 27.com and other related websites are not related to the Halo 3 ARG, never were and are supposedly in place for a separate ARG. But back to the topic at hand. Adjutant Reflex is now sterilized and now rendered terminated by the attack who has been wearing away at AR's matrix for the past week or so. This brings an unknown stage to the ARG. AdjutantReflex has been determined to be the Steward of the Ark of some such similar position or to be feeding us information as a ghost within a forerunner system who has subsequently been found out, hunted, and processes terminated. Either way we cannot expect to see AR posting any new threads in the Bungie.net forums. But what is to happen with the ARG? No one noes and many are wondering if the ARG will even continue. One thing is for sure, we will all miss AdjutantReflex's cryptic and inspiring messages.

Society of the Ancients : Times Square Viral

SOTA, part of the Halo 3 ARG has gone to the RL. They were advertising the site in NYC today and have probably taken this viral joy ride too far. But hey, I like long rides. Lets roll with it.

Adjutant Reflex : Viral Campaign

Well more research into 7499.com has revealed a good deal of well, goodies. If you successfully complete the green dot game within the pages, you get an email and a code. If you email this code to the email, it will eventual send you an email containing "3^3". 3^3 means that 3 is raised to the third power or 3 times 3 times 3. This equals 27. So of course with all these number websites, I went to 27.com. It was some Hello Kitty homepage for a girl named Katie and had a large green table in the center of the page. The greatest part of the page wasn't the text within the table, it was the image hidden behind it. The image is located at 27.com/ar.jpg. As soon as I found this I realized of course the 'ar' could only mean Adjutant Reflex and that the image held two instances of the Chrysopteron. One was the Chrysopteron was actually located within the left side of the image, and the second was the text on the right started to say Chrysopteron. (Or so id like to hope.) When I attempted to enhance the image, it appeared instead to hold the characters +,C,Y,M,Y,+. The M is the tricky part though. It might be a different set of letters or characters and until I can figure out what it is really is I think i am at a dead end.

Adjutant Reflex : Compound Intelligence

The first two words of this post's title instill awe into thousands of Halo fans around the globe. For the past 4 days a mysterious user on various message boards and forums such as Bungie, and even HBO for no real apparent reason. The real excitement behind these posts is it means that another alternate reality set of viral advertisement is most likely on its way much as 'I Love Bees' for Halo 2 and 'The Cortana Letters' for the Halo universe. But lets explore what this compound intelligence has to offer us as we count the days, no even the hours until Halo 3 is released for the Xbox 360.

For starters lets explore the name. Adjutant Reflex simply translated for the average man could mean a few things. An adjutant is an assistant to an executive military officer. He or she could be said officers personal secretary or personal messenger. The word reflex could mean a few different things within the context of the name. It could be an involuntary response to something, or it could mean it reflects some form of energy or something transferable back to its source. So Adjutant Reflex could be a personal aid to a commanding military officer who relays information because it is part of his instinct. Even further simplified, he tells us what the officer is trying to tell us not by choice, but because is vital and it is not questionable. But where does this leave us with Compound Intelligence? Well Intelligence could either specify what branch or division this adjutant is within, or it could mean that said adjutant is infact aware of what they are doing. The hard part of this is the Compound. Compound could mean that the adjutant is receiving said information from several officers, the adjutant is working with other military personal to bring this to us, or the adjutant is using both information from said executive officer and using his own intuition.

Another interesting aspect of Adjutant Reflex, is the way they word their posts. They seem to be trying to tell us something, but they also try to hide it from us. Adjutant has been referencing to archiving data and that 'the seeds have been sown'. <img width="90" height="90" src="http://www.bungie.net/Forums/skins/default/avatars/Chrysopteron.gif"/> This symbol has been found on several Halo 3 related pictures and is called the Chrysopteron. One post by Adjutant asked on who's wings would 'we' fly from the blackest earth to the brightest heaven. One user responded Iris which means personification of a rainbow and a messenger of the gods. After that reply Adjutant responded with "Time to sleep. Something that once was malevolent is stirring. [hibernation resumed]". This could mean that the Flood are regrouping or it is time to lay low until the next entry.

Another seed found besides the Chrysopteron is hidden in the Halo 3 Comic on the Halo 3 website. Its is also a supposed artifact found by a safari guide in Tanzania. This information comes from the Society of the Ancients, or SOTA. They can be found at 206.16.223.63. This website was found by looking in parts of the comic book and has been verified to be owned by MSFT.

Other links have pointed to lyca.com and topcola.com somehow being involved. Many disagree with this but upon looking through and following up on 7499.com, I think there is something there. When you go to 7499.com, if you click the other links in the correct order it starts to fill up the green circles on the bottom. So far it appears to be a system thats based on choosing the largest or smallest number that labels the link. I got the bar filled up almost 3/4 of the way when i click a wrong link and had to start over. It also appears that if you click the links in the proper order, it is actually a story about how the British attacked New York during the Revolutionary War. I am from the area of NY where the turning point of that segment of the war took place so i noticed it immediatly. If anyone else can try this with me to see what happens if you fill up the bar completely let me know. I realize a lot of you have already accepted that lyca and topcola probably aren't part of Adjutant Reflex posts or part of the seeds that have been sown. But what if it is? Besides, AR hasn't posted yet today and since this compound intelligence has started, it has been going everyday. No reason to stop now! Is there?

This is an intense and very exciting opportunity for me to waste my summer away on. I dont even have a 360 yet and I cannot wait until Halo 3 comes out!

HD-DVD vs. BlueRay

Personally I myself have always followed the possibilities of blue lasers since I first heard about them when I was five. The possibilities for these lasers is truly amazing and was heart broken when I discovered they had went to the dark side, err I mean tagged along with Sony. Not that there is anything wrong with Sony. Sure they have the Handycam's, and they started bring back console gaming first on DVD-ROMs, but I mean hey, come on, Microsoft jumped in on it too! And now that the console war has been underway for a long time, its spawned the next-gen DVD war too. Playstation 3 comes standard with a BlueRay drive. Microsoft offers an HD DVD drive with an Xbox 360 or 360 Elite for an extra $200. And supposedly Toshiba's HD-A2 HD DVD player is the best selling stand alone next-gen player available. Which makes sense because no one buys a stand alone Blue-Ray player when you can buy a Blue-Ray player that comes with a free PS3, err I mean that the PS3 has the Blue-Disc, with the peanut butter fudge, and MP48's/cassette tape bonanza. So there are probably more Blue-Ray players out there but stores have sold more HD DVD players. But of course we all know that this years Blue-Ray Disc will lead to Red-Ray Disc (which technically are just regular DVD's but the public doesn't need to know) and HD DVD will lead to HHD DVVDD BVD. Thank you Red Vs Blue for that completely useless but very thoughtful 'Gadget' wepisode.