THX

Promo for the episode:

For those of that don't know, Midnight was featured during the filming of this 30-minute episode. The Penn and Tell film crew flew to Huntsville to spend a couple of days with Midnight late last year. During that time he held a CoD4 LAN party and the film crew filmed the LAN and interviewed some of the THXers. Most likely there will be next to no face time for any THXer other than Midnight in the final cut of the episode, however, there's no telling what will air.

Whatever the case, I think Penn and Teller are doing us gamers a favor and attempting to debunk the theory that violent video games lead to violence in young persons.

It airs tonight on Showtime at 9 CST. Check your local listings for air times and dates.

Find a few good servers and stay there

Our Halo PC dedicated server is online and running. We are getting smooth 66ms pings which will be great for gaming online.

The server is called "hushedcasket.com" in the game browser. You can join by entering "hpc.hushedcasket.com" as the IP of the server.

Tips on playing:

On XBOX Live, you hop online, you play a few games, and once you sign off that micro-community you just participated in dies.  There’s no guarantee that those good games you just had will be there the next time you join up.

By frequenting the same dedicated servers that you like, you’ll eventually notice that others frequent those servers.  A community emerges and you will have assurance that good games are to be had when you sign online.

Take some time. Find some good servers and stick in them.  THX has setup a server with classic THX gametypes on good maps. 

Over time, after enough players have been through the server, a community will form and the server will be populated with players who like to play the same gametypes and maps we do.  That is, you won’t have to play all those heavy weapons only gametypes that are flooding online Halo PC svr population.

See who is in the THX HPC server

Go here and you can see who is in the THX svr right now:  http://carnage.bungie.org/halo/HaloQuery.cgi?address=hpc.hushedcasket.com&port=2302&refresh=30 

Bookmark that link.

Create a desktop shortcut for a direct connection to the THX HPC svr

Add –connect hpc.hushedcasket.com to the end of your Target field in your shortcut’s properties so that it looks something like this like:

Here's to what was a great 2008. Enjoy your holidays and Merry Christmas.

Look out for an awesome 2009 including Midnight and some Hushed Casket members appearing in an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit! on Showtime as they investigate the effect of video games on behavior. Also, a mega LAN is being quietly discussed and may occur around the air date for that episode.

* The image has been uploaded to the Hushed Casket facebook page and tagged here.

General Info
Who: THX - Up to 34 people can comfortably fit
What: Halo 1 LAN
When: Saturday, June 7, 2008: Be There At 11AM
Where: Rayne's House outside of Huntsville, Alabama - PM Mintz for directions if you do not have them already.
Why: It's been a while since the last LAN. It's time to fire it up again. Keep your thumbs warm. Bring your controller. Yes, most of this is just copy-pasted from the last JuLAN.

Rayne is graciously opening her house for our LAN entertainment, and it's time we got together again to play Halo 1. I'm talking about lugging TVs and Xboxes from your house, four-people-per-screen, Mountain-Dew-fueled, all-night-and-into-the-morning gaming. And Chaos'/Cyneater's/Jonathan's cookies.

It's been long enough; let's do it again.

So without further ado, when should it happen?

Saturday, May 31 OR Saturday, June 7?

Update: The LAN will take place on

Saturday, June 7th.

Inform your friends and family that you will be unavailable on that date. Look for more LAN-related information in the next few days.

Today marks the date five years ago that Foulbreed and I decided to call our fledgling Halo chapter on Bungie.net "The Hushed Casket" (THX). Much has transpired between then and now. THX has ballooned to encompass over 100 people playing a multitude of games. THX'ers have participated in gaming tournaments all over the United States, and we've actually even won some of them. Our Huntsville, Alabama, based group has changed significantly since then, and because an exhaustive history is available here, in this article I will only recap the past year (August 2006 - August 2007).