Giving up OGame, again

 I think my last "going to stop playing OGame" post was in about 2019. And I probably had a few more before that too. I'm not sure why I keep coming back to it, probably because I've invested about six years into my current account. I'm ranked #403 in the world (last time I checked) but that's probably more due to other people moving on rather than due to any great skill or effort on my part. I doubt I'll be able to get much higher or crack into the three hundreds due to the effort levels between each rank. I'm happy when I build a big mega-ship on each of my planets, but I've been attacked by players with fleets of thousands of mega ships (and that's fleets with an "s" - plural).

The downside (upside?) of the game mechanics is that when you get attacked, the attacker can destroy all your defenses, blow up all your ships and steal all your resources, but the resource generators on the planets are untouchable. So if you get totally wiped out, you can just rebuild. So long as you're willing to invest the time and effort, there is no lose condition. By that same metric, there is also no win condition either. You can only keep playing, or stop playing.

So I'm back to giving up, again, The current plan is to keep logging in every now and then in order to keep the account active so that others can raid the planets. I'll probably log in at some stage and see a pile of resources there and start rebuilding again, but for now I'll try and keep my hands off it.

Because when it comes to games like this, the line between time "invested" and time "wasted" is very thin. On the plus side, I never spent any money on it, so there's that.

Making puppets

 No idea why, but lately I've been watching a lot of videos on how to make puppets. All sorts of different types, ranging from the "cut up old shag carpet" muppets-style monsters, to foam latex insanely-complex articulated full-feature puppets to finger puppets and "kids can make it at home from old socks" style puppets.

It's a bit silly, because although I could just use the camera on my phone (or the actual video camera that I have) to record puppet shows for free, it would still need sets, backgrounds, lighting and who knows what else to put something halfway decent together. Great if there is plenty of spare cash lying around, not so good for my circumstances.

The biggest issue is that a single puppet doing on thing on the screen is inherently boring. So I'd need some fellow puppeteers in order to have two or more characters on the screen at one time. Or green screen it and try to do the puppets separately and then composite them together. That's something I can totally do, it's just a lot of extra work... and I don't have a green screen. I used to, but I sold it years ago along with my other camera gear.

I don't know how much of a puppet-making community in this town, but I don't see it being a huge hive of activity. We're not exactly known for creative endeavors. I've also had a look at fabric prices, and that stuff isn't in the "buy a bunch on a whim" range.

Maybe have a look at animation, again? I did have a bit of a go back in 2017 (and 2007 if we count my Lego stop-motion, but I no longer have the Lego and trying to do stop motion in a house with four cats is an exercise in futility!)