I got a new webcam yesterday, hardly exciting in regular times, kind of a sensation now.

My wife's onboard webcam started acting funky, actually looking as though the lens had been damaged, and her online students were mentioning it. I've had a few webcams over the years, aside from built-in ones in laptops, dull toys that I've usually repurposed into security cameras and then dust-bunny collectors. I'm guessing a few got tossed, but my go-to, a nice HD one with surprisingly good resolution, still works and so I repurposed that, too. She got it and I got a new one, just placed an order on Amazon with no awareness that this would be a big deal.

Meaning, apparently you can't find one now, which makes sense. Somehow I snuck under the wire or through a hole in the fence or please find your own analogy. I got lucky, and so another Covid success story. This is how it is now. Conspicuous consumption has now become all about ordinary stuff in extraordinary times.

Of course, most of us have cameras, at least in phones or tablets; this is just about convenience, about wanting to be comfortable, enjoying a Zoom conversation without holding up an iPhone at eye level. The new webcam seems to work fine, although the picture is a little blocky. We're not producing 60 Minutes here; it's fine. I just enjoyed the rarity of being a needy consumer and getting my needs taken care of.

And the other day, running my son up to the store for his weekly shopping trip, I made my usual perimeter exploration, checking out produce (we always need bananas) and my normal homage to the toilet paper and disinfectant wipe aisles.

I also went down the baking aisle, and there was a big ol' bag of all-purpose flour, 10 pounds. I'm not leaving that alone, and I know a few tricks to mess around with the protein content, so AP is fine with me.

It's been sitting on the dining room table for a couple of days, for no good reason. My wife asked me about it, not upset by it on the table (I'm just laughing at the idea of her being upset at a less-than-neat area of this house) but curious.

"Don't we have a big bag of flour down by the potatoes?" she asked. Well. It wasn't that big. And we've got a few 1-pound bags from our bimonthly delivery. We're OK on flour so far. Getting a little low on butter.

She wasn't getting after me about hoarding flour, or overspending on baking supplies. She was hinting that with all of this flour, I really didn't have an excuse not to be making cookies.

And I don't, other than the noise from the stand mixer. She's teaching in the room next to the kitchen, and even with the door closed I worry about too much racket. And she teaches a lot. That's my story.

It's probably your story, too. We're all doing bizarre things, upended by loss of routine and unplanned hours, and at the same time skipping daily habits that were once unconsciously performed. It turns out that doing nothing particularly strenuous all day long requires fewer showers, for just one example. My story, again. Your results may differ.

,,,

A group of industrious tech writers decided to test out the various video chat platforms, and their conclusions were interesting. Facebook Messenger has the best filters. Skype has the best picture quality.

And Zoom wins the all-around, in their opinion. It's fine, too. I'd probably side with FaceTime but that requires the Apple universe. I've had no problems with Zoom to speak of.

It's what our pastors at church are essentially using to produce our virtual worship services. The individual stuff, prayers and meditations and readings, are all done on personal devices, recorded and uploaded so I can grab them and edit.

The rituals and other behaviors that work best with more than one person (this is mostly virtual communion, which was a decision and I think is working well, if much differently and certainly less than it was) are done on Zoom, recorded and sent to me.

One of our pastors (this was weeks ago), waiting for his associate to get her items all in order, was fooling around and decided to entertain her by changing her name. You know, the little name box on a Zoom; he found out he could change hers, so he did. It wasn't offensive, of course, just a jokey title, but they laughed and then forgot about it until they were done.

She mentioned that she wasn't crazy about the joke name on the video and asked if I could fix it. I said sure. I meant it, too, but what I also meant was, sure, I'll watch a YouTube and see what I can do.

Here's the most basic difference between editing a photo, which a lot of people do routinely, spice up the saturation or fool around with the contrast, save and you're done, and video – at a frame rate of 30, say, for a nine-minute video that means editing slightly over 100,000 (slightly different) photos at the same time. It's not something we have to think a lot about, although it makes things different.

We've all seen blurred- or pixilated-out sections of video, somebody's face or sensitive areas of a naked body. If you're used to opening up Photoshop to make small edits to a photo, you might think, select the area, add a blur effect, save and done. That's why the difference is important.

Just a black bar over the name would have sufficed, and that's easy. The name section was pretty static, so just create an adjustment layer, slap in a picture of a black box with a transparent background, and we're good.

To get the pixilated effect, though, requires a little more effort. I'd seen it done, and I watched a YouTube and got it. Not a problem.

But it opened up a learning window for me, a primary lesson in video-editing mechanics, and everything changed. I was used to editing home videos and little videos I made to amuse myself; I had the basic skills to help us out.

Now, though, I was into the creative part, figuring out what I wanted to do, and then figuring out how to do it. I'd started walking the learning curve of editing essentials, and now I'm on the way down.

I am. The more tutorials I watch and read, the more I understand that I've finished the course. I understand the basics of video editing. I get the theory. I understand the analog connections we need to visualize (picturing strips of celluloid in your mind makes the whole thing easier to understand, as different as it is). I've got the basics.

I'm an amateur, then. Finally. I can do it for you, no problem. But that's all I can do. I can improve your slideshow. I can fix the old VHS video so it looks better. I can edit and mix audio – my best saves have been with audio, in fact. People notice a good picture but seem less concerned about audio, and sometimes audio is everything.

But I'm not going to get much better. I mean, I'm going to try; I really like editing video. I just think I've reached my limit, and that interests me.

It has to do with passion, I think, along with the way our minds work and age and experience, and then just interest. People who are good at this have spent hundreds and thousands of hours learning how to be that way. I probably won't find those hours.

It's been fun, though, and a nice distraction. The hours are horrendous, but then I have them to spare right now. I don't mind spending 40-60 hours a week producing something that helps our community stay in touch. It's my pleasure, a gift to me, a chance to be useful.

Which is, really, the way I feel about baking cookies. And that's where the passion is, anyway, and it turns out I have plenty of flour.