Tag: christmas

On the 12th day of Kitschmas my webmaster brought to me: 12 Santa with Jesus figurines.

You betcha I ain’t kiddin’! I mean,what better way to convey to the kiddies the true meaning of Christmas in our current entertainint-driven culture than with the rotund, non-fasting, Nordic image of Saint Nicholas looking over a WonderBread white baby Jesus?

A confusing little mixed-metaphor dontcha’ think? I do. I also think this mix of Madison Avenue imagery with legal historic details is an excellent object lesson in why we need to be careful about semantics in a different light: semantic HTML.

For example, below is list of Santa with Jesus Nativity images I discovered in about 2 minutes on the web. In the past, one might use a <table> tag to render this list … but since IT IS a list of images and descriptions … why not use a list-like entity where the markup gives search engines, visually impaired seekers, and other systems and users a clue about the content in which they’re about to receive?

That is, why not use a definition list to render a list of images and their associated ‘defining’ descriptions (with typos included from the cited websites)?

Dona Gelsinger Christmas Miracle Collectible Angel Figurine: Rejoice! The beloved work of renowned artist Dona Gelsinger comes to life in this collectible Santa and angel Nativity figurine, depicting Santa and a pretty little angel worshipping at the blessed birth of the Baby Jesus. A sweet lamb and bunnies join in the miracle, making this special collectible Christmas decoration an even more adorable treasure for your holiday home!

Santa with Baby Jesus Stand: This Santa with Baby Jesus stand combines two important symbols of Christmas, Our Lord Jesus and Santa Clause.Enjoy this tall and cheerful statue with Santa holding the Star of Christmas and the Baby Jesus.This is an absolutely stunning figurine of Sants in his dark red clothing with white fur trim, holding Baby Jesus who is wrapped in a blanket. This Santa is made of Resin and stands 11 1/2″ H.

The Greatest Gift Of All Figurine: Elevate your Christmas display to a whole new level of sophistication and beauty with this elegant Christmas collectible figurine. This lovely Christ Child and Santa Claus figurine is beautifully sculpted and carefully hand-painted in resin, highlighting the poignant expression on Santa’s face as he kneels next to the smiling Baby Jesus’ manger. Real fabrics, molded and shaped by hand, are featured on Santa’s “fur”-trimmed coat and the Christ Child’s swaddling clothes.

Roman Santa Kneeling W/ Baby Jesus Ornament: Roman Santa Kneeling W/ Baby Jesus Ornament – This stone resin ornament is a licensed Roman item, has a very special message that can be taught to children and adults alike for generations to come. The message is that Christmas is not all about Sanata Claus, but rather Santa Claus also humbles himself before his maker, Jesus. Comes in attractive gift box, measures 2 1/2″

Santa & The Christ Child: There is no greater joy than watching a baby’s face at his or her first Christmas. The excitement and happiness parents feel are contagious and surely their child is not immune to the love surrounding this holy holiday. It is only fitting then, that the gentle gift bringer, Santa, comes to visit the greatest Bringer of hope, love and peace: the little Baby Jesus. As the Baby’s face lights upon seeing Santa’s gift, a cuddly teddy bear complete with big red bow, his hand reaches up to accept the precious gift. Santa’s eyes glisten as he sees the sweetness and beauty of the Baby Jesus, who, though nestled in His humble bed of straw, bears all the dignity and power of a King.

Blech!

For more on how and why semantic HTML makes more sense than the usual “code slung like hash” I suggest reading my recent post entitled: Enough with the Bread and BReakfast markup already!

For those on how and why the semantics of how and why imagery of the Coca-Cola Claus and the Uber Caucasion Christ may be sending the wrong message, may I suggest a post on the Colossians Three Sixteen blog entitled: Everybody Loves Santa Jesus!

On the 11th day of Christmas my webmaster rubbed on me – 11 “Happy Birthday Jesus” tattoos!

Just when you thought I’ve already cited and objectifried the worst in Kristshun Kitsch, the crass world of commercialization, like a good rash, provides the gifts that keep giving.

In this case it’s we’re talking “Happy Birthday Jesus” Tattoos. Yes folks, everyone knows your kids will love wearing these faith-based tattoos! Easy to apply and remove, they’re fun to find in Sunday School goody bags and Christmas stockings. So what if you send your children a mixed message later in the year when teaching Leviticus 19:28?

Which brings us to today’s object lesson, 11 blogging mistakes pastors & laypersons should avoid.

Yes, like the overzealous but ignorant Sunday school teacher who means well  rewarding their students with rub-on body markings, so too is sometimes true when an equally well meaning pastor takes over a church blog.

The result is a series of errors that plague most new to blogging, including the following:

1. Getting hung up on high-tech instead of compelling content;
2. Assuming Google will do all of your site’s ‘networking’ and ‘advertising’ for you;
3. Shoot-off-mouth first, ask questions later;
4. Shotgun topics – too many points (pellets) in one post;
5. Anemic headlines that have no zing;
6. Ignored or devalued commenters and their input;
7. Shotgun categories – not taking control of your niche of expertise;
8. Assumed it would be easy;
9. An ugly URL that is hard to remember (lest spell)
10. Know-it-all-itis
11. poorly constructed excerpts and/or lead paragraphs.

Three things I keep repeating here, and will continue to repeat:

• People don’t read the web, they scan it;
• Aggregators and search engines index and list titles and excerpts (or lead paragraphs where excerpts aren’t present) – write to that;
• We cannot serve two (or more) masters – write to a single topic, if you have more, post more tomorrow.

Bottom line, just it is our job to leave a mark on the World, not to be marked by worldlinesses – so too it’s our job to leave our mark online with our writing, rather than merely splatter senseless, non compelling markup just so you’re different like everyone else.

On the 10th day of kitschmas my webmaster threw down on me – 10 Moses Action Figures (all clutching tablets of the 10 commandments in their patented kung-fu grip!).

Seriously, todays wandering into ‘Wadi Crapola‘ was made a bit amusing by some of the descriptions given for this particular item. Of note:

Recreate theTen Commandments with this 5 1/4″ hard plastic Moses Action Figure. It has moving arms and legs, as well as removeable shepherd’s staff and stone tablets. Moses info on the package too! – Giftoplois

A description that is only topped by this one:

The story of Moses has more action than a James Bond movie. Miracles, murder, plagues, escape, betrayal – his life was filled with dramatic events and exciting adventures. With our 5-1/4″ tall, hard plastic Moses Action Figure you can recreate the entire epic saga in the comfort of your own home.

Use the removeable shepherd’s staff and stone tablets to punish your roommate with God’s plagues or deliver the Ten Commandments to your little green army men. Comes with interesting Moses info on the back of his card. – StageFight.com

For me however, I’d suggest buying this Torah Toy as an object lesson in … wait for it …

… a reminder to read my classic article entitled:

• The 10 Commandments of Church Website Search Engine Optimization

Here are the first three just to whet your whistle:

1. You shall have no text other than your church’s name, denomination, city and state correctly spelled in between the <title> tags of your church’s home page.
2. You shall not make for your self webpage description and keywords meta tags that contain key words that are not related to your church’s ministries, purpose and personality.
3. You shall have no text other than your church’s name, denomination, city and state correctly spelled in between the <h1> tag in the header of your church’s home page – even if you are using some form of CSS text/image replacement.

Now go be doers of the word, rather than mere readers!

On the 7th day of Christmas my webmaster dealt to me, a set sevens, with an ace-king kicker.

What better way to demonstrate grace than to take a bad beating on the river during a late night game of Texas hold ’em during a youth lock-in?

Sure, you’ll have to let the kiddies shave your head, but at least you didn’t lose it when you realized you were drawing dead after going all in because you came equipped with your deck of ‘Walking With Jesus’ Playing Cards.

And speaking of betting the house, it’s probably time I complain about all-Flash based web sites (again) – or that is a church and/or charity website whose webmaster wagered the entire user interface and/or navigation on a third-party plug-in technology.

Not that Adobe Flash isn’t popular, but it’s also not without it’s problems including:

• search engine hostile
• tends to break back button technology
• comparatively expensive to maintain
• more labor intensive from a smaller pool of human resources
  (often having to steal from Peter to pay the addicted Paul)
• relatively inflexible to change without a substantive investment in relational database interface
• higher user error rates than simpler forms of navigation
• long load times

Along with the above factors related to Flash itself, I’ve noted some trends in the Church website community when it comes to webmasters suffering ‘flashination‘ as they tend to:

• convert their websites into art projects
• effectively make their home page an ineffective splash page
• be geared exclusively at the 18 to 32 demographic
• attempt to compete with MTV and other media outlets

Perhaps the biggest problem I note with such sites is the trend for Flash-masters to continually “up the ante” with style over substance, in many cases because users quickly bore and/or ignore the gimmickry after the first or second use.

Well that and I often get one or more comments from webmasters – and sometimes their wives – whom have fallen in love with their creation to the point of forgetting that “You are not your user.”

Rule of thumb:  Don’t confuse a church website with … um … marital bliss

On the 6th day of Christmas my (new) webmaster crimped on me, six goose band leggings …

I didn’t think it possible to “jump the shark” with a topic as over-the-top as the 12 Days of Christmas crapola … but it appears that our misconception of culture for Christianity has taken us to new heights in coming off like a buncha babbling idiots.

Case in point, a set of ‘unique “Jesus Saves” goose leg bands‘ available on E-Bay for $12.99.

I don’t have a problem with the message, rather I’m having great difficulties in understanding how effective it is to run out to my local reservoir, tackle a wild goose without getting ‘beaked’ and then banding the poor water fowl’s leg with a context-less message is going to be read by individuals falling into one of four categories:

1. hunters
2. biologists/conservationists
3. unsuspecting drivers
4. unlucky jet pilots

In case you haven’t guessed already, today’s is conversion goals – specifically begging the question:

• What are you trying to say?
• What are your goals of what you’re saying?
• To whom are you saying it?
• How are you saying it?

For example this past November, before I went to Jordan, I learned a little bit of the Arabic language and customs because I knew my message of peace would fall fallow if I didn’t communicate it within the context of the recipient.

In terms of our object lesson, and forgetting about the unsuspecting driver and/or unlucky jet pilot, how do you suppose someone working on behalf of the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center feels when they run into one of these cryptic, unregistered and untraceable bands? Do they drop to their knees and repent – or do perhaps they say a few choice words about the amateur (and possibly unpermitted) attempt at gaming the game system to advertise?

My point simply being that “how you say it” – especially online – is as important as what you say; and I’m not talking in terms tickling one’s ears with political correctness. Instead, and for example: two websites with essentially the same information, but two entirely different approaches. You decide for yourself which one gets the job done more effectively:

• Probe Ministries
• Jesus-is-Savior.com

Put another way, you need to decide if your church and/or charity is going to convey a message that allows its recipients to soar like eagles – or present them with a dead goose. The choice is yours.

Then the Lord said to me, ‘Arise, go down quickly from here, for your web developers whom you have outsourced from India have acted corruptly. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them; they have made themselves cheap plastic pencil toppers.’ – ‘Dude’ronomy 911

On the 5th day of kitschmas my webmaster was struck down by G*d.

Why?

Because of … and let everyone sing together: “5 Jesus pencil toppers.”

I’m sorry folks, but this one bugs me at a variety of levels. In part because it’s just flat-out blasphemy by unbelievers, and those who do worship the Christ, idolatry.

“They are both stupid and foolish; the instruction of idols is but wood [or perhaps plastic?]!” – Jeremiah 10:8

Apostate or apostle, this false image of our Lord not only provides everyone with the near perfect example of how commercialism has lead some down a false path – but because this pencil topper is actually not an eraser – this plastic crap also gives us an object lesson in a not as serious sin I sometimes find on church and charity websites: faux navigation.

False navigation can come in a variety of irritating and confusing forms:

• underlining text that isn’t a hyperlink;
• formatting hyperlinks so they blend into the text;
• menu titles that do not match the title of the pages to which they are navigating;
• anchor links that effectively go nowhere; and
• DuHTML-driven drop-down and slide-in menus that don’t work the same across all browsers or user age groups

“All of them are put to shame and confounded; the makers of idols go in confusion together.” Isaiah 45:16

The point here is to realize that the primary purpose of any navigation is to get a person from point A to point B as intuitively as possible – that is without several pages and/or hours of instruction.

Here’s a good question to ask yourself regarding website navigation: if it’s not obvious, then perhaps it’s over done?

Oh and for those who’d like to discuss the finer theological points of the aforementioned merchandise, please allow me to direct you to a website I myself just discovered as I researched this item: A Little Leaven: Jesus Pencil Toppers – whose description of this item accurately asserts:

Our internal studies have shown that use of the Jesus Pencil Topper in high school classrooms reduces incidences of cheating by .001%. But, it increases blasphemies by 600%.

Tell’m Mean Dean sent ya!

On the 4th day of Christmas my webmaster brought to me, four neon colored kazoos! Yes folks, even if your singing sounds like an injured cat in a trash can, you can still harmonize with that “Mitt Romney sings your Favorite Carols with the Mormon Tabernacle” album your great aunt bought you back in 1987 when you’re equipped with one of these cheap, plastic “Jesus Loves me kazoos” pictured to the right:

Speaking of the sound of fingernails being dragged down an old, faded chalk board, I’d like to employ today’s “Kitschmas present” as a metaphor for yet another type of annoying surprise that I continue to find on a number of church websites. That is, the earsplitting gift of music – and now videos – that automatically play when the web page loads.

I mean how effective do you think a church website is that ambushes someone within earshot of their boss with some tinny rendition of Peter Schickele’s “The Seasonings” – especially in a work place where there is a sensitivity regarding music downloads and US Copyright Laws?

Fact is that though 47% of the U.S. is now online using some form of broadband, most still dislike the time it takes to load media files – not to mention the unwanted legal headaches such files present.

Fortunately services such as YouTube give content providers the opportunity to act smart by embedding a click-to-play image that we can surround with useful summaries; in turn offering the user the freedom of choice to play or not to play.

A good example is my own post entitled “Dean takes a dive in the dead sea that ‘rocks’” where I take the ‘Nestea Plunge’ into the Dead Sea with a 25lb rock on my chest – but only after providing users a brief description along with the option of clicking the play button – before showing the silly 1.5 minute video.

Point is, so long as you have the rights to the content and feel it contributes to your websites conversion goals, provide it, but in an opt-in format only. Otherwise your love comes across like a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal … or in this case, more like some krummy hot-pink kazoo in the key of B#.

On the 3rd day of Christmas my webmaster gave to me, three inflatable nativities (see enumerated image below !-)

Yes folks, nothing bring to life the miraculous birth of our Savior like some pudgy latex airbag glowing in front of your house at night.

Of course I’m being sarcastic. I mean c’mon, what’s more out of context:

1. the comfy inflatable pillow beneath the baby Jesus’ head ¹;
2. the slightly obese Mary and Joseph (apparently no shortage of eats at the inn) ²; or
3. the blizzard like conditions ³?

Obvious anachronisms aside, I’ve actually selected these bloated lawn-blimps to remind us of yet another aspect of church websites that are as equally irritating as the neighbor who positions all three of these flightless dirigibles so that their blinding glow comes pouring into your bedroom window all night.

Yes folks, I’m talking about Image Bloat – a plague so annoying that I’m told it has the potential to turn Internet seekers into flying spaghetti monster worshiping pastafarians due to the long load times of enormous images. Or as Father Flanders put it in his now famous sermon for Sunday, July 13, 2003:

Just because Jesus miraculously turned water into wine doesn’t mean he can miraculously turn your 1280- x 1024-pixel image whose file size is 1.8Mb into an image whose file size is only 74Kb just because you changed the WIDTH= and HEIGHT= attributes to WIDTH=”420″ and HEIGHT=”336″.

In other words, one of the big problems I see with so many church websites are poorly optimized graphics – so let me make this point very loud and clear:

Reducing the height and width attributes of the <IMG> tag does not, I repeat DOES NOT, physically reduce the physical size of the file. Nor does it reduce the size of the image via “color reduction.”

But rather than bore you with the math behind shaving minutes of download time to seconds by a little bit of optimization and color reduction, I’m just going to suggest 2 free solutions that will help get you started in the right direction:

• Quick Thumbnail: a software as a service that helps you resize images online
• IrfanView: a client application that also helps you both resize and crop your images

Either one will help you get the job done, and help you avoid overweight images that impede your visitors browsers slower than the idiot driving in front of you at 5mph to see some 12-foot inflatable Nativity scene that is equipped with a squeaky MIDI rendition of “Let it Snow!”