The Cat's Chair, Interactive Edition

I spent the whole of yesterday working on this: The Cat's Chair. It's a 2009 (or was it 2008?) short story that I wrote, which I've now taken and converted into a semi-interactive digital reading experience.

From the about page:

This project is an exercise in character. I have no control over the names each reader may choose to use for their reading of the story — or, indeed, should they choose not to set names of their own and read the story with names chosen by the reader before them.

This naturally makes it tricky for a reader to refer to the characters of the story — for instance, how might I talk of the protagonist if her name changes with every reading? How am I to talk about the Evil Cat (the antagonist in this piece) when his name changes according to the whims of a reader?

The Cat's Chair, written under the pseudonym Eli James in 2009, has been edited no less than five times, and once more in preparation for this project. It has an off-beat, quirky tone to it; something that I have attempted to maintain despite the change in medium.

My hope is that your reading of this narrative would be truly unique, small as these differences may be. For we do know that names do change our perception of character; The Cat's Chair is written to be geographically neutral, and it doesn't take much imagination for the story to change, should one enterprising reader switch all the names to Russian!

I'd love it if you give it a try — I, for one, think that all the cats in the story are rather cute.

Courage, My Friend

I'm programming right now, so I'll make this quick — just to record a few thoughts I had this morning.

I learned today that St Thomas's Junior Team dropped out from Swinburne WSDC, because a member of theirs got scared and pulled out from the team. As a debate coach, I used to find this sort of thing despicable. (I still do, to be honest). With that said, there isn't anything new about this when you're working with high school kids. I've lost count of the number of times I've had to sit down with a scared first-timer, and talk to him into joining a competition. "It'll be alright." I tell him. "You'll thank me for the experience." (The ones who do go almost always do).

Sometimes they listen, and go to Swinburne, pale-faced and clammy at the start of the tournament. Other times they make some lame excuse and drop out, and let their team-mates, their school, and their coach down.

The funny thing about these kids is that I find the ones who dared — the ones who were brave enough to go, who were willing to swallow their fear and fight for their school — more impressive as individuals. And almost everyone I've met in Uni who've done cool things have this element of facing up to their fears and conquering them. Regardless of whether it's applying for a scholarship, or applying for an internship (I have two friends who are going to intern at Facebook, and then later Google, this summer), or tackling some new problem in a field they know little about.

Now, I'm not saying that the kids who don't conquer their fears would end up as failures in life. Life is too long and too random to predict anything of the sort. (It's fair to assume that some of them would come into their own in Uni, after all — and I really hope that they do). But by and large, I'd say that the people who matter — the ones who change things, in the world — are the ones who face their fears, swallow bile, and conquer them.

In this way, all the kids who attended Swinburne today are winners. Each and every single one of them. The ones who dropped out of WSDC— or worse, the ones who dropped out and caused their team-mates the opportunity of going and learning — are the real losers of this tournament. My only hope is that they grow up to realize that.