I've Died and Gone to Devon re-purposes a Python script by Nick Montfort to tell (and retell) the story of an arrival and first impression of Devon. Most of the sentences in this story were adapted from Twitter posts written during a five-week visit to Devon, August - September, 2009.
I've died and gone to Devon. In North America, roads this narrow wouldn't even count as driveways. If this is the wrong side of the road, I don't care what's right. If this is the driveway, then I can't wait to see the house. We can't hear the river from the house, but we can see it. Everybody insists we're by the seaside. I can smell but not see the sea. Flotsam on a tidal river is a strange mixture of oak leaves and seaweed. This is an achingly beautiful place to come across a little death.
To view the Python version, Download the file http://luckysoap.com/stories/Devon.zip to your desktop and unzip. On a Mac or Linux system, you can run the story generator by opening a Terminal Window, typing "cd Desktop", and typing "python filename.py". Hint: look for Terminal in your Utilities folder. On Windows, you will probably need to install Python first: version 2.6.5. Once Python is installed you can double click on the file and it will automatically launch and run in the terminal window. Every time you press ENTER a new version of the story will appear.