👽 Lee Tusman

Technology Simply Explained

2021

Most years I participate in National Novel Generating Month, also known as NaNoGenMo, an intentionally funny idea for programmers to write software to generate a novel each November, coinciding with the national and more well-known National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This was the fourth iteration of NaNoGenMo I participated in. I browsed the Project Gutenberg website looking for public domain books for inspiration, with the idea that maybe one or more could serve as a corpus of text I could use. I stumbled across the book Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained and was inspired by its language, especially its introducion

My object in placing this handbook before the reader is to provide him with a simple and straightforward explanation of how and why a gas engine, or an oil engine, works. The main features and peculiarities in the construction of these engines are described, while the methods and precautions necessary to arrive at desirable results are detailed as fully as the limited space permits….

Based on this quote I came to a concept and then worked to turn this into generative software. The completed program is capable of producing an endless supply of different versions of Technology Simply Explained.

Links

Complete book (PDF, one of infinite variations)

Detailed project writeup

Development log