The Choose Your Own Adventure README for Nova:

  You have come across a cloud computing fabric controller.  It has identified
  itself as "Nova."  It is apparent that it maintains compatibility with
  the popular Amazon EC2 and S3 APIs.

To monitor it from a distance: follow @novacc on twitter

To tame it for use in your own cloud: read http://nova.openstack.org/getting.started.html

To study its anatomy: read http://nova.openstack.org/architecture.html

To dissect it in detail: visit http://code.launchpad.net/nova

To taunt it with its weaknesses: use http://bugs.launchpad.net/nova

To watch it: http://hudson.openstack.org

To hack at it: read HACKING

To laugh at its PEP8 problems: http://hudson.openstack.org/job/nova-pep8/violations

To cry over its pylint problems: http://hudson.openstack.org/job/nova-pylint/violations