Repeatedly hit the Github status API to see if it's down or not (py2/3 compatible and cross-platform)

check_gh.py

from __future__ import print_function
import requests
import os
import time


if os.name == "posix":
    def sound():
        os.system("play --no-show-progress --null --channels 1 synth 5 sin 440")
else:
    import winsound

    def sound():
        winsound.Beep(440, 5)

print("Is GitHub back yet?")
while True:
    req = requests.get("https://status.github.com/api/status.json")
    if req.json()["status"] != "major":
        break
    else:
        print("Still down")
    time.sleep(30)

print("We", req.json()["status"])
sound()