Script to monitor an URL for changes

monitor.py

import urllib
from time import sleep
from hashlib import md5
import sys

def bell():
  sys.stdout.write('\a')
  sys.stdout.flush()

def dig():
  return md5(urllib.urlopen(sys.argv[1]).read()).digest()

print 'Monitoring %s' % sys.argv[1]

d = dig()
while dig() == d:
  sleep(1)

print 'Changed!!!!!'
for i in xrange(10):
  bell()
  sleep(0.5)

Usage:

$ python monitor.py "http://example.com/"