Update your Twitter profile color in a day-night gradient cycle

twitter-gradient.py

from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from PIL import Image
import twitter

def clock_fraction():
    'Return time since midnight rescaled to [0, 1); e.g. 0.5 is noon.'
    now = datetime.now()
    midnight = now.replace(hour=0, minute=0, second=0, microsecond=0)
    return (now - midnight) / timedelta(days=1)

# Log in to Twitter. .twitter is four lines:
# Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token Key, Access Token Secret
with open('/home/lynn/.twitter') as f:
    api = twitter.Api(*f.read().split())

# Index into the gradient and update the profile color. gradient.png is a 24x1 image.
colors = list(Image.open('gradient.png').getdata())
i = int(clock_fraction() * len(colors))
api.UpdateProfile(profile_link_color='%02X%02X%02X' % colors[i])