A while ago, I wrote a simple script to fetch pictures from one of the Mount St. Helens volcano cams. I only ran it for a short time, but I collected an afternoon’s worth of images and just now got arround to assembling them into a short MPEG movie.

The script was remarkably easy to write, using code from Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Python book. He has some code (downloadable from the website, as is the book itself) which is called openAnything which was incredibly useful, as is the discussion in the book. I urge anyone who is making programs which interface with HTTP servers to read the chapter on Web services. Great stuff.