title: Converting http request time to unix timestamp in Python
body: <p>Folks, 
    How would I convert the following string to a unix epoch timestamp?  </p>
  
  <pre><code>Thu, 03 Oct 2013 14:55:44 GMT
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can pull in the local http timestamp via the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>In [53]: now = datetime.now()
  
  In [54]: stamp = mktime(now.timetuple())
  
  In [55]: print format_date_time(stamp)
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 16:24:59 GMT
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and how would i convert the resulting unix timestamp back to the above format?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>