~$ sudo pip install blinkstick
Downloading/unpacking blinkstick
Cannot fetch index base URL https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement blinkstick
Cleaning up…
No distributions at all found for blinkstick
Storing debug log for failure in /home/cursist/.pip/pip.log
This seems like it could be an issue with pip and OpenSSL. A quick search on Google revealed a few results which tell to downgrade pip to 1.2.1 version:
BTW, are you able to access the https://pypi.python.org/simple/ from your browser? Also could you check if you have all Ubuntu updates installed?
As an alternative option, you can download and install pip packages manually. Here is how you can do that.
- Download pyusb 1.0.0b1
- Download BlinkStick Python Package
Once you have them, you can install them manually by running
sudo pip install path/to/package.tar.gz
Make sure you install pyusb first and only after that BlinkStick Python package.
Hope this helps!
manual installation worked, thx
Glad to hear it worked for you! 
BlinkStick module for Python wiki has lots of examples on how to write your own code to control BlinkStick.
Let me know if you need any further assistance and happy hacking! 