Longlunch Utility

Introduction

The longlunch utility is a tcl/tk script that will run on any platform that has tcl/tk installed. It allows you to maximize your leisure time at work by presenting a impressive looking GUI to the world that makes it appear that you are doing some highly significant and time-consuming. If anyone asks you what you're up to, you merely have to point at the GUI, which is seemingly computing something, and shrug. Of course, absolutely nothing is happening. Nice!

The way the utility is configured presently, it looks vaguely plausable, (and I stress, vaguely, in a computer graphics environment. If you are an accountant, or a coroner perhaps, you might want to configure the utility, so that it displays more appropriate tasks. Like, uhm, "Brain Saw Sharpening Algorithm," or "Blood Splatter Recognition," or whatever it is that you might do in your daily life at work. NOTE: Preceding example was for CORONER, not ACCOUNTANT, please make careful note or be prepared for a hasty visit to HR.

longlunch utility

System Requirements

You must have tcl/tk installed on your machine. This utility should run on Windows Macintosh or Linux. Who knows, it might even run on Solaris. You can download tcl/tk here. Alternately, if you are running Houdini Apprentice, it should be included in the GNU tools.

Customisation

You can customize the GUI in two ways. You can either edit the text in the code directly, (and it is very easy if you take a look), or, if you include a file in your home directory called .longlunch, the list of passes in the interface will be read from that file. For example, your file might look like this, (one entry per line):

Toaster Buffing
Hasselhoff Extraction
Anna Magdalena Notenbüchlein

... and the GUI would look like this:

longlunch GUI

Acknowledgements

Some of the code for this utility was found on the internet. Unfortunately, I have no idea who wrote it. I probably got if from comp.lang.tcl group on Google. The original longlunch utility was allegedly something that used to come with 3D Studio Max, although I have no idea if this is true.

Download

View longlunch here or right click and save to download.