I'm not sure how much of a cool 'use' for Perl this is, but I find it to be a pretty cool demonstration. A cool 'abuse' for Perl, perhaps. ;-)

I don't know where or why this would be a good idea, but if you made the TDs, say, 4 by 4 and had only a small, simple graphic to generate on the fly but didn't have any graphics libs available, it might find actual use somewhere.

I must admit, the thought of using a table full of 16 * 16 PNGs for a tile-based online game has crossed my mind before. One by one is more than just a little scary, though.

In any case, this is an interesting thing you've put together.

++,
Chris

Update: corrected a typo. Thanks to John M. Dlugosz for pointing it out.