The Celtic Collection v1.0
Compilation (c)1997 by Greg Ellis and Trident Software

If you're reading this in Notepad, I suggest making
this window fulll-screen and turning word-wrap on.

   Cead mile failte!  Welcome to the Celtic Collection!  This started as a Windows 95 desktop theme, but I ended up with more than I thought I would.  You can certainly make a desktop theme out of these files, but I haven't included a .Theme file, as you will probably want to make your own combination of cursors, icons, etc.  You can explore on your own, or read on for a description of the files contained in this compilation, as well as a few tips on their use.

   I am releasing this compilation as freeware, as it contains some files of which I am not the author and do not hold the copyrights.  However, I put a considerable amount of time into drawing all the cursors, animated cursors and icons, and in searching the Web for the images, MIDI file, and assorted links.  If you enjoy the files contained here, please remember to tip your server.  I'd greatly appreciate a donation of $3 or 4.  (This will probably go to the Greg Ellis Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Treatment Fund.  I've spent far too many hours drawing those icons and cursors with my left hand locked around one of those stupid Microsoft ergonomic mice which are shaped to fit the right hand.  You'd think with 14% of the population left handed, someone would make a left handed mouse!)  Anyway, the address is:

Greg Ellis
6105 Adkins Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63116-2911 USA

   If you have any other questions, comments, requests, or files to add to this collection, feel free to Email me at gellis@stlnet.com.


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Cursors:
   As I mentioned above, I'm left-handed, and so I made a full set of these cursors for left-handed and right-handed people.  If some of you right-handed people don't think it makes a difference, try using some of the left-handed cursors for a few days and see what we go through.  Anyway, choose what set you want to use, and copy the cursors in that directory to C:\Windows\Cursors, or the Cursors folder wherever you installed Windows 95.
   From the Start menu, select Control Panel, and then double-click the Mouse icon.  Click the tab that says Pointers.  From here you can change any of the different Windows pointers.  Select the one you want to change and click the Browse button, then select the cursor you want to use.  All of these cursors start with either "il" or "ir" for left or right, so you should find them grouped together in the listing.  You can choose from either the cursor files (*.CUR) or the animated cursor files (*.ANI).
   I would recommend that the Irish Flag and Celtic Knot animated cursors only be used as your Busy pointer, as they do not have a "hot spot" point on them.

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Fonts:
   I have found several TrueType fonts which describe themselves as being Gaelic or Irish in appearance.  Simply copy *.TTF to your Fonts folder wherever you have installed Windows 95.  If they don't appear immediately when you try and use them, either reboot your PC, or go to the Control Panel, select Fonts, and select Refresh from the View menu.
   You can preview these fonts before installing them just by double-clicking them from the Explorer window, that way you can see what the font names will be once they are installed and you can decide which ones you want.
   If you want to use any of these as your Windows font, right-click somewhere on the desktop background, then select Properties from the pop-up menu.  Select the tab labeled Appearance.  From here, select the item you want to change: active title bar, icon, menu, message box, and so on.  Set these to the font you want to use and the font size if you want to change it, then hit Apply or OK when you have made all the changes you want.

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Icons:
   You can do whatever you like with these icons, but I primarily designed them for replacing the standard desktop icons.  You can easily do this if you have installed Microsoft Plus!, but you can also do this even if you don't have them.  Warning: This requires editing the Windows 95 Registry, and if you haven't done this before, this may not be the best time to start.  These directions will work if you follow them correctly, but if you start changing or deleting keys in your Windows 95 Registry, you could totally and irrevocably trash your system, requiring Windows or other software to be installed.  Be very careful!
   If you have Plus!, just right-click on the desktop, select properties, and go to the Plus! tab.  Change the icons for My Computer, Network Neighborhood, and Recycle Bin full and empty.  Hit OK or apply and you're done.

   If you don't have Plus!, here's what you can do:
In the ICONS directory, there is a file called "Irish Desktop Icons DON'T CLICK ME YET!.TXT"  Now, double-click this file to edit it.  You will see a string of letters and numbers ending in 'DefaultIcon', then below that a file name.  You will see this for the My Computer, Network Neighborhood, and Recycle Bin icons (this one has more than one).  DO NOT change anything but the file names listed, and change them to point to the full path and file names of the icons you want to use.  Enter the new names in the same format, using double slashes in the file name, like @="C:\\WINDOWS\\IRISH ICONS\\IRELAND MAP.ICO,0"
The ,0 at the end is important.  For .EXE files or other files which contain more than one icon, this tells Windows which one to use.  For .ICO files which obviously only contain one icon, just add ,0 to the file name.
   For the Recycle bin, there are three icons: the full, empty, and default.  The default should be the same as the full.  Windows just displays this briefly at startup while it's checking to see if there are files in the recycle bin.
   If you don't want to change one of these icons, delete the 3 lines from the one beginning with ; to the one with the file name, or in the case of the Recycle Bin, the 5 lines starting with ;Recycle Bin.
   Once you have typed in the icon file names exactly as they are on your hard drive, then exit Notepad.  Click on this text file, then select Rename from the file menu.  Rename it to Irish Desktop Icons.REG.  This will tell Windows that this is a Registry patch.  Double-click this file, and your changes will be applied to the registry.  You will see these changed icons when you reboot, or you can click on the desktop background to select it, then press F5 to refresh the desktop.
   If you want to set these back to their original state, rename the file called "Original Desktop Icons DON'T CLICK ME YET!. txt" to have the extension .REG instead of .TXT.  Before you rename it, if you have installed Windows 95 to a directory other than C:\WINDOWS, you will need to edit this file accordingly.  Double click this REG file and it will reset your desktop icons to their original settings.

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Wallpaper:
   I have enclosed a selection of Irish graphics and photos that I have found.  A few are pictures I took on my honeymoon, but most are courtesy and copyright U. S. News and World Report at http://www.usnews.com.  The Guinness graphics are of cource copyright of the Guinness Brewing Company at http://www.guinness.ie.
   The "Guinness logo.bmp" and "shamrock tile.bmp" are small enough that you would want to tile them as background, but you would want to set the others as centered.  There are two ways that you can set these as wallpaper: 1) Copy these to your Windows directory, right-click on the desktop, select Properties, and from the Background tab, select the wallpaper from the list.  2) Leave these bitmaps wherever they are, then double-click on the bitmap file to start the Paint program.  From the file menu, select "Set as Wallpaper (Centered)" or "Set as Wallpaper (Tiled)".

   If you set these as centered, most will not exactly fit your screen size.  There is a way to automatically stretch your desktop wallpaper to fit your screen.  If you have Microsoft Plus!, then right click on the desktop, select Properties, and from the Plus! tab, turn the "Stretch desktop wallpaper to fit the screen" setting on or off as needed.
   If you don't have Plus!, you can still use this feature of Windows 95.  In the folder with the wallpaper, there are two files with the .REG extension on the file names.  DO NOT EDIT THESE!  These will modify the information in your Windows 95 Registry.  They work fine as they are, but you assume full responsibility for their use, especially if you change them.  If you double-click the "Stretch Wallpaper to Fit the Screen.reg" file, from then on, if you set a bitmap file to be your wallpaper, and it is not the same size as your current screen, it will be stretched so that it displays in full-screen.  (Your actual file won't be changed, just how it displays.)  If you double-click the "Don't Stretch Wallpaper.REG" file, your wallpaper will display in the normal manner, centered on the screen with a solid border around it if it isn't as big as the screen.
   If your current wallpaper is set to display tiled, you won't see any difference with this settin on or off.

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Links:
   Point your Web browser at some of these sites.  I did not include a lot of these as the ones I did include have lots of links of their own.  If it's Irish-related, you'll find it on one of these sites.

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Other Stuff - just some things I've found that you might like.
   Ireland Map (no cities).BMP - 160 x 160 bitmap - map of Ireland.
		     (I used this to create the Ireland map icon.)
   Ireland Map.BMP - Same as above, but with the major cities labelled.
   Ireland Map.GIF - Only useful if you do Web sites.  The same as above with
                     cities labelled and a transparent background for Web 
		     pages.  Special thanks to whatever Web site I found this
		     on.  If it hadn't been 2 AM, I would have remembered to
		     write down the name of the site to give them credit.
   Shamrock 64x64.BMP - Just a bigger shamrock bitmap.
   Shamrock animated.GIF - A spinning shamrock animated GIF file for Web 		     pages.
   Guinness Pint.GIF, .BMP, Harp Pint.GIF, .BMP - Images from the Guinness
		     Web site.
   Bitmaps as icons.reg - Double-click this Windows 95 registry patch and
		     you will see a thumbnail image of a bitmap as the icon
		     when you look at the files in Explorer, instead of the
		     standard icon for bitmaps.  Don't use this without
		     reading the information on the Windows 95 Registry
		     above.  This is harmless and will work fine, but you
		     assume all responsibility for changing your registry.
   Irish National Anthem.MID ( and .TXT) - A MIDI file of the National
		     Anthem, along with a text file of the words in Gaelige
		     and English.
   Irish MIDI Files.ZIP
		     This is a collection of Irish MIDI files I found.
		     I am trying to find my way back to the site where
		     I found it, so I can give the creator the proper
		     credit.  You may want to listen through all of
		     these if there's something you're looking for,
		     since many Irish songs use the same tunes as.  For
		     example, "derryair.mid" (Londonderry Air) is the
		     same tune as Danny Boy.  (unless this was a mistake.)

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A note on MIDI files:
   MIDI files (Musical Instrument Digital Interface, I think) are not actual recordings - think of them as digital sheet music.  They contain only the information needed to play a piece of music - codes for the musical notes, the time, the instruments used, and so on.  While their primary use is with MIDI-enabled musical instruments, these files can be played back on a Windows PC as long as you have not deleted the Windows Media player (MPLAYER.EXE) from your Windows folder.  You must have a sound card installed on the PC.  To play a MIDI file, just double-click it, and the Media player will load.  It looks a lot like a tape recorder - just puch the Play button if it doesn't automatically start playing when you load it.
   You can play a MIDI file when Windows starts, but it's a little bit difficult.  What you have to do is:
1) Right-click on the Windows 95 taskbar
2) Select properties
3) Go to the tab marked "Start Menu Programs".
4) Click "Add".
5) For the command line, type in the following:
"C:\WINDOWS\mplayer.exe" /play /close "C:\File location\Your Midi file.MID"
(include the quotes, enter the location of your MIDI file, and change the beginning if you installed Windows to a directory other than C:\WINDOWS.)
6) Add this shortcut to Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

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Screen saver
   So far, I haven't found any screensavers that were particularly Irish, other than the one that you can download from the Guinness web site.  The URL to get it is http://www.guinness.ie/hours/screensaver.html - you can download it from there.  If anyone has any good screensavers of an Irish nature, please let me know.

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   If you have any files which you think should be added to this collection, then Email them to me at gellis@stlnet.com and I'll add them and give you credit if you want.

I hope you enjoy this collection of files.  Slainte!

Greg Ellis

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Credits:
Guinness logo copyright the Guinness Brewing Company, http://www.guinness.ie
Some photos copyright U. S. News and World Report, http://www.usnews.com
All icons and cursors (c)1997 by Greg Ellis and Trident Software.