Moon Cursor is copyright 1989 by Jim Trudeau, 5 Broadmoor Drive, Cumberland Center, ME USA 04021. Moon Cursor is distributed for free under the Happiware system, which means if you like it, remember to smile. If you think it is worth the bother (and you live outside of Maine), send me a postcard of where you live. Pretty stamps are appreciated in this household. I can be reached on GEnie at JTRUDEAU2. Anyone may upload this little ditty to any bulletin board or electronic retrieval system, provided this documentation accompanies Moon Cursor.
Moon Cursor replaces the spinning wristwatch in the Finders accompanying systems 6.0 and 5.0. On any occasion when the hands on the wristwatch would toll the time, you will have the phases of the moon to keep you company.
To install Moon Cursor, open it using ResEdit. Then select both the acur and the CURS resources (shift/click on both). When they are both highlighted, choose COPY from the Edit menu, or type command-C. Then close Moon Cursor. Still in ResEdit, open the Finder you wish to change. Once the finder is open, choose Paste from the Edit menu, or type command-V. ResEdit automatically replaces the wristwatch with the moon phase cursor. Save the new Finder, quit ResEdit, and you are all done. Very simple. To see the new cursor, replace your current finder with the revised version you just created. Then do something that takes time, like opening a big folder or copying a file.
As always (and especially in ResEdit), work on a COPY of both Moon Cursor and the Finder you are changing.
The moon in Moon Cursor is astronomically accurate within the limits of the cursor size and shape. The grey areas are the maria, or "seas" on the face of the moon. In fact these are large relatively flat areas formed by volcanic activity after the moon was heavily cratered during its formation. The maria are relatively darker than the highlands and craters and so appear grayish to our eyes when we look at the moon.
Moon Cursor runs through 24 separate images. Since the lunar month is about 28.5 days, this gives us about one image per day for the lunar cycle. Twenty-four being a nice, even number, creating 24 images with regular changes between them was far easier than doing the same for 28. If you have two floppy disk drives, I have found the smoothest animation is while making a disk-to-disk copy in system 6.0. Enjoy.
