Spent the first day of my leave productively, doing DIY and all kinds of cleaning. Slipped out this afternoon to catch one of the GBRf worked stock moves to Laira. These seem to happen when I'm either at work, or out of the area so this was something of a novelty for me.

Back to argue with the bank about an error which they admit, but don't seem to want to put right...

Not strictly a Highbridge related tale, but a cautionary pointer from a plastic seabird in a near neighbour!

Recently, new signage was erected all over Weston-super-Mare in an effort to make the town 'legible' to visitors. The new signage was plagued with errors, omissions and the inclusion of strange details which were unlikely to interest even the most avid fan of the slowly decaying resort. Tonight, as I made my way home via the railway station, I noted the allegedly humourous comedy seagull which sits atop the sign had apparently tired of his vigil over the hordes who pour out of town to jobs in Bristol each day. Or, more possibly perhaps, locals had brought the country into town with a good old fashioned duck hunt?

The gull seems to point to a potential future for the town. At a time when Weston struggles to redefine it's purpose and to attract serious business to an area which couples commuter-belt affluence with some of the most deprived wards in the country, a nosedive seems worryingly close. The parallels with the reinvention of Highbridge as a low-income dormitory outwith Burnham's walls are troubling,

In a casual conversation with a work contact last week, we got to discussing Highbridge. He'd recently flown his Microlite Aircraft over the town, and had taken some photographs for colleagues concerned about changes to the road layout. When I mentioned that the development site was on my doorstep, he offered to share some of the images with me. The southern part of Highbridge from the air appears surprisingly green and spacious. Comparing the image below with the same site on Google Maps highlights the absence of the industrial units and bus garage which defined this part of town.

I notice too the intrusion of Newtown Lake into the top left of the picture. It's interesting that this represents a bit of Highbridge I rarely think of or see, which is shockingly close by when viewed from the air. What is even more striking is the size of the new development, and how it will dominate the town once opened in November.

A larger image is here.

Once again, a patch arrives from the ether which reminds me people are still using Inkblot. I'm always pleased to hear from people who've made something I wrote years back do what they need it to now, and I was delighted to receive an email from Stian Jordet which ports a fix for trayicons on transparent panels to Inkblot, meaning it won't look weird on newer, eye-candy intensive setups! Seriously, this is the kind of work which prevents a fairly old piece of code from getting stale and falling out of use. Keep the patches coming.

Unfortunately, no time for screenshots this time - but I'd be happy to see pictures of the application in action. Instead, here are the important bits:

• Inkblot project page at gnomefiles.org
• Download Inkblot Source (tar.gz)
• libinklevel project page at Sourceforge