Harry's Place still an irrelevant echo chamber for wankers. Film at ten. Penny Red called them on their irrelevance and tendency to attack the messenger rather than the message, and Harry's Place piled on in, er, an attack on the messenger without challenging the message. We find that to be a cowardly approach, conceding the points the original poster was making. So, yes, by their own admission, Harry's Place is an irrelevant echo chamber for wankers. Wankers who wouldn't know a semi-colon if one came up and bit them in the dotty.

As we said a month back, if there's a memorandum amongst male bloggers not to link to women, then no-one bothered to copy us in. Wouldn't be the first time, as we explicitly reject the male norm of big! Big! BIG! Meanwhile, we abstain from attacks against people as people. We will attack their ideas, we will criticise their policies (and criticism need not be negative).

Why are we breaking the habit of a lifetime and attacking Harry's Place as a single entity, when we know it's a group effort? Because it appears to speak with one voice, and to such an extent that the casual reader will assume it is a homogenous echo chamber. Penny Red asks us to criticise her on her politics and language (which we can't honestly do) or on her use of semi-colons; anyone who can punctuate properly is doing very well in our book. Applying the same standard to Harry's Place, we find language being abused to the point of incoherence, and the apostrophe cops gave up long ago. But, most of all, we find a political view that is excludes anyone who doesn't agree with their accepted groupthink. Commentators compete to come up with a more extreme, more vituperative, more bigoted piece of abuse, while praising the trolls and wankers already posting. It's a mob, and mobs don't think.

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The highest rating for a non-terrestrial channel is 2.86m. It's been recorded twice - under the current ratings system on 24 October 2004, for The Sports Channel's live coverage of Manchester United -v- Arsenal, which was going to be Arsenal's 50th consecutive league game unbeaten, except they lost it. 2.86m was also noted under the old ratings system on 16 January 2000, for Friends 6.01, "The One After Vegas"; The Satellite Channel had first-run rights to the sitcom, and this episode resolved the question of whether Ross and Rachel did or didn't get wed.

Interesting links... Broadcast for Schools, a look back at the educational programmes on the BBC and IBA.

Station plans, maps and plans of almost every railway station in the country. The one we've picked is of London Euston. If you turn javascript on, there are appropriate photos for where your mouse is.

Oyster PAYG on the trains: some details, 853blog discusses how the new cashless tickets will work on overground trains, with a special emphasis on commuters from the 853 area.

Artcles... Het Grauniad investigated the practices of Waterstones, which it accuses of killing bookselling. The fundamental problem is that people see books as a status symbol, something to have around, and not as resources to tap into. Is there really a place for fifteen ghost-written «autobiographies» of Jordan, when we know exactly why he's famous?

Things darkies say explores how Tw*tter told its South African customers that they couldn't use their native word for old black people, because some thin-skinned morons from Moronica didn't get the joke. It's satire, of course the Moronicans won't get the joke. We remain worried that Tw*tter is acting as yet another agent of Moronican imperialism, by telling speakers of English what they can and can't say.

Speaking of morons, Johann Hari explores the bollocks of Ayn Rand, that well-known purveyor of ludicrous schlock. He ends the piece by comparing Rand to Elron Tubbard, another failed sci-fi author who pretended to be religious for tax reasons. Though Rand's line of nonsense stands up to no more scrutiny than the Scientologists' creed, there's no widespread movement debunking her line in bull.

Someone claiming to be Belle du Jour appeared in yesterday's papers. Was the whole blog a work of fiction from the start?, asks Seth Finkelstein. We don't know, we don't frankly care very much.

Dollhouse is dead? Not before time. An entirely icky concept - half of this blog's chums wouldn't go near it with a bargepole, some dubious acting, a central character that resolutely refuses to learn anything. There's potential for a fine episodic ensemble series, but this certainly wasn't it. For our money, that makes Joss Wheedon responsible for one hit (Buffy), one satisfactory series (Firefly), and two shows with badly flawed central premises (Angel, Dollhouse).

We have been enjoying Andrew Marr's History of the Twentieth Century, though we can't tell you precisely how much, that's covered by an injunction. Or the host's ears. Also had a good time with Mercer Night on Radio 2 last Friday, three hours exploring the career of Johnny Mercer, everyone's fourth-favourite person from Queen Georgiana's Land.

Sports news, and the Sindytab reports from the world memory championships. Ben Pridmore won, which probably doesn't count as a spoiler. Does that qualify him for inclusion in the round-up of British champions on BBC Sports Review of the First Eleven-and-a-half Months of the Year? Probably not.

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Hullo! Do you have a question about computers? BBC Owl is here to set you straight about the workings of the micro. Our question tonight is from Midhat of Middlesbrough, who writes,

I bought a laptop a few months ago and it has developed a habit of turning itself off from time to time without warning. My suspicion is that the heat sensor is doing its job; there is a vent blowing out hot air, but at a fairly weedy rate. It sometimes seems to be more prone to turning itself off when the air vent is at all blocked. The bottom of the computer is pretty warm in use.

Yes, these are all signs that your computer is overheating. You will want to make sure that the computer is on a sturdy surface, with a good flow of air underneath, so that the cooling fan can do its job. Despite their names, laptops shouldn't be used on laps unless you have a tray to work from. Do you, perchance, live with some animals that like sitting in a hot draught and shed hair into the vent?

We live in a house with two big hairy cats that like to sit near the vent to get the blast of hot air and I have a suspicion that it's not impossible that some of the stray cat hair (which gets, near enough, everywhere in this house) may be blocking up the fan and thus hindering it from doing its cooling job. We own a can of compressed air. Would there be any downside to just spraying the vent with the can of compressed air to see what happens? Is there a better way to clean the fan? Is there a better laptop cooling solution that I should consider? Many thanks in advance for your advice!

Turning off the power, removing the battery, and blowing compressed air into the vent will clear it of pet hair, if that is the fundamental problem. You may also wish to see how the laptop works while connected to the power cord but without the battery - if this cures the problem, the battery needs to be replaced.

It could also be that the fan itself is covered in dust. If you're confident, you can remove the keyboard fascia and blow compressed air into the innards; if you're not confident, any decent computer repair shop will do this for a signed photograph of Ian McNaught-Davis. Or £50.

Do you have a problem with your computer? Have you spent four years trying to load a game on your BBC Model B? Is your acoustic coupler losing its flavour on the bedpost overnight? Send your problems to BBC Owl, c/o Making the Most of the Micro. If you're connected to a BBS, our electronic mailbox is uk!org!bbcnc@owl

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Punchdrunk are to interactive theatre as Take That were to pop music circa 1993: everything they touch turns to gold, they attract a fanatical following, and their works will still look fresh in fifteen years time. Shunt are East 17: there's a lot of raw talent in there, but they've not yet left a lasting classic - reviews of their current project Shunt leave us in mind of such non-classics as Slow it down. Slung Low? The theatrical equivalent of Let Loose: they made one good play, and everything else is remarkably similar.

They Only Come Out at Night is staged in a car park. To be specific, it's staged in a car park underneath the Barbican centre in London, and with most of the lights turned out. Our driving friends tell us there's a certain frisson of nervous tension when in an underground car park, because it's not easy to see around corners. We don't drive ourselves, so we'll take their word for it; we found it to be a dark space, a slightly claustrophobic space, with ceilings lower than a house, but not innately tense.

The viewing arrangements are to go around in groups of three; with a run of three-and-a-half weeks, that works out at about 1000 tickets. As we meet the third member of our party, we're sent into a car, where there's an apology. The show we're about to watch has been cancelled, and instead we'll be taken on a tour of the city. It lasts about 40 seconds, and we're deposited at the entrance to an underground car park, covered with white plastic sheeting. We're issued with head torches, glowsticks and headphones, pointed at one of three trails of salt, and left to get on with it.

(More: What happened when we got on with it?)

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