Martin Widlake's Yet Another Oracle Blog

My laptop has a Bug July 20, 2010

My laptop is suffering from bugs, and I’m not talking software.

It is warm and sunny here in the Southeast of England, which is not always the case during the British Summer, and I am suffering an invasion of little insects. Specifically Thrips or Thunderbugs. They are called Thunderbugs as they are supposed to appear in numbers when a thunderstorm is brewing. Like most Old Wives Tales it is utter rubbish. But kind of true too…

If you do not know, a thrip is usually a small insect about 0.15 mm wide and maybe 0.4mm long. So small, but visible. About the size of this:

,

Yep, a coma on an average LCD panel. And that is where the problem is. One has got into my laptop and under my screen and it is sure to die. It is currently scurrying around at the far left of the screen and I’m considering a mercy killing before it wanders further across the screen into prime acreage. I had this before on my old laptop. In that case it died in the middle of the screen and for ever more has looked suspiciously like a coma, or single ‘quote’, causing me confusion when it falls on top of emails, word documents and…. code. It really was a pain when it came to code. Even now, if I use that old machine it sometimes catches me out. It can merge with a letter in new and exciting ways, to subtly change a word or command.

I’m obviously not alone, a quick web search threw up some other people complaining of the same issue.

And of course it is a common knowledge that “bugs” in computing really did start out as insects getting fried in the electronics and valves of the very first machines in the mid-20th century. I wonder if that is really true or just another old myth? James Higgins seems to think it is real and who am I to doubt him. He has a photo of the evidence after all.