Ant Farm
May 24, 2006
There is a bug stuck inside my Cinema Display. I never realized that the image of what’s displayed on an LCD is actually projected up onto the top glass surface. The bug can crawl deeper into the picture, looking translucent and barely visible, or right up to the surface where it’s so noticeable that I still fight the urge to swat it off the screen. I have no idea how to get him out, so for now I just have to hope that when he dies, he’ll die off-screen, Leo McGarry-style. Credit to Keegan for giving me the idea to film it.
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That’s both funny and crappy at the same time. Like you said, hope the bug dies off-screen. :-)
Hah, I’ve never heard of that happening before. Good luck with that – let us know how it goes.
That’s awful, I’m sorry for you I imagine how painful do you feel, can’t you just hit it when it’s walking at the corner.
Another Safari rendering bug? ;)
Can you send it to Apple Care? You’d think the thingd be sealed off…
Would you mind telling me what the name of the song is that is playing in the background? Thanks.
It’s Aimee Mann’s “One.” It’s a cover, originally recorded (I think) by Three Dog Night. It’s been done by a ton of different artists through the years.
Bonus points to anyone who knows what soundtrack the song is from. I’ll give you a hint. It’s the name of an up and coming social bookmarking site that recently released the 1.0 version of its API.
I’m guessing I’m excluded from the disbursement of bonus points, Alex? :)
Every time I watch the video, when it’s over, I think to myself “much much worse than two.” Why didn’t I make it 3 seconds longer?
I’m guessing possibly Magnolia? I don’t know much of her work, but I know she was on that one.
Regarding the bug, have you tried sucking it out with a vacuum?
Matt, you are not allowed to join in on the obscure competition for “Bonus Points”. Jason wins the prize. You can redeem your bonus points at an unforseeable time in the future.
Vacuuming’s not a bad idea, although I’m not sure where I’d start… but the good news is that the bug appears to have either gotten lost somewhere deeper in the display or found his way out. I haven’t seen him all day. I’ll miss that lil’ feller.
I had this happen to me, actually. Don’t vacuum.
Here’s what I did:
I propped my cinema display flat on the ground. There are vents where animals can get in and out, obviously. I put a flashlight near the vent and covered the rest so that light wouldn’t get in elsewhere. Then I put it in a closet. I also put a tiny bit of food near the flashlight.
I figured the ant would be drawn to the light and food and would eventually climb out.
I waited 24 hours. I plugged the display in and… no more ant.
It freaked me out when I saw the ant in there. I waited for it to wander near a corner that I didn’t care about so I could try to “squish” it, but as you found out, that’s not possible.
I have a bug stuck in the apple on the back of the powerbooks lid, it bleeding well died right in the middle and I keep meaning to take it out by opening the screen up, but its amusing when you show someone the powerbook and they try to rub it off.
Rather than a flashlight, food and a closet I suggest a space shuttle (working), a bag of potato crisps and an inanimate carbon rod. Probably less effective, undoubtably more expensive, but much funnier…
I had a family of moths living in my big screen TV for a couple of weeks. They seemed to have all died off as I haven’t seen any for over a week now. Good luck getting it out!
Dammit! This happened with my Samsung LCD! The damn bug crawled around for about a day and then decided to die exactly at my eye level! I’ve learned to live with it…
Ouch. Too soon with the West Wing joke. Some of us are still morning.
Ooh I’ve got one of those in my iPod. Too bad he’s dead and can’t crawl out.
I had exactly the same experience with my 23” Cinema Display when I got it 3 years ago. The bug crawled around the screen for a couple days, then disappeared. His decaying carcass is probably still somewhere in the case.
Good luck.
There’s a “Debug” menu clearly visible in the beginning of the video… Try looking in there.
Re: Leo McGarry — John Spencer was my favorite actor. Consider it an homage.
That is too funny … and to think of the fame ONE got from this :) Thanks for sharing this :)
oh, that just sucks. I’m soooo sorry.
Apple should send you a brand new one, just because
Damn, that sucks. Good luck!
Oh man. That is rough. The bug inside of my cinema ended up eating away all the pixels, which ruined my monitor (kidding). Seriously though, when that bug runs out of oxygen, he will drop like a sack-a-taters and you will never see him again.
I had an insect in my old Compaq iPAQ H3600, you could see it crawling around, but it wasn’t that big, when it crawled around it all you could see was a small white dot moving.
Heh, it was damn funny. I don’t know what insect it was, guess it died already, and if the insect hasn’t died then the iPAQ’s battery sure did ;)
That’s simply unbelievable! ;-)
How can you be so sure it’s real? If I were in the business of writing viruses, I would write them just like this. Annoying, but harmless. And funny.
Okay, watching this (from digg) I thought about halfway through that, Oh I see, I am so FOCUSED on watching this bug crawl across the inside of your screen and I am only dimmly aware of the nice song playing in the backround and “what’s on his monitor anyway?” Family pictures? And I just can’t take my eyes off it and then …
THAT’S when you have the giant zombie face shoot up with the screaming and shreaking and the scareing.
But you didn’t so; One, Thanks for that.
Two, Have you considered the whole let’s scare people with the zombie thing?
Three, does anyone else feel a little sorry for that bug?
Whatever you do, DON’T SQUISH IT! :)
I had this exact thing happen to my 12” PowerBook about a year and a half ago. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it was on the inside of my screen, and I tried to brush it off. Bad move. He got squished and died, right there in the middle of my screen. Never moved again. I just had to learn to live with what looked like a few dead pixels.
So annoying! But it was great to tell people “My powerbook has a bug! No, really!”
A few days ago, I experience the same problem : a bug on my screen !! Well, I shut down Windows and everything is ok now.
Put the display in one of those “space bags” or something similar and suck the air out, should kill it.
“One” was originally recorded by Harry Nilson, who wrote it.
Check out the Beta Band version of ‘One’ also (named ‘Won’) .. tis a great tune :)
poor bug !!
Question have you given it a name yet ?
Show some humanity;
Cut the display open with a knife, and set it free.
Its only a monitor, thats real life in there!
:)
Screensaver?
:( i had the same problem but unfortunately for me it died in the centre of the screen. now i am just waiting that it disapears naturally, but it has been a year now and it is still here ….. some sort of protection of the screen maybe ….... sigh
Well, this is what you do. Set the background color to black, and give yourself a huge white cursor. Then use the cursor to try to lure the bug to the edge of the screen, near the vents. When he gets near the vents, blow lightly into the vents so that the insect feels air moving, and has a natural tendency to follow it. Of course, if it’s a cockroach, you’re out of luck, but hopefull it’s not (and hopefully there are not more of them.)
I got two of those little f**kers die in the middle of my old G4 iMacs screen! I never got them out. eventually i managed to unload the iMac onto a friend for a good price.
my suggestion, which i never got around to doing, is blasting a can of compressed air into the edge of the screen.
i really hope you get him out, and dont have to suffer my fate.
My last job was for a company that used to sell big screens. One of the techs told me about a repair job he had. Big rear projection TV with a ton of roaches clearly crawling around on the glass. He said the house was just disgusting.
He also told me about a TV that had one corner discolored. While he was trying to figure it out the family dog came and pee’d on the TV.
This happened to me with my Dell LCD 19 inch. I too made a video and sent it into anandtech.com but they never put it on their site. After about a week the bug finally either left the monitor or died off screen.
This hasn’t happened to me yet but the more you f***ers keep talking about it, chances are, the sh*t will happen to me!!
I can’t help but feel really sorry for the Ant.
Sure, I know ants don’t have very sophisticated brains, but… the guy has to be really homesick and scared by now.
Assuming he can find his way out… how the heck is he going to get home to China?!?!?
I think you need to take apart the monitor, extract the ant, put him in a box, and air-mail him back to the factory in China. The address should be on the shipping label for your monitor.
Enjoy!
Haha, that’s insane. Good luck getting it out.
Haha, the song makes the entire thing very funny. Good luck getting the bugger out and it’s the first time I’ve heard about such things happening. Kudos!
Let me tell you what… IT HAPPENED TO ME!
I kept trying to get the damn bug to move by hitting behind him trying to get him to move away… but it didnt work. I hit it too hard and the little guy died in view… So now i’ve got a real ‘dead pixel’ it sux
Why not draw a huge maze and full screen it?
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That sounds like Aimee Mann…
i am taking it upon myself to name that poor organism…
i shall name it “Heather”... or “Bob”... is it a girl or a boy ant?
aww. heck,lets call it heather..
Is it really an ant? It doesn’t seem like it. Anyways, all worker ants are females so you have to say she/her. :)
Dude that suks!
Just throw the whole screen in the oven for 45 minutes @ 350 degrees.. That’ll kill the bug.
Hey, if we want more trivia questions, can anybody name another Aimee Mann/West Wing link, other than this blog post?
For the sake of the other folks on the server I need to end the comments for now. So I’ll win the trivia prize by saying that Aimee Mann appeared on the West Wing in the episode “College Kids.” :)
Yeah. I figured out a while ago the Cinema display is actually a rear projection screen. a couple things clued me in: it runs way too hot for an LCD, it gets screen burn (not permanant), and the brightness is far brighter than any LCD i’ve ever used.
[...] a look at a bug that is apparently INSIDE the LCD [...]
[...] to know what life is like for a bug stuck in a cinema display? Visit I am Matt Thomas for a bug’s eye view from inside a screen. [...]
Sounds like an updated equivalent of that old gypsy curse ” May you always have a dead wasp in your double glazing”
OMG! I Have the exact same bug, its driving me nuts!!!!
Did it eventually go away??? Or do you now have a family of bugs???
Okay and I thought I was the only one who had this. Happened on my monitor tonight. I’ve had those little bugs on my monitor before but on the outside the only thing different about tonight was I had my lights off and I had two crawling inside my LCD… talk about annoying.
Only problem is one of the bugs isn’t moving and seems dead! :(
well i had 1 and he died in the middle, just got back from work and he’s got a new best buddy to join him as the seond of these annoyin things got inside ma screen and died. im just off out now to buy insect repelant and fumagate ma room lol :D
i have one f**ker like this in my week old lenovo laptop. it comes out for a walk a couple of times a day, camps in the whitest spot on the screen for an hour or so and then goes home to his wife and kids. i’m going to spray the top, bottom and one side of the screen with RAID so that the bugger runs away. i just hope he’ll get the point and escape through the side that isn’t sprayed instead of camping in the middle of the screen until his death.
i can confirm – the RAID strategy worked. i sprayed 3 sides of my laptop’s lcd and the bugger came out to complain 2 minutes later. he’s now 2 dimensional on my fingernail. i named him jimmy.