Zeitgeist-daemon using all the CPU

Hi there! :)

Some time ago I had a problem in my Ubuntu installation. All of a sudden, I had some weird process using all the CPU, causing the computer to become really slow and hot and making the laptop fans go crazy. Since I use conky, I quickly verified that the weird process causing all of it was zeitgeist-daemon. Zeitgeist-daemon is a process that keeps track of activities on your system (file usage, browser history, calendar events, etc.) and logs them into a central database. It does not only create a chronologic register, but also supports tagging and can establish relationships between activities.

Maybe due to some buggy update it went nuts and was keeping the whole CPU busy.

I tried to kill the process but it would just show up again and keep doing the same.

To temporarily disable it I had to perform a few steps (source):

1. Add the Zeitgeist PPA to the system:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:zeitgeist/ppa
   

2. Install the latest version of Zeitgeist:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get upgrade
   

3. Restart zeitgeist-daemon

   zeitgeist-daemon --replace

4. Install activity-log-manager

   sudo apt-get install activity-log-manager
   

5. Open activity-log-manager and click the "Logging active button" in the bottom right corner of the window to disable logging.

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After disabling it in the activity-log-manager, all the problems were gone and everything was working as desired again :) .

If desired, it can be turned on again by clicking the same button.

It happened some time ago and I have reinstalled Ubuntu in the meantime and I have zeitgeist-daemon turned on ever since and never got the same problem again. I guess it was just due to a buggy update. Anyway, if it happens to you, now you know how to fix it :) .

Take care! :)

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Steve Jobs Biography: must read!

Hi! :)

This post is going to be a little different from the usual posts. This time I'll make a short post about an excellent book that I've just finished reading: the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

And before you think it, no, I'm not an Apple fanboy nor I am against it. I've been using linux for some years now and I will keep myself as being a proud linux user :P. I enjoy my freedom to do whatever I want with my computer and the feeling of being learning something new (almost) every time I use my computer. :) I will not enter the "Apple vs Window$ vs Linux" domain since this post is about a great book, not about the typical flame wars that flood the internet every day.

Sticking to the title of this post, if you like technology, computing, innovation, and leadership, then you should definitely read this book. Although the name of the book is the biography of Steve Jobs, it is much more than that. You even forget it is a man's biography because it features lots of cool things such as the history of modern personal computers, music players and cell phones. By reading it you'll get to know how it all started, who were the creators and the geniuses behind the great innovations that led to existence of the device that you're using to read this blog today.

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Making a Siemens C55 Data Cable

Hi! Recently I've been developing a GSM access control system for eLab Hackerspace using an old Siemens C55 cell phone and, as such, I needed a data cable to connect it to a PIC microcontroller. I searched on ebay for one but it turned out that they were a little expensive and I began thinking about a way to make myself a data cable.

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Luckily, after searching for a while in my "old power supplies box" (a box where I store all the old phone chargers and power supplies), I found two chargers for old Siemens phones, having the connector that I needed. However, I quickly realized that they only had the VCC and GND pins and I needed a connector with Tx and Rx pins too.

Since I had two chargers I decided to try to modify the connector of one of them to add two more pins and it worked perfectly! :)

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Lab tip for power connectors

Hi there! Today I'll show you a simple but very useful tip for your hacking sessions in your home lab or local maker/hackerspace.

Probably sometimes you want to power some device from your laptop's USB or phone charger, but the device has a DC barrel power connector and there you go and make a USB A to DC barrel connector. Then, in some other day you actually need the same thing but with a micro USB, or a mini USB, or a USB B, or a thinner barrel connector, or a larger connector, or alligator clips, or a longer cable, or a shorter one, and so on... The problem is that after some time you'll end up with lots of connector converter cables and you'll still find yourself needing a different connector converter cable. Well, I'm going to share with you a simple solution to avoid making lots and lots of cables.

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Record Audio playing in your computer

Hi! In this post I'm going to explain you one of those things that the music industry doesn't want you to know: how to record audio playing in your computer. :)

Some years ago, back in the days when I was still using Micro$oft Windows XP, I remember that in the sound properties there was an option named "stereo mix" that would allow you to do record the audio being sent to the output of your sound card. However, from what I've read some time ago, that useful option has vanished from the sound controls in more recent versions of Micro$oft Windows.

When I heard about it I started wondering why would they remove a useful feature from the audio options. I googled about it and the history is that the music industry made some pressure next to sound card manufacturers, Micro$oft and Apple so that they would drop that feature in hardware and software, so that people wouldn't be able to copy music. If the history is true or false, I do not now, but, honestly, it wouldn't surprise me and certainly is a kind of measure that fits within the spirit of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, etc. : limiting the freedom of people to get money at all cost.

However, using linux gives you back that freedom. Moreover, using the audio-recorder application you can do it in an even better way! :)

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The audio-recorder application allows you to record audio being played by any program of your choice, instead of the final sound card output mix. To install it you can download the appropriate package for your Ubuntu version and computer architecture (32- or 64-bit) here.

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