Hello World!
It's been such a long time since the last post. Almost 2 years! Time does fly.Why the sudden resurrection of this blog? Let's just say it's the desire to learn has been rekindled!
I'd mentioned on several previous posts (I think I did at least) on this blog that I used to work as a technical translator for a software dev company back in the Philippines. The team I served with my language skills (greatly diminishing instead of improving - I cringe at the multiple and redundant grammatical errors my posts here contain!!) were Java developers. They tried to teach me how to code in Java. I remember that "Beer Song" exercise which when I'd resolved it, I dropped Java like a too hot pancake in my hands. Since it had splattered on the floor already, why bother picking it up? There were other more interesting and yummy confections at that time (ehem - like the HP Mini 311 Darwin Project at InsanelyMac.com) to bite into!
I remember explaining to my then team mate and close friend (who's a freakin' awesome Java programmer) that I just couldn't accept why some stuff (methods? classes? etc.) must be declared first. On retrospect now, perhaps there was just the general lack of a motivation for me to force my brain to wrap itself around the proclivities of decent Java coding: i.e. the need to make things work.
For I now realize I did end up dipping my elbows in code when I was finding my way through the cog works of hackintoshing, specifically DSDT patching. I was surprised to be informed of my the techie team mates that it involved, in fact, coding at a much much lower system level than say the commonly known object-oriented programming languages like Java, Python, etc.. Java worked inside the Operating System and interacted mostly with the files and file system therein, while dealing with DSDT meant interacting with the BIOS. (More info on DSDT here).
Now what was different from this machine gibberish from Java when they're both code? There was a requirement - specifically a personal need - my dream of experiencing having a Mac ^_^
I had to patch my own DSDT to make sure low system level processes like wake-up from sleep triggered by mechanical actions like closing the lid, hibernation, fan speed, etc. for my own hackintoshes because most of the hacking guides available were for North America models of said machines and I was in Asia. I had to do a lot comparison and reading the code lines of those other hackers posted and looked out for patterns. Some object names would differ by one character between those posted codes and the actual DSDT extracted from my own Asian release model laptop or netbook.
It was trial and error, testing, and squeezing out comprehension (read the original post from 2009!) from cryptic lines as the example section below:
