[Long Haired Git]

Apologies:

ETL: Extract, Transform, Load.
For me, I have to get data out of System A in a certain format, and change it all to be in a different format, and load it into System B. Some of the trades ("Asset Swaps") take 6 minutes each on an eight-CPU v880r with 32 GB RAM. I've got tens of thousands of them.

VAR: Value at Risk. A risk calculation to determine how much of a trade's value is still outstanding and hence at risk if the customer goes belly up.

NPV: Net Present Value: Basically the P&L of the trade at a point in time.

Both VAR and NPV of some of the trades are calculations that see Mathmaticians get jobs outside of Universities. Very, very ugly maths, and non-trivial volumes of data.


As for the approximator itself, its quite straight forward to calc things. Again, no trying to solve equations, instead I start at 5 LPM, calculate the head (positive for pumps, negative for components). If its positive, I nudge the flow up, if its negative I nudge it down, and I repeat and reduce the nudge amount and when I get close enough to net zero head I stop. Looping through tiny data sets and doing floating point math is very, very fast even in java (which is like 100 times slower than C).

As for games, I still play BZFLAG. Sodd graphics, I want engaging game play, which BZFLAG has delivered (essentially) unchanged for years. See you at Lou's Laser Mania....