Tips and tricks for building an Alexa skill

Recently, Energy Australia (one of Shine's long standing clients) approached us to help them build an Alexa skill in time for the launch of the Amazon Echo into the Australia/New Zealand market.The skill will allow Energy Australia customers to ask Alexa for information regarding their bills, and to get tips on how to minimise their energy usage.  In this blog post I'll give an overview of our solution, and outline some of the tips and pitfalls we discovered during development.
07 February, 2018 /

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In 2010, Patrick McKenzie wrote the now-famous blog “Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names”, in which he listed 40 things that were not universally true about names.Did programmers sit up, take notice and change their attitudes to names? Sadly, not really. We still get asked to fill our names out in online forms which assume we have a first name and a last name (in that order) and which refuse to allow us to continue unless we have filled out both. They assume our names can be entered in alphabetic characters, often only ASCII.I fear that part of the reason that this blog post had less impact than I hoped was that Patrick did not give examples of how each assumption can be false. But having worked in a previous life on IBM's Global Name Management product, I can assure you that it's all true.Still not convinced? In this post I'm going to list all 40 of Patrick's original falsehoods, but give you an example (or two) drawn from my experiences working in this space. Ready? Let's go!
08 January, 2018 /

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Server-side rendering a React app is a miracle on-par with childbirth and modern air travel.

OK, that opening sentence was a little over-the-top. I apologise to birth mothers and those in the aviation industry.

Let me start again: server-side rendering a React app is...kind of cool.

That said, it can be a little tricky to get started, especially if you're trying to do it with an existing app.

In this post I’ll explain one way you can implement server-side rendering (SSR) for an app that's using  React Router v4 and Redux Thunks.

Along the way we'll discuss the fundamental difference between JavaScript clients and servers, how it forces us to change the way we do routing, and the small "missing-link" that enables us to bridge React Router v4 with Redux thunks.

We'll build up a simple example to demonstrate. I'm going to assume you've got some knowledge of:

  • React
  • Redux
  • React Router v4

However, you are not required to have knowledge of:

  • Childbirth
  • Aeronautics

Let's do this.

14 December, 2017 /

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Shine’s TEL group was established in 2011 with the aim of publicising the great technical work that Shine does, and to raise the company’s profile as a technical thought-leader in the community through blogs, local meet up talks, and conference presentations. Every now and then (it started off as being monthly, but that was too much work), we curate all the noteworthy things that Shiners have been up to, and publish a newsletter. Read on for this month's edition.
07 December, 2017 /

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No food reviews here I'm afraid

This year I was incredibly lucky to score a coveted ticket to YOW! in beautiful Melbourne. I was also asked to be a track host for a couple of sessions, so that was quite an honour too. This post is a whirlwind wrap-up of the conference, and only includes my favourite talks from the two day event. If you're hoping to hear detailed reviews on how the coffee/food/WiFi/venue was, then you'll be greatly disappointed (it was all great BTW).
01 December, 2017 /

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The last time I was fortunate enough to attend AWS’s global conference, re:Invent, was three years ago in 2014. Then there were 14,000 delegates and the conference spanned just two Las Vegas hotels. Lambda was announced during Werner Vogels’ keynote and it seemed that the most in-demand sessions had “Docker” in the title.

In just three years the conference has tripled in size with 43,000 delegates attending this year spread across a campus of six Las Vegas hotels. Although not one of the biggest conferences held in Vegas, it’s obviously a significant logistical challenge. After some hiccups on the first day with the inter-venue shuttles and a venue running out of food, everything seemed to settle down and run smoothly from the start of the second day. Whether the improvement was due to human learnings of the hivemind or training of some Machine Learning algorithms is up for debate but almost certainly it was a combination of the two. No, actually, the transport still is not good and Uber is key to success.

30 November, 2017 /

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What happens In Vegas….The old adage tells us that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. But for one week a year the reverse becomes true. Thousands of cloud enthusiasts descend on the city of sin and come away filled with renewed vigour to play with, and ultimately implement, the latest toys from Amazon Web Services.This year I’ve been lucky enough to represent Shine by travelling to Las Vegas and participating in this prestigious event. In this post I'll be recapping some of the things I've seen. I'll add more as the week goes on with my thoughts and reflections, as well as the latest announcements from AWS.
29 November, 2017 /

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I wasn’t sure what my first day at Shine would look like. I looked for some blog posts that resembled this one for some insights but I figured everyone’s experience is different. I hadn’t worked in this industry before, and my work experience at a laptop repair shop didn’t really count. The only relevant experience I had was the industry project I did in my final year of study and that turned out to be very valuable. I knew I would be thrown into the deep end and have to learn quickly. Since day one, I’ve been surrounded by great mentors, helping with code reviews, best practices to follow, great book suggestions and general insights into how this business works. Anyway, I think enough time has passed now to reflect on this year.
31 October, 2017 /

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