University of Skills Launch

Good Day! We have launched our newest skill called University of Skills. You can start to learn about Amazon Alexa skills by saying “Alexa, Enable University of Skills.” This skill was designed to help educate users what Amazon Alexa skills are and how they work. There is an opportunity to allow Alexa users enter a whole new world of voice applications called skills.

You can also enable the skill by going to your Amazon Alexa App and searching for University of Skills. There is also a direct link here University of Skills.

If you find the skill useful please leave us a rating and some feedback.

Starting a Business Skill

We are very excited to announce the launch of the first end to end skill created by Phelps Inc. It is called Starting a Business. This skill was created for the Venture Center at Fox Valley Technical College.

The screenshot above was taken from the Amazon Alexa Skill store. You can access the skill by click on this Starting a Business link. This is a great way to get a valuable preview of what the Venture Center can do for you, like they have done for me. I encourage you to enable this skill and say “Alexa, open Starting a Business”.

Phelps Fast Pitch – Live

Good Evening!

Phelps Fast Pitch is Live in the Amazon Skill store and can be accessed here. The description of the skill is: “Phelps Fast Pitch is a skill intended to share the elevator pitch of Phelps Inc. It is also contains information on how to contact Phelps Inc. There are also some suggestions on where people can find more information about voice. Phelps Inc is using Alexa Presentation Language in the Launch and the CancelandStop Intents. After publishing this skill, anyone that wants to learn more information about Phelps Inc by launching the skill.”

This is the 2nd skill published by Phelps Inc. We are excited to move onto the next skills and partnerships upcoming. We also plan to launch some content on YouTube on setting up an Amazon Developer account and some general Alexa Tips on a weekly basis. That content can be accessed here.

 

We have Lift Off! Pillars of Ethics!

Phelps Inc has published it’s first Alexa Skill! Woo! It is a simple skill for parsing three Pillars of Ethics, which are Duty, Outcome, and Person ethics. The hope is that it can help future students, learn these ethics in their class at Lakeland University. It was designed using the Alexa SDK 1.0.25. That has very recently been upgraded to 2.0. The Alexa SDK is linked here: https://github.com/alexa/alexa-skills-kit-sdk-for-nodejs.

Phelps Inc also has started a YouTube channel that depicts Pillars of ethics in Action. Head on over and check it out. The following link shows how to open Pillars of Ethics – https://t.co/hWkhozKRuk.

This has been a small update, but all for now.

From Pluralsight to Kahn Academy

Good Evening All,

It has been a few weeks since my last update. I have been busy with Discrete Math in college that has taken more time, than I originally thought. This has caused my activity on Pluralsight to plummet. I was not getting the full 30 dollars a month value out of the courses, because I did not have the time to take them.

A friend shared the following link with me…

https://frontendmasters.com/books/front-end-handbook/2017/

The frontendmasters.com is a great resource front end development. I have spent a good deal of time working on Python and with a recent turn of events Javascript and Nodejs seem to be the path forward. Within this link it references Kahn Academy which is free. There are courses an Javacsript and HTML/CSS. I will take both of those and look outside of that for Nodejs.

So that is all for now. Hope all is well.

Docker and The Knowledge Project Podcast

Hi All,

Good Evening.

It has been a while since I have blogged last. I am currently chasing and learning Docker. I have Windows 7 laptop that I have installed Docker toolbox on. The laptop is a bit old but it get the task accomplished. I have taken one full plural sight course Docker: Docker Containers and the Big Picture – https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/docker-containers-big-picture. It provided a very good overview. I enjoyed the presenter and he was able to get the content across very well. I am hoping to finish Getting Started with Docker: https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/docker-getting-started. This is has been a nice hands on beginner course.

The other thing I wanted to write about was one of the “The Knowledge Project” podcasts. The one that has become my favorite is the one with Ed Latimore. He is a boxer, served in the National Guard, and is studying physics. The message of his podcast reinstated with me. Things that are worth attaining in life require hardwork. Once you realize that something just needs to get it done and you get it done. I cannot do the podcast justice by my description it is very much worth a listen. The link to the podcast is here https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/docker-getting-started.

All for now.

Retool and Refactor Update

Good Evening.

It has been a while since my last blog post. I have finished my C++ class and thoroughly enjoyed it. I am looking forward to the next C++ class that should have more of a focus on object orientation. In the mean time I am taking some classes on pluralsight.

The most recent that was completed was – https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/aws-developer-big-picture/table-of-contents. It was a high-level overview of AWS services from a developer’s point of view. This fed into the course I am currently taking which is https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/aws-developer-getting-started/table-of-contents.

The second course walks through creating a website and uploading it to AWS. It stays within the free tier. I would recommend have some programming and System Administration under your belt before taking the course. I am about 1/3 of the way through it and have enjoyed it. There was one trip up a I had with a security group but was able to figure it out after a few hours. I could have tried to do the live mentoring but decided to proceed on my own. It was fulfilling to find the error and correct it.

I will provide another update once I have completed the course. In closing I found the picture featured on https://pixabay.com/en/tool-hammer-repair-master-1314070/. I love the picture as I am a bit of rusty old tool but now it can be viewed as patina. My old skills will still help while pursuing new.   I will likely sign up for this website at a later date. I have added pixabay to my list of links as well.

Remember as my friend Adam “SuperTanker” said “It is always good sometimes!”

Python Forever – For Now C++ Game

Hi All,

Good Evening.

The code is listed at: https://github.com/phelpsinc/ConsoleApplication1/blob/master/ConsoleApplication1/ConsoleApplication1.cpp.

It has been a few weeks since I have posted last.  The code is for a text based game in C++. It is in the form of the game to accept user input, do some math calculations and have some nested if statements. The code has been posted to GitHub linked above.

The reason the game is called Python Forever is because that is another language, I am actively trying to learn. So why not include it in the game? 🙂 The C++ class has been very informative in a building week by week fashion. Classes on pluralsight are quick and to the point.

The code was posted to GitHub using https://visualstudio.github.com/ and the command line. I used the following link to push the entire directory up to GitHub. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17743549/recursively-add-the-entire-folder-to-a-repository.

Below is a screenshot of my Visual Studio Community Edition. The blue boxes show where more Github content can be seen.

Big Nerd Ranch, Alexa, Lambda, and Pluralsight

Good Evening. I was able to enable a skill to ask “Alexa ask Greeter who is my hero?” It responds “My Pa”. This was made possible by a video and instruction from Big Nerd Ranch. Big props to them and their course work. The video is linked below. That was my first experience with AWS Lambda. The course covers step by step how to enable the Hello Greeter Skill. I changed out the text to say “My Pa” instead of Hello.

After saving my work in VS code I attempted to view my code on GitHub but it was not showing. So now I went back to the GitHub application and saw a publish button. I now know that in order to get my code onto GitHub from a local copy it needs to be published. :).

Short blog today… Checkout the video below by Big Nerd Ranch. I also started using pluralsight.com. So far I really like that as well. More updates to follow on that at a later time.

Big Nerd Ranch Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxgdPI1B7rg&t=1s

Big Nerd Ranch Course Work – https://github.com/bignerdranch/developing-alexa-skills-solutions/blob/master/coursebook/haIntro_Chapter.pdf

Big Nerd Ranch Code – https://github.com/bignerdranch/developing-alexa-skills-solutions/tree/master/1_helloAlexa/

Up and Running with Python

Welcome back to another blog post. I have completed the course Up and Running with Python via Lynda.com. This course really illustrated the power of Python. You are able to hook into APIs on websites as well as read an entire webpage. This Python course was done with Python 2.7. Next I will be taking a course on Javascript to be in closer alignment with Amazon Web Services.

I have been recently coding in VS Studio Code. I really like the syntax highlighting and auto completion. I had to run the script from the command line and not the Python built in execution window. So far it has only been used with Microsoft Visuals Studio Code. I look forward to using it with Javascript and Node.js.

To engage with the community more, I have signed up for Reddit and Stack Overflow. It will be interesting to see how I use them. I am still listening to Talk Python to Me and Microsoft Dev Show podcasts. I have found these podcasts very good and current topic as well as things to explore. It also helps with understanding the Lingo that is used with in the programming community.