<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Unfortunately, I don't see a play button. Not allowed to play in
the US? <br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 11/25/20 5:51 AM, Jim Cownie wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:5FE6E43C-A7AC-43F8-9BAD-E3F59EC72443@gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">
<div class="">I assumed this was Alexa not understanding a
Scottish accent.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Cue mandatory sketch <a
href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hbfjw" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hbfjw</a> (may
be viewed as NSFW...)
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<h1 class="details__title" style="font-size: 2rem; margin: 0px
0px 0.28125em; line-height: 1.125; letter-spacing: -0.03em;
font-family: ReithSans, Arial, Helvetica, freesans,
sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2;
widows: 2; background-color: rgb(207, 216, 220);
text-decoration-thickness: initial;">Voice Activated Elevator</h1>
<div class="details__description" style="font-family: ReithSans,
Arial, Helvetica, freesans, sans-serif;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2;
background-color: rgb(207, 216, 220);
text-decoration-thickness: initial;">
<div class="longest-synopsis text--prose">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 16px; max-width: 752px;" class="">Burnistoun
is a sketch show that first aired in 2009. Here, Iain
Connell and Robert Florence star in a skit about a lift
that doesn’t speak Scottish.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On 25 Nov 2020, at 10:41, John Hearns <<a
href="mailto:hearnsj@gmail.com" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">hearnsj@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<div dir="ltr" class="">Aha. I did not know about the 8
second limit. I use Alexa with a Philips smart lighting
hub to control house lights. Sometimes nothing
happens...
<div class="">I assumed this was Alexa not understanding
a Scottish accent. I forgive Alexa now - she might
have been having trouble talking to the Hue.</div>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, 25 Nov 2020 at
10:21, Tim Cutts <<a
href="mailto:tjrc@sanger.ac.uk" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">tjrc@sanger.ac.uk</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px
0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;" class="">
Indeed, my main personal experience with Lambda so
far has been in writing an Alexa skill in my spare
time. It’s been quite fun, and very instructive in
the benefits and pitfalls of lambda.
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">My main takehomes so far:</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">1. I love the fact that there’s
basically no code at all other than that required
to deliver the actual skill. Just handler
functions for the incoming requests (Intents, as
Amazon call them)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">2. Debugging is awkward. There is no
interactive debugging, as far as I can tell. Log
inspection is about all you have, and some errors
are obtuse (for example, some valid Node.js
constructs produce syntax errors on Lambda, and
it’s very hard to track down when it happens -
unit tests all pass locally but then you get a
syntax error in the LogWatch logs, with a useless
stack trace that doesn’t tell you where the syntax
error is). Debugging and unit testing on your
laptop is hard to do; many Alexa APIs rely on real
hardware functions and the simulators don’t handle
them.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">3. Persistence of data is fairly
straightforward using S3 buckets or DynamoDB, and
I haven’t noticed latency issues with those (of
course the interactions are on a human timescale,
so latency isn’t really much of an issue)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">4. Interaction with external services
can be problematic; Alexa lambda functions must
return within 8 seconds, which can be fun if your
skill needs to fetch data from some other source
(in my case a rather sluggish data service in
Azure run by my local council), and there’s no
clean way to handle the event if you hit the 8
second limit, the function just gets terminated
and Alexa returns a rather meaningless error to
the user.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Tim</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On 25 Nov 2020, at 09:45, John
Hearns <<a
href="mailto:hearnsj@gmail.com"
target="_blank" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">hearnsj@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div
style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none"
class="">
BTW, I am sure everyone knows this but if
you have a home assistant such as Alexa
everytime you ask Alexa it is a lambda
which is spun up </div>
<br class="">
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
-- The Wellcome Sanger Institute is operated by
Genome Research Limited, a charity registered in
England with number 1021457 and a company registered
in England with number 2742969, whose registered
office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. </div>
</blockquote>
</div>
_______________________________________________<br
class="">
Beowulf mailing list, <a
href="mailto:Beowulf@beowulf.org" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">Beowulf@beowulf.org</a> sponsored
by Penguin Computing<br class="">
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe)
visit <a
href="https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf</a><br
class="">
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="">
<div class="">
<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal;
text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;
-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"
class="">
<div class="">-- Jim<br class="">
James Cownie <<a href="mailto:jcownie@gmail.com"
class="" moz-do-not-send="true">jcownie@gmail.com</a>><br
class="">
Mob: +44 780 637 7146<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
Beowulf mailing list, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Beowulf@beowulf.org">Beowulf@beowulf.org</a> sponsored by Penguin Computing
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf">https://beowulf.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/beowulf</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Prentice Bisbal
Lead Software Engineer
Research Computing
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.pppl.gov">http://www.pppl.gov</a></pre>
</body>
</html>