Hi, I'm Alex Kates 👋

Introducing DynamoDB Extended - Query History, Favorites, and Editor Defaults
6/9/2025•12 views•1 min read•10 likes
aws
dynamodb
chrome extension
DynamoDB Extended is a Chrome extension that adds quality-of-life improvements to the AWS DynamoDB web console, including persistent query history, auto-unmarshalled JSON, and query replay. Every query you run is automatically saved, so you don't hav...
Let's Talk About Rejection
3/6/2025•106 views•3 min read•13 likes
aws
stoicism
On March 4th, 2025, I woke up thinking it was just another Tuesday morning. Like many people, I started my day by making a cup of coffee and scrolling through social media. But this day was different because it was the AWS Community Builder acceptanc...
Hosting Custom Fonts in AWS
11/27/2023•273 views•11 min read•35 likes
aws
typescript
web development
Alright, here's the scenario: You're a front-end developer who was just given a stunning custom font from your designers, and they're incredibly excited about it. They want to use it as soon as possible. However, you're only familiar with using fonts...
Mastering AWS S3: 7 Essential Tips for Using the aws s3 ls Command
10/30/2023•171 views•3 min read•11 likes
aws
cloud
developer
In this article, we explore 7 useful AWS CLI commands for managing S3 buckets, including checking bucket size, listing objects with specific extensions, finding the largest files, listing objects from a specific date, listing objects with a specific ...
VTL Quote Escaping for AWS API Gateway and Kinesis Integration
9/1/2023•106 views•3 min read•20 likes
aws
Introduction AWS provides a wide range of services that, when combined, can produce powerful results. One such combination is the direct integration of API Gateway with Kinesis, although it comes with its own set of challenges. In this post, we will ...
How to Trigger an AWS CloudWatch Alarm from a Lambda Function
5/10/2022•3,631 views•4 min read•37 likes
aws
typescript
aws-cdk
In this post, we are going to use the AWS CDK and TypeScript to build a Lambda Function that triggers a CloudWatch Alarm that sends an email when an invocation error occurs. All of the code can be found in this repository. Setup We need to run a few ...
How We Scaled the Credit Genie Platform with AWS Serverless
2/26/2022•1,396 views•7 min read•43 likes
startups
aws
I was recently interviewed by Elise Greve of AWS about how we scaled Credit Genie from MVP to a full-scale platform with over 20 AWS Amplify applications. You can find the original article here. In this post I want to expand on some of the topics cov...
How to Trigger an AWS Lambda Function from a Kinesis Stream
1/28/2022•187 views•3 min read•1 likes
aws
2articles1week
In this post, we are going to use the AWS CDK to build an AWS Lambda Function that triggers from an AWS Kinesis Stream. All of the code can be found in this repository. Setup We need to run a few commands to set up our CDK app. mkdir how-to-trigger-l...
How to Trigger an AWS Lambda Function From an SQS Message
1/27/2022•2,461 views•3 min read•4 likes
aws
javascript
aws-cdk
2articles1week
In this post, we are going to use the AWS CDK to build an AWS Lambda Function that is triggered from an AWS SQS message. All of the code can be found in this repository. Setup We need to run a few commands to set up our CDK app. mkdir how-to-trigger-...
How to Trigger an AWS Lambda Function from an SNS Message
1/21/2022•810 views•3 min read•10 likes
aws
100daysofcode
cloud
In this post, we are going to use the AWS CDK to build an AWS Lambda Function that triggers an AWS SNS message. All of the code can be found in this repository. Setup We need to run a few commands to set up our CDK app. mkdir how-to-trigger-lambda-fr...
How to Trigger an AWS Lambda Function from an S3 Put Event
1/16/2022•2,514 views•4 min read•0 likes
100daysofcode
developer
aws
In this post, we are going to use the AWS CDK to build an AWS Lambda Function that is triggered from an AWS S3 Put request. All of the code can be found in this repository. Setup We need to run a few commands to set up our CDK app. mkdir how-to-trigg...
How to Trigger an AWS Lambda Function from a DynamoDB Stream Event
1/15/2022•1,123 views•3 min read•2 likes
aws
developer
javascript
In this post, we are going to use the AWS CDK to build an AWS Lambda Function that triggers from DynamoDB Stream Events. All of the code can be found in this repository. Setup We need to run a few commands to set up our CDK app. mkdir how-to-trigger-...