I like the decking, SRS.

Alexa so far has been yet another frustration.

Alexa doesn’t seem to like the words or my attempts at “Right”, “Left” or “Spot” which seemed to be at the root of messages including “I don’t understand” as well as error beeps.

I tried going nautical with the living room and changing “Spot”. That got me to “Port Table Light”, “Port “Spotlight”, “Starboard Table Light” and “Starboard Spotlight”. 3 of 4 of these worked reasonably reliably (main thing was to make the “t” in “port” strong and rather exaggerated for me, otherwise it goes for “porch”) but it couldn’t work out the 4th (I can’t remember which that was) and I can’t see how my pronunciation could be changing to affect this.

If I try to use “Bedroom Light”, I’m informed “A few things share the name Bedroom Light” even though there is only one. Going by this Reddit thread and other search results, this appears to be a bug in the Alexa set up that has existed (perhaps intermittently) for at least 2 years. It also has given success “OK” for the nonexistent “Bedroom Light 99”, something I called out in frustration/trying to find some uniqueness.

Well that bit was frustrating but I had some fun with it later. A couple of things that amused me:

Asking it what the longest place name in Wales is produced an answer which contained the worst attempt at Llanfair PG that I've ever heard.

Asking it if it is a long way to Tipperary resulted in the Alexa voice singing the song!