Articles on Adrian Mardlin

Escaping Microsoft

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 20:12:16 +0000

I don’t like Microsoft. I think their software is poor, and their business practices shady at best. Many years ago I switched to using Apple Mac computers, and haven’t looked back. However, for many people, Microsoft is considered essential. They must have Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook etc.

In my working life, providing business email services, we’ve been battered a little bit by Microsoft. Here’s how it went…

In the 2000s and up to about 2016, Microsoft Exchange was their thing. People would install it on a server in their office, pay Microsoft many hundreds or thousands of pounds a year for the software, and then they’d pay a company like us to keep their email feed safe from Spam and Viruses.

Training the Dragon — A Tale of Qwen & 2 Sparks

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 17:33:07 +0000

This is a tale about my ongoing efforts in using AI to provide useful services. As with all things AI-related, it’ll probably be out of date within a couple of weeks of writing it — that’s just how fast things are moving these days! Hopefully it’ll give some useful info and guidance for others following a similar path of discovery!

Let’s start with a summary of the services, the hardware and the software & models.

Introducing Edwin

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:10:24 +0000

One of the annoying things about writing about AI projects is that the writing! goes out of date so very quickly. It does make interesting reading, though, seeing how far things have come and how quickly. Projects that would have taken 6 months were only taking a week or two a year ago, thanks to the help of AI. Now they take days, and are demonstrably better.

From a business owner’s point of view, it’s quite empowering and exciting while at the same time creating a lot of uncertainty. As my career has hinged on inflection points like this (the birth of the home computer, then the PC, then the Internet boom), I’m genuinely excited about the opportunities. Yes the internet is filling up with AI ‘slop’, but those of us using AI as a tool to do a job are finding that we can realise some of the ideas that we’ve had in the past that weren’t worth the risk of spending the time and money to develop.

Training AI with AI

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 18:30:39 +0000

One of my latest projects involves using AI to classify Emails as Spam/Scam/Phishing etc. In order for this to work at any sort of scale, I need fast and cheap AI. Claude is my AI of choice but far too expensive for the task at hand, so we’ve elected to use OpenAI’s gpt-5.4-nano model. This is super quick and super cheap but not super bright. It simply doesn’t have the level of world knowledge of the Claude chatbot.

Claude plays golf in Spain

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:44:12 +0000

Using Ai in Anger

I finally did it. Found a really good use for AI that I can put to practical use, and who knows, maybe start a new business from it.

So once again, my elbow is playing up! So I’m playing less golf, and you know what they say about idle hands…

Anyway, I do love my golf, and would love an excuse to mix business with pleasure, so I give you Open Golf Events

MailCore Send

Sun, 02 Nov 2025 09:53:50 +0000

Recently I’ve been suffering with some elbow problems, which has prevented me from playing as much golf as I would like. So about a month ago, I took some time away from golf to recuperate and went and hid in my mountain house for a week to avoid the temptation of golf, and avoid distractions (and being given random jobs by my wife).

So, it was just me and my Ai assistant, Claude. My business is The Very Good Email Company, which has focused for many years on providing email hosting services, with a strong anti-spam stance, so we’ve always shied away from services involving bulk sending. However, there are many legitimate reasons for sending ‘bulk’ emails, so it’s time to do something to support those needs.

Tesla Spain Road Trip

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 18:46:37 +0000

Introduction

I live in the south of Spain, and we just had a family holiday in a charming village in the far north called Ventalló. Here’s an account of my road trip as far as Barcelona (we continued on after spending a couple of days in the city). Hopefully it’ll provide useful information and ‘comfort’ for those with EVs planning a long road trip, and help for those considering whether an EV is for them or not.

Eating my own dog food

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:49:45 +0000

I recently was re-acquainted with an old software development term. Eating your own dog food. Here’s the story…

At my work, which is the business of email services, we provide a webmail interface. This, I believed, was for emergency or occasional access to email when away from your normal devices. Not so for many people, it seems, as I discovered we have many users for whom it is their only access to email.

Thunderbird Autoconfig

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 14:41:59 +0000

Today, as part of our effort to move people away from Outlook and onto Thunderbird, I thought I’d have another look into autoconfiguring it. We already have it working for email setups, but Thunderbird now supports Calendars and Contacts as well using CalDAV and CardDAV protocols.

After some googling and much assistance from claude.ai, we finally found a solution, so here goes…

First of all, for my example, I’m going to use this domain. We have this setting in the DNS:

Surviving the Internet

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:32:08 +0000

Think of this as a shortcut guide to getting along in the modern world. It is aimed at anyone from my mother to far younger people (sorry mum) running small businesses. It is UK based, but much of it can be applied in other parts of the world too.

There is some bias here. If you read my bio in the About page above, you’ll know that I run an email company, so that side of things will definitely be biased. I also dislike most things Microsoft, which will be explained in a separate article.

Claude the English Teacher

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 15:35:10 +0000

My Ai of choice these days is Claude. I use it a lot for help with coding (particularly Javascript which takes a lot of getting used to!) and I’ve paid the subscription so that I can use it a lot. Sometimes I supplement with Grok – Elon’s creation.

Anyway, today I was putting the final touches to this website. There’s quite a bit of writing involved, particularly on the ‘About‘ page, and I wanted to make sure it flowed well and wasn’t full of typos and grammatical errors.