Something you may of noticed that’s been added to the sidebar is a donate button. I’ll be clear first, it is completely optional. I’ve tried to put it in an unintrusive space, so you don’t get bombarded with it being put in your face and this will be the only place I will “promote it”. I’m not going to push it in everyone’s face as I am not like that. I’m not driven solely by money. I got targets, I got desires, agreed, but money is the root of all evil so I’m trying to not get corrupted by money and its problems.
You can find it here:
(Donate an amount to me – OPTIONAL)
The reasoning behind it is simple. I’ve had a few comment on my work and its quality despite being unfinished and the time I have. I don’t take commissioned projects on for similar reasons (dysfunctional family, stress and other work commitments), but if you want, you can keep me going. I don’t care if it is £0.01 (1 pence) or £100.00, I’m grateful for anything. I also do everything in my spare time. As in, on the train from home to work and back. Even then I have a WiFi battle!
To give you an idea of my likes and expenses and one is going to quite wild, as of 29/06/2025:
- A 2 Litre bottle of Tesco’s Coke zero – £0.49 (49p)
- Regular sized Latte for the morning commute with discount – £3.30 approx
- Tescos meal deal – £3.60 (3 items, sandwich, side and drink)
- Lyca Mobile 5GB plan – £5
- Online storage – OpenDrive – $9.99 a month or around £8. Its unlimited though. Not sure of the security aspect, I’ll be honest, the program looks older than the hills and doesn’t have versioning, but it works. There are other options, TeraBox which is based in China and I’m a bit questionable about it as you have to upload/download through their app. OpenDrive does have a WebDAV option though. OneDrive is preferred though but its limited to 1TB and the upgrade goes to 2TB. A lot of my work collectively is already near the 2TB limit.
- Waitrose shopping SBC – £10 a time
- Keeping this site going – £20 (thank god!) a year. If you want to have your own site hosted by my friends, please talk to www.cadence.net.uk (Cadence Networks). I’ve been with them for years and despite what I have said in a previous blog post, I’ve have had no issues with them at all. Just I’m unfortunate with the issues I’ve suffered has been all external and they have had to act. No, they aren’t sponsoring me to say this, its all genuine.
- Renewal of the domain – £31.61 for 2 years ☹ It was cheap at one point.
- Keeping my wessexelectricnut mailbox going (As I write this, doesn’t work with the site for enquiries, so its on my burgess.world inbox) for a year – £60, although admittedly, it’s a Zimbra Hosted box with a briefcase that reports it has “unlimited storage”, until I broke it recently. Don’t ask – turns out 11GB of meshes was too much for it to handle.
- Cheap laptop – £150 (believe it or not, a lot of my work is made on laptops with Intel HD based graphics processors)
- Used Toughbook – £500 – £1,500 (acceptable for use).
- Expensive laptop – £2,000
- Ultimate desire, Panasonic Toughbook FZ-40 with 5G modem – £4,200
In the immediate term, I’m trying to get enough money together to get my own house with a mortgage, at 39, its not easy. My dad is trying to tempt me in staying at home but at times, I’ll admit, its becoming increasingly difficult as I do a day job (Train Planning), then have to do a ton of tasks when I get home related to him and the dogs.
Getting to work, travel is fortunately cheap, I drive and park at my nearest station, that is because the travelling time by train caused conflict between my dad and me because to him, the evening wait for 45 minutes between trains to my local station is unacceptably long when Southern changed their timetable. He also has a vendetta against Southern. So £25 of petrol in my 29 year old Renault Clio (yes, the one that has the bonnet that flips the opposite direction to most cars – think Clio Williams. Actually, how many bonnets are hinged at the bumper than the scuttle these days?) is thankfully frugal on petrol – despite the hammering down the A27.
Parking is thankfully free as I work for the Train Operating Company, Rail travel is free for the local TOC but since the transfer from First to DFTO, everywhere else is now chargeable at Priv rate (75%, no more free travel for 10 boxes a year on Avanti, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, Lumo or other First Group TOCs ☹ and no Friends and Family discounts on them too! And no, other DFTO companies, we don’t get free travel at all on them).
The only other big issue is one of my friends likes lots of holidays, but he has a different job and he gets a hell of a lot more than me. I don’t have any secondary employment, so its just my main source of income. Cost control on holiday can be difficult and he can be a bad influence, where I look at reducing my costs (and my weight), he goes out and orders quite a lot of food – which is actually quite costly these days.
So, there you have it, that’s the reasoning behind the sudden appearance of the “donate button”. As I said, its up to you. I’m not forcing you to pay and I don’t want anyone to struggle financially, if you can afford a penny or a quid or whatever your local currency is as I am British, I’m grateful for anything.