Status quo

The regular visitors of the Charles Mingus Home Page have probably already noticed that there haven't been many changes on the site for the past few years. The reason is quite simple: I do not have enough time to update the site anymore.

I started the Mingus website as a hobby back in 1994 when I began my studies at the Sibelius Academy (siba.fi). The core of the discography was gradually put together with the help of many people in the first few years. After that the job has been mainly fixing mistakes and adding new releases, again with the help and input of numerous people.

Well, what happened then? I got my master's degree and had a lot more "real life work" than before. More importantly regarding this website however, in the summer of 2000 I and seven other musicians formed a record label called Fiasko Records. And that is pretty time-consuming. Since I'm a musician by profession I don't want to spend too much time working on music-related "meta information" but on the music itself, by performing or by composing.

To make the discography more convenient for both user and the maintainer it should be converted from its current old-fashioned HTML implementation to a relational database (SQL). That would require:

And most importantly, someone should co-ordinate everything.

Meanwhile try to enjoy the site as it is. I'll try to do some updates every now and then. Don't get offended if I don't reply to your emails, I simply get way too much email these days.

- Esa Onttonen

Wednesday, 12th February 2003