opinios is a web site designed to encourage and inspire creativity and self-expression. Not only does it provide me with an avenue to pursue my missed calling as a magazine editor by designing and maintaining it all, it also gives others a medium to express themselves to the world. Although a majority of the content is my own, there are a growing number of creative individuals who are sending in stuff of exceptional quality, and it is this variety that, I think, makes opinios really interesting.
The word "opinios" is not strictly Greek or Latin, it is derived from the Latin opinio, meaning opinion or idea.
While some submissions may be topical and others timeless, the focus is on being creative and the fulfillment gained from articulating and expressing thoughts and ideas; it is self-expression for the sake of it. Whether opinios acts as a launchpad to further creative pursuits, or is just a place where you can show others what you've got inside, anyone is welcome to get involved by submitting something for display! Comment on a submission, tell your friends about opinios, forward them links to opinios submissions, and encourage them to get involved!
To navigate, click on the categories to the right (or at the bottom of the page) to move between different mediums, or on 'all' to list the most recent submissions for all categories. You can also view a listing of all submissions by viewing the archive, or you can search the entire site using the search field on the right.
As the front page only contains the most recent posts, each entry contains a # sign which is the permanent link to that post and can be used as the address to direct anyone to the post.
You can also comment on an individual submission by clicking the "comment" link at the bottom of the entry. This will bring up a pop-up window for you to write your comments in. The other place to voice your opinion is on the discussion forum, which you can now register to use here.
You can stay up to date with what goes on at opinios a couple of ways.
One is to subscribe to the opinios mailing list. Mail-outs are not very frequent - I am not interested in sending you spam, and don't have the time to send you other non-related stuff. And I definitely won't give your email address to a third party. But any time there is a major update or a notable submission is posted I like to let the community of opinios readers and contributors know about it.
The other way is to read opinios via the RSS feed. If you have an RSS news aggregator like NetNewsWire (Mac) or Syndirella (Windows) then point it here*.
*I am still working on fixing the broken links present when viewing opinios as an RSS feed.
My name is Matt and I am presently working as an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan. As is obvious from the different things I have posted here, I spread myself pretty thinly - I jump from drawing to writing to taking photographs to making music without really letting one area develop as much as I should.
Which probably prevents me from ever really excelling at any one of the creative arts; but it does mean that I get to jump around between a bunch of different mediums instead of being passionate about only one. So be it. If it involves being creative, I'm all for it. I believe strongly that expressing yourself, creating something - contributing to a society's culture - is a worthwhile and positive activity. And so this web site is basically an online paradigm of my scattered brain.
opinios began in mid 2001 as a way for me to express myself in this multi-faceted manner, an outlet that I found was not being satisfied while employed as a software developer. The first volume contained some poetry and prose that I had written when I first moved to Melbourne, Australia, along with a handful of photos by myself and a few friends.
A few months later the traffic opinios attracted jumped when the second volume emerged, containing longer stories, more impressive drawings and more spectacular photos, sent in by more different contributors from different places around the world.
Relocating to Tokyo at the end of 2001 put a hold on updates, but recently I have managed to find time to give the site a drastic overhaul. Restructuring the layout and moving over all the old content was time-consuming, but definitely worthwhile as it looks a lot smarter and can be updated more frequently in a blog-style format rather than in distinct volumes.
Hope you enjoy the site, please leave any comments you have in the discussion board or send me an email.
