#FollowFriday - @Odin1Eye: blogger, family man, viking, and podiobook reviewer.

@Odin1Eye is the internet name of a blogger from Texas who chooses to keep his real name off the net as much as possible. Since @Odin1Eye is a friend of The Nifty Tech Blog and is a contributing volunteer, we'll respect his wishes. That and he asked me to. He is a family man, a self-proclaimed Mac Geek, a martial artist, a teacher educator (he teaches teachers how to teach), and a video buff.

@Odin1Eye is also the man behind the blog View from Valhalla. He began blogging on March 23rd, of 2009 with a plea to the (publishing) gods to explain why books like Twilight see print, but works like @PhilippaJane's Weather Child are rejected for "lack of a market". I won't go into the whole thing, but you can read it here if you're interested. View from Valhalla started out as a personal blog, and in some ways it still comes across as one. @Odin1Eye speaks as himself and tends to be rather frank. But in November of 2009, he started a new project that has taken over his blog and established his name in the social media community. For on November 15th, 2009, he started his Podcast Review series. Since then, he has published 33 podcast reviews. In general, @Odin1Eye reviews podcast fiction that has completed and is available in its entirety, although he reserves the right to break his own rules. These reviews are an excellent resource for lovers of fiction, podcasting, podcast novels, and audio books. I recommend checking them out.

@Odin1Eye also partnered with fellow viking @Rasplundjr of Random Pimpage and they offered up a two viking review to the highest bidder during The Boom Effect auction. This "Pimp from Valhalla" style review was to feature the two (drunken) vikings discussing the winner's latest project in the coarse, disparaging, yet kind-hearted manner that only vikings can muster. For reasons that still escape me, I bid on this lot and ended up being the winner. Yes, that's right. I paid good money to a five-year-old girl to have two inebriated vikings roast my blog over the coals. I plead auction fever. Unfortunately, life events prevented the double-viking threat from doing the review, so they each did individual reviews as a good faith effort until they can make good on the original contract. Or until the Girl Scout Mafia catches up to them for their unpaid cookie bills. Whichever comes first. You can see their efforts here and here. And yes, this does mean that at some point they're going to come along and roast me again.

On Twitter stream, @Odin1Eye is a person that I tend to think of as the "cheerleader" of the network. He is always very supportive of everyone's projects, new and old. And I guess you can tell from the paragraphs above that there is a fair amount of good-natured kidding around. The end result is frequently insightful, rambling conversation that frequently leaves me in stitches. If you've followed any of the multitude of links in the above paragraphs, you should probably plan on following @Odin1Eye.

That is it for today. Go, have a good weekend, and come back here on Monday for a new review.  Red Laser will be up then and I'll tell you all I can about it while you're hammering Apple's servers trying to download iOS 4 along with a few million other people. And there may just be another editorial or two dropping next week. Be sure to vote in the two polls going for the month of June. See you next week!