Five Things Friday #1 - Cool Stuff That Rocked My Week
Happy Friday, Everyone!
So I'm testing out a new feature on my IG channel called Five Things Friday. Yeah, like Taco Tuesday - it's been done before, but not by me! Can you tell that I love alliterations? (Tip Tuesday, Tool Thursday, and now Five Things Friday?) Oh my.
So here are my five things:
1. Manatee Summer by Evan Griffith
Ok, so for books that have really impacted me lately, I would say that Manatee Summer would be my top choice. This is a kid's book, it's actually one of the Battle of the Books titles for grades 3 - 5 this year in Florida. Why is it on my list? Because I bawled when I read it. Not just sniffled, bawled! It takes a lot for a book to make me bawl, and no, I am not telling you what part made me cry. You'll just have to read it yourself! I don't want to give anything away! I will tell you that it is an excellent story of boy friendship, which seems so rare in young adult writing these days. If more boys could read books like this, it would help them to feel less isolated with their feelings since boys are taught not to express their sadness. I think that the author, Evan Griffith, did an amazing job of giving us that unique insight into a boy’s emotional world that never quite makes it to the surface.
The author also writes about coastal life and since I live near the beach in Florida, it was a fun read for that reason as well. A few summers ago, my friend and I were in the Gulf and a herd of eight manatee swam right between us as we were talking. It was stunning. We love the manatees around here - they have a sacred specialness here on the Gulf.
2. Tim Ferriss Show Ep. #797: Dr. Keith Baar
I listened to this episode over a week ago and it has stayed with me. The big takeaway was that you can get stronger with less injury if you go slow with weights instead of fast. A lot more was said, but that was my big takeaway. If you are into fitness and have not heard of Tim Ferriss or listened to his podcast, do yourself a favor today and listen to this one. If you’ve ever been injured, or are forever recovering from old people injuries like I am, this is a good listen! You will always win by being your own advocate in the medical world!
Tim Ferriss podcast ep 797 (Here’s the transcript if you want to read it and the link to the podcast episode: https://tim.blog/2025/02/27/dr-keith-baar-transcript/
3. Notebook LM
I touched upon this tool in an earlier Instagram post, but in this post I would like to actually share the podcast that Notebook LM created for me! I am honestly considering doing a bunch of these and starting a podcast for them - or at least having them as a feature on my own podcast, which is definitely something I am wanting to do.
If you didn’t see the Instagram post, (first, why not? Click on the image below! Please subscribe!) I talked about how Notebook LM is a great tool for consolidating information from a variety of sources. You can upload up to 50 sources (which can include YouTube videos!) and it will analyze them with AI and create a Briefing Doc - this is a link to a copy of the Briefing Doc which Notebook LM provided for me, which I copied and pasted into Obsidian then saved it in Google Drive so that I could share it with you! See Cool Thing #4 for more about that…
But before I do that, I want to share the other cool feature of Notebook LM - the podcast! It’s gonna be hard to beat this favorite! This audio is a recording that Notebook LM generated between two AI “people” discussing the information that was contained in the 11 YouTube videos that I uploaded. They digested all that information, and then generated a podcast that I can listen to in 20 minutes. Wow. Here it is… 22 minutes. Have a listen!
4. Obsidian to Notion Automation
I also mentioned this one in a post this week. I am testing out some new features this week on Instagram. I have Tip Tuesday, where I highlight a tip for Notion users. This week, my tip was about an automation that I created between Obsidian and Notion.
Basically, Notion kinda sucks at generating PDFs of their pages. Anyone who uses Notion knows this! It sucks. So I ended up staying with Obsidian for PDFs for that reason. But a lot of times, I want access to those files that are in Obsidian when I am in Notion because (hello!) they relate to my LIFE! So this is all very new, but I figured out this week how to get access to those files while messing around in Notion! Every time I get advice from ChatGPT, it goes into Obsidian - beautifully, with markup and everything! But it is not available in Notion!
So, to set up the automation between Obsidian and Notion, I first installed Google Drive for Mac so that I could save files directly to Google Drive from my Mac. (I’m sure that you could do the same thing from Windows.) Then I set up a Zapier automation that looks to see if that particular folder (in my Google Drive) has been updated. If it has, it automatically adds a new entry in a database in Notion that includes the name of the file and a link to the Google Drive file! It’s brilliant! We actually have a paid Zapier account, but I think you could still do that on the free Zapier but you might run out of zaps unless you can somehow program it to check less often? That is beyond me at the moment as I am just getting started in the automation space!
Favorite IG Post of the Week
OK, here’s a fun one for you! A singing dentist! Have a great week, everyone!
