Sensory overload?

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People always assumed that by showing me the body language, I would learn how to do that stuff, but I never did (go figure). It was only after I figured out how snapping and whistling worked that I could figure out how to do them.

Whistling first off is approximately a 'w' shape with the lips. (Exactly a 'w' shape for me, but I don't know how you pronounce 'w'.) What you are trying to do is not produce a certain tone, but eliminate all the other tones in the air you exhale. The top and bottom of the lip should be relaxed, the side corners pushed in. Mess around randomly with the lip muscles (you have about a millimeter's leeway), making sure to try blowing steadily, but not hard. Your goal is to 'catch' a tone, and feed all the energy of your breath into that tone, letting the rest of the white noise die off. After you've got that basic tone, expanding and contracting the back of your mouth can change it to all the other tones, and you're whistling.

Snapping is much easier than whistling. You are striking the muscle of your thumb with your middle finger at an extremely high velocity. That's all snapping is. (Well, there is a bit of a sound chamber now that I look but...) So put your ring and pinky fingers on the muscle of your thumb, and touch the pads of your thumb and middle finger together. Slide your middle finger down to the pad of your thumb to land on the muscle. Got that? Okay now press your thumb and middle finger together strongly. This pressure makes it harder for you to slide your middle finger, so the more you push the more pressure comes on the bone of the middle finger, like a hiker pushing a branch forward only to have it snap back on the next hiker at lethal velocity.

Since the kinetic threshold of friction is less than the the static threshold, once your attempt to slide your finger overcomes the resistence from pushing your finger and thumb together, your middle finger will accelerate very rapidly once it starts moving, and will strike the muscle of your thumb with a loud 'pop' or 'snap' sound. The two fingers already on the muscle will be pushed aside (you may have to aim for that) and the cylinder they form can be tweaked a little bit to form a resonant chamber that will amplify and focus your snap. (Without the chamber it sounds more like a soft splat than a snap.)

So... hope that helped. Probably not, but was fun to write.

Transition lenses are pretty cool. I have used them before, although I've noticed after about 3 years of use they seem to stop transitioning. I'm glad for my sunglasses consequently. Be sure to get glare resistent sunglasses though: the ones I have may dim the light but then the whole thing covers with a sheen and ohmigodican'tseeitis occurs.

But fluorescent lights are a totally different business. The way they work is by building up a current, and then flashing it through the gas of the bulb. And then doing it again, and again, in rapid succession. The end result is what appears to be a constant glow, but is really a strobe light going so fast we (theoretically) can't tell it occurs. A friend of mine used to get migrane headaches, but only when there was nothing to see with besides cheap fluorescent lights.

Televisions and monitors are strobing too, somewhat, so if you can use a computer screen (without ambient lights) without getting headaches, chances are strobing of fluorescent bulbs isn't giving you headaches either, but one can never be sure.