For over a year now, making full use of my body has been a big hobby. To this end, I am learning silly human tricks. It has taken a few weeks of sporadic effort and I am now able to snap my fingers consistantly. My next goal is to be able to whistle. I have made little progress so far and am not yet able to whistle particular notes. Previously successful projects of this type were refining my senses of smell and temperature. Now I can reliably tell the temperature of water or air to the degree C with a range of roughly −20 to 45C. Calibrating my sense of temperature was easy enough; I would feel something, guess the temperature, then read off a thermometer. If I was wrong, I might say something like “Oh so that’s what 23 degrees feels like.” and then feel it again.
Other ongoing projects of this sort are to smell relative humidity and to sneeze only in the presence of a bright light. I’ve lost a bit of progress since last thread, now darkening my field of vision works to prevent a sneeze, but I still sneeze occasionally at normal indoor room brightness. When I feel like sneezing I look at a bright light until I either sneeze or stop feeling like I need to. It could be that the CFL I normally use is not bright enough for my purposes. “Hazards of Light” by Cronly-Dillon et al. suggests that I would be safe using a much more intense lamp.
Both, definitely. I do parkour regularly; I can reliably run (or walk backwards) on a 7cm wide beam, and am practicing rolls. I lift weights once per week and will move to twice weekly if I want substantially more arm strength than I have now. I also hike often. I have made large gains in physical fitness; as a kid I was always near the slowest of my peers, now I am one of the fastest runners in my laser tag club.