I have a mashup web app http://tripoptimizer.heroku.com for looking up points of interests (Tourist attractions, Restaurants, hotels, etc) and their ratings and reviews.
The technology stack is RoR, jquery, jquery-mobile and PostgreSQL. It uses Yahoo Local Search APIs and Google search APIs.
I am not sure studying things in nature and creating exact models would be a good idea. Imagine trying to model a motor bike or a car by studying Cheetah(Fastest animal on ground). Nature may inspire to model/create useful things.
We create exact models to try to fully understand what is happening in nature, and then we mix the concepts into hybrid designs. This has been done for a number of MEMS insects, and has made them so much more efficient.
I think tuning little things or finding right combination of things is right on. For example, if you watch Chef Gordon Ramsay's Restuarant Nightmares TV show, he does the same thing. He comes in to a failing restaurant observes how it is run and tries to change Menu, Interior decoration, etc to make it successful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Ramsay
In the bastardized US version of the show, he seems to mostly be turning them all into the same restaurant. Also, his makeovers don't have a great track record (check Wikipedia, and also Yelp). I also think the advice you'd distill out of the show is pretty superficial:
* Reduce your menu to simple, accessible dishes with a restaurant "specialty".
* Reduce price.
* Source fresh ingredients.
* Redecorate.
What annoys me most about the show (even the BBC version) is that personnel changes never seem to be on the docket --- you have people that clearly shouldn't running a kitchen, and at the end of the episode there they are, plating Ramsay's sauteed skate wing.
That's not true. Some of the great earlier episodes had HUGE blowups between Ramsay and the not fit for kitchen people. Watch the Babylon, NY episode, or the one about the Indian restaurant in NYC.
I think you fail to consider that the places he goes into are usually owned by a family or a clueless person. He can't go in and say "well, honestly since you asked to be on my show, it's clear that YOU are the problem. You'd be better off if you just closed."
Uh, clearly he could choose not to "take the cases" of restaurants that were structurally incapable of improving. And yet his producers do, because they are the ones willing to embarass themselves on this show.
More importantly, the fact that Ramsay is willing to yell and bare his chest for the camera does not change the fact that he does not seem willing to stick to his guns and demand that they fire the old guy in the kitchen and hire a talented Ecuadorian to take his place.
My opinion is that is entertainment. I don't think it is turning the knobs, instead it is manipulating the video tape to show you what they want you to see. And he is an outsider making the changes, the original person is not doing it themselves. In a startup, the original person needs to be coming up with ways to turn the knobs and try different things to see what will work. It seems they choose people for the entertainment and shock value. Same thing with the "We mean business" show on AETV. I recommend a different source of inspiration...
How about the traffic green light displaying seconds before it's going to turn yellow? I think this is feasible because of LEDs usage in the traffic lights.
I think how many hours per week you can work is an individual thing. I need atleast 7 hours of sleep to think straight and produce meaningful stuff (code, designs, conversations, etc).
I don't need seven hours of sleep to think straight and produce meaningful stuff. I need seven hours of sleep to be able to convey the meaningful stuff to other people. I tend to talk a lot faster than people when I haven't gotten much sleep, and change subjects pretty quickly.
If you would like to create your own buttons, graphics, background images, colors, etc, try inkscape open source image creation, editing tool. http://inkscape.org
I also own www.tripoptimizer.com domain.
Let me know if interested.