Category: new!

There is one key thing to know about Uber. This is it.

Uber is a global logistics company based on sophisticated computer technology. It takes a modern software approach to delivering services. That’s the key thing to know about Uber.

Uber is not:

  • an app. The app is just your entry into the services that Uber provides. Behind that is the sophisticated computer technology that really makes it work.
  • a taxi service. Uber is a logistics company. “Logistics is the management of the flow of things between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet requirements of customers or corporations” (Wikipedia). That’s what Uber is. If there is something that needs to get from A to B, Uber will do that. It could be people, it could be food,  or it could be goods. Regardless, Uber is capable of doing that. If that is what your business does too, you will be competing with Uber.
  • local. Uber is not interested in just your city. Uber will disrupt your city, but it is not focused just on where you live. It is a global company looking to provide services globally, one city and territory at a time.

Finally, Uber is delivering logistic services, but it is delivering them the way other companies deliver software. That means it is going to take VC money and rapidly deploy service after service, upgrade after upgrade, to do what it needs to do to be successful. It doesn’t need to be profitable. It does need market share. If market share comes at the expense of your logistic services, so be it.

Lots of people talk about Uber. If they are not thinking this way, they are missing the bigger picture.

MyDomaine will make you appreciate IKEA in a new way

The folks at MyDomaine.com have a number of great articles of how to use IKEA furniture in a chic way. Here are four of them:

Well worth a look if you are on a budget and need to furnish your place. For example, I really like how they used IKEA bookcases to make this:

The rock, the attendant and the vanishing soul: how fathers progress

When I first started off as a father, I was like a climbing rock: durable, constant,  capable of bearing heavy loads.

As my children mature, I find I am more the attendant. I watch their events, I monitor their behavior, I whisk away what is unwanted, be it spiders, dirty dishes, tears, anxiety.

In time they will be independent. I will hover around, like a ghost, a memory, reminding them of what is good in them and their past. I will be there but not there.

This is the life of fathers.
—————–
Written on my BlackBerry Handheld to my old Posterous blog, October 12 2011, 7:34 PM

Why do Apple’s Macbook chargers cost so much?

Simple: they are a complex piece of technology. The photo above shows a Macbook charger from Apple on the left: the charger on the right is from another company. You can clearly see that the one from Apple has a lot more technology packed in there. And for good reasons. To understand what those reasons are, see this piece:  Macbook charger teardown: The surprising complexity inside Apple’s power adapter. It was surprisingly interesting, from an engineering and design perspective.

Thanks to Tom Plaskon for sharing this on Twitter!

Blackberry has a new Android phone coming

And I think it could be successful. First off, it looks good, and it has the famous BlackBerry keyboard. Plus it will work with BlackBerry Enterprise Servers. For some users, this is the best of both worlds. For BlackBerry fans who also want to tap into the benefits of Android devices, this could be for you. More details, here:  BlackBerry Priv — the Android phone formerly known as Venice — is on the way | IT Business.

On the beautiful weight that holds you under

Before you take hold of the beautiful weight, you read the stories written and listen to the tales told of holding on to it. But life is short, and when you are offered it, you are  more afraid of refusing it than you are of accepting it. You fear you will never get the chance again in your life, long or short, of having the beautiful weight. You see so many others, weightless and unbearably light and that seems worse than the load.

You step forward and shift the heavy beauty onto your back, and as you stumble forward, you experience the pride and panic of such a possession. The days and months and years will pass, and through each of them you will rise up and shoulder the weight throughout each hour, retiring it briefly each night.  If you are lucky, you will have a string of Hercules who will shift it onto their shoulders, however briefly, giving you a moment’s rest. Many unfortunately know no such solace, and the sublime burden falls solely on their backs.

The truly unfortunate are unable to walk steadily forward and eventually lose their footing, stumbling off the path, into the waters. Unable to let go, they go deeper and deeper down into the water, struggling to keep their head above the surface as the weight submerges them. 

Only those unworthy of the beautiful weight are able to slip out from under it. The rest get stronger from their struggle, or drown.

They say out loud that the beautiful weight makes life worth living. Afterwards they whisper something else. 

There is an art to carrying the beautiful weight, and though it is the most important of the arts, it is rarely taught. They will learn as they go, they mutter, and either sink or make do. And many make do, while some struggle terribly and then float quietly beneath the surface. 

The modern history of comic based Hollywood movies is here

The modern history of comic based Hollywood movies is here (via VOX) and it’s great. It starts with this:

Though they both center on a certain caped crusader, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) and Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever (1995) couldn’t be more different. One is regarded as a cinematic treasure; the other is viewed as beautiful, colorful garbage

It goes on to review how films centred on superheroes have been progressing since Tim Burton’s Batman in the beginning of the 1980s and reviews films all the way to 2015. There’s been significant change in the genre in that 35 years, as you might expect. And it looks like it is about to undergo another change.

Like alot of genre films, it’s can be easy to dismiss genre films like this as something outside the mainstream of cinema and not worth discussing. My own view is that comic book films are films first and foremost, and when good directors like Nolan and Burton direct them, you end up with really good films. This has always been true for genre films, not just super hero movies.

For fans of such films, or film in general, it’s well worth a read and a consideration.

Praise for “Twelve Recipes” from Michael Ruhlman and me


On his blog,  Michael Ruhlman has kind words for the book “Twelve Recipes”, by Cal Peternell. I strongly support this. I bought the book and read through it quickly, enjoying it the entire way.

I call it a book, rather than a cookbook, though it has 12+ recipes and plenty of good advice on cooking. But it is as much a biography and a series of essays as it is collection of recipes. If you want a beautiful book about food and so much more, than I recommend you pick this up.

Here a link to how to order it from Indigo and here is Amazon

Is there no limit to how small computers can get?

Right now it doesn’t seem it when I see a general purpose computer shrunk down to this size:

You can find out more about that computer here: Inverse Path – USB armory.

I believe that soon everything you buy will come with computing built into it, by defaul. When this occurs,people may find it weird to think about non-digital devices, just like younger people might find it weird to see people working from previous generations doing work and not using computers.

Looking for a new job? You need to tell a good story

Or, more likely, fifteen good stories, according to Lifehacker.

.

I’d recommend anyone looking for a new job should consider having these stories and rehearsing them so that when asked you have good answers and don’t fumble as you tell them. Plus it always looks good to be prepared.

If you are looking for a new job, go to Lifehacker/LinkedIn for more guidance.

Resources for people wanting to start getting into coding

My daughter asked me for good on line resources for people interested in learning about programming. I’ve collected a number of them here. If you know of any more, please let me know.

  • Code School and Codecademy are both well done sites that teach the basics of programming. I’ve used Codecademy and liked it alot. People say good things about Code School too.  For example, at Code School they came up with this fun way to learn Rails: Rails for Zombies.
  • Code.org is another highly publicized site that teaches programming, though it seems aimed more at younger people. Still, a good site:  Code.org
  • Other good sites I found were The hard way to Learn Python and The Hard Way to Learn Ruby. I honestly didn’t find them that hard. For people who find the other sites I mentioned too slow or not for them, try “the hard way” sites.
  • If you want to focus more on HTML and CSS, then there are good tutorials on HTML, CSS, and more here: W3Schools Online Web Tutorials. I have a big fan of w3Schools for a long time. There’s also this: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Tutorials, References, and Articles over at HTML Dog. As well, the other sites mentioned above have lessons on HTML, etc.
  • There are tons of  of programming references here -> Become a Programmer, M—–F—–. (Yeah, that word is what you think it is. Still, that site has alot of great links.)
  • What language should you learn? Well, here are the top 10 languages of 2014, according to Mashable. It really depends on alot of things, but I think you can’t go wrong learning Javascript, then maybe Ruby or Python. Some SQL is good to know.  But hey, I still use Perl and PHP. Java and C have their strengths. If someone made me choose one, right now, it would be Javascript.
  • Last, but not least by any means is a great story for anyone learning to program but is worried about it.  So How Did You Learn How to Program? : A Cubicle Of My Own. I highly recommend this to anyone who thinks “I really want to code and use computers” but is put off by the culture or the attitude of other programmers or for any reason is thinking that they can’t do it. You can. Really. Give it a try.

Interested in the MEAN stack? Check this out

Like alot of folks, I am interested in the MEAN stack, but in getting started, I haven’t found too many concise, all in one, pieces on the topic that are good intros. (I am sure there are some: I just haven’t found one.)

This IBM developerWorks article looks like it could be the one for me (and you): Mastering MEAN: Introducing the MEAN stack.

The title is confusing: you won’t be mastering MEAN with one article in devWorks, but you will have a chance to learn enough to get started.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Should you take vitamins? A simple two step evaulation process

Vitamin image from wikipedia

1) Read and print this: Don’t Take Your Vitamins | FiveThirtyEight.

2) Talk to your doctor. Discuss this article. Then decide.

I’ve seen a number of articles like the one in FiveThirtyEight saying one shouldn’t take vitamins. Others treat them like chicken soup, saying: they can’t hurt. Regardless, if you are putting anything that is not food into your body on a daily basis, it only makes sense to talk to your doctor.

(Image via the “Vitamin” section of Wikipedia)

On class, Tim Hortons, and Starbucks


While there is alot being written about the Tim Hortons/Burger King merger from the point of view of taxes and finances, this piece in the blog Worthwhile Canadian Initiative touches on something else: class

Can’t we at least get a decent class analysis of this question? There are two sorts of people: Starbucks people; and Tim Hortons people. And this class distinction is far more important than anything based on superficial differences like income and occupation. As a Tim Hortons person, who feels deeply ill-at-ease in a Starbucks, and who does not understand the menu, I cannot stop myself asking the “barista”(?) the subversive question: “Can I have a small double-double please?”

In my experience with going there, Tim Hortons is an establishment that seems to be staffed sith and patronized by working class people. As opposed to Starbucks, which seems to be staffed and patronized by middle class people. This is not to say that one class is better than another, but there appears to be this class distinction that differentiates them. The blog post linked to above talks about cultural or educated classes, but I think there is a case to be made that this also has to do with economic classes as well as a rural / urban / suburban divide.

Economically, the lowest coffee advertised by Tim Hortons is closer to one dollar (in Canada). In Starbucks, the lowest coffee advertised is closer to two dollars. While that may seem like much to some, for working class people, it makes a big difference. (Never mind that alot of the coffee bought in Starbucks is over three dollars once you start getting it from the espresso bar versus from the coffee carafe.) Likewise, a coffee and a donut costs less than three dollars in Tim Hortons, while a coffee and a snack at Starbucks is closer in the range of four to five dollars. (Based on the many coffee / snack combos I have bought at both.)

In terms of rural / urban divide, Tim Hortons has been over time making a move into the downtown core (at least in Toronto), while Starbucks has been slowly expanding outwards (e.g., Sydney, Nova Scotia recently got a Starbucks).

Those of you who say you have good taste may say: yes, but Starbucks is better. (And there will be others that say both are terrible and only indie coffee shops have good coffee.) I believe it is better too, though I don’t think Tim Hortons’s coffee is bad. (I have drunk bad coffee, and Tim Hortons is not bad.) I think for Tim Hortons customers, coffee is a hot beverage with caffeine that is good to drink while driving and at work.  Having it cost less makes a difference. Tim Hortons advertises that their coffee is fresh: that is the quality it has. Starbucks will talk of their coffee in terms of where it comes from and with terms you often hear wine experts talk about: those are the qualities it has.  Your values will determine where you buy your coffee from.

By the way, one of the stereotypes was that only middle class people (and pretentious ones at that) drank lattes. Now Tim’s has machines that make lattes and a wide range of milk based coffees too. They may not be as good as those in other places, but they are not bad and they have two other qualities: they are fast and they are lower in cost. Those two qualities are valued by working class people. And working class people like to try things too: they are no different from people with more money and more education who live downtown in the city.

Coffee is about class. It’s about the different classes we have in our society that center around money, education, where you work and where you live. Starbucks and Tim Hortons are based upon that as well, though as each attempts to grow more, they are expanding from their class base. As someone who comes from a rural working class background but lives an urban middle class background, I am comfortable in and recognize the value in both.

In Canada, we don’t talk about class much, but it is everywhere. Including the coffee shops we patronize.

Why Read the Classics? Italo Calvino has the reasons

It’s the weekend. You could use something to read. Instead of going to the latest books — which are no doubt very good — why not consider picking up a classic and reading it. If you are furrowing your brow at the thought, please take a moment and read Calvino’s argument for why you should in this NY Review of Books piece.

One thing that Calvino doesn’t mention is that the classics can be fun. Not all of them, of course, but many of them can be as delightful and engrossing as any book you might find.

Whatever your reasoning to select one, here’s hoping you start reading one this weekend. Enjoy!

(The image contains text from Calvino’s book, “If on a winter’s night a traveler” and it contains the best description of the process of reading. I don’t know if it’s a classic yet, but it will be and is also a great read.)

A Mathematician’s Apology by G. H. Hardy is free and online

The great mathematician G.H. Hardy wrote a slim book that is great for mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike. Best of all

As fifty or more years have passed since the death of the author, this book is now in the public domain in the Dominion of
Canada..

So yes, you can get it for free, here.

I highly recommend it. (Did I mention it is a great read for non-mathematicians, too. It really is.)

Thanks to @anitleirfall on twitter for pointing this out.

How to set up Kanboard (a visual task board inspired by Kanban) on the IBM Bluemix platform

It is very easy to set up Kanboard on Bluemix, IBM’s PaaS solution. (For those of you not familiar with Kanboard, it it a visual task board inspired by Kanban). I encourage you to visit the Kanboard site for more information. 
 
Meanwhile, to set up Kanboard in Bluemix, I took the following steps, some which are optional:
 
1) Download the kanboard code from here: http://kanboard.net/downloads
2) Unzip the kanboard folder.
3) (Optional) Copy the kanboard folder into a local test environment. I had a Xampp test environment and I put the kanboard there. (e.g., C:\xampp\htdocs\kanboard). I started Apache and then pointed my browser at http://localhost/kanboard to see it working. (One of the benefits of doing this is I can configure the Kanboard environment before I push it into Bluemix. In my case, I created some new users, changed the admin password, and added some default tasks. If I push this folder, these changes will also show up in Bluemix.)
4) I had a copy of the Cloud Foundary executable (cf.exe) to push the code into Bluemix: I put the cf.exe file in the Kanboard folder.
5) I created a manifest.yml file in the Kanboard folder. In my manifest.yml file I had the following 
 
—
applications:
– name: <my app name>
  memory: 256M
  instances: 1
  host: <my host name>
  buildpack: https://github.com/zendtech/zend-server-php-buildpack.git
 
You can make the name and host name anything, though the hostname is part of the URL for the site, so it must be acceptible as part of a URL. Also the hostname needs to be unique in Bluemix. I tend to make the app and host name the same.
 
Open a command window, and from the Kanboard folder, enter the following commands:
  1. cf api https://api.ng.bluemix.net
  2. cf login -u <your Bluemix login account>
  3. cf target -o <your Bluemix login account> -s dev
  4. cf push
Once you see that the health and status for the app is “OK”, you can either go to Bluemix to check it out, or go directly to  the url: http://<hostname>.mybluemix.net/
You should be able to login and proceed to use it. (The default userid and password is here).

17 great, short novels for people like me who struggle to finish larger volumes

If like me you want to read better but find yourself struggling to get through massive books that you tend not to finish, this post is for you. Rachel Grate has put together a list of 17 great books that cover a range of old and new, very well known and some less well know. What’s on the list?

  1. ‘The Awakening’ by Kate Chopin
  2. ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  3. ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel
  4. ‘Passing’ by Nella Larson
  5. ‘Candide’ by Voltaire
  6. ‘The Member of the Wedding’ by Carson McCullers
  7. ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell
  8. ‘Autobiography of Red’ by Anne Carson
  9. ‘Invisible Cities’ by Italo Calvino
  10. ‘The Buddha in the Attic’ by Julie Otsuka
  11. ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by Ernest Hemingway
  12. ‘The House on Mango Street’ by Sandra Cisneros
  13. ‘The King’ by Donald Barthelme
  14. ‘The Metamorphosis’ by Franz Kafka
  15. ‘Notes from Underground’ by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  16. ‘Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?’ by Lorrie Moore
  17. ‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes

 As you can see, a great range. I highly recommend you go to the post and read why they are recommended. Then head to your local bookstore and grab a handful. 

One of my favourite books is ‘Invisible Cities’: I highly recommend it.

Bon Appetit teams up with IBM’s Watson for some great summer recipes, like these ribs



The story of IBM and Bon Appetit is really interesting to me, since I love food and I am proud of the work IBM is doing with Watson. Anyone interested in the topic of innovation in IT or food should find it worth a read.

For people who aren’t interested in the high tech aspect of it, check out the recipes. In particular, these ribs with a range of flavours from bourbon to oyster sauce look fantastic.

The myth of waste: some rainy Sunday thoughts on awareness redemption imagination + love

wet leaf

Walking out today, I looked down and saw this leaf covered in raindrops. I thought how beautiful it was and how I should take a photo of it. Sadly, this photo doesn’t do it justice.

The way we treat many things in the world, including people, doesn’t do
them justice, either. It often has nothing to do with meanspiritedness. More often it is the case that we are not aware of them, or not aware of the goodness that they possess. Their goodness is wasted in that sense.

Or we lack imagination to see the goodness that is there or how we can appreciate it. In the physical world, I think the notion of waste indicates
a lack of imagination as to how we think of something. We throw it away and
become unaware of it any more, instead of reusing it or recycling it and
making it new and better.

If waste is a lack of awareness and imagination with regard to appreciating
the value in something or someone, love is the opposite. To love something
is to be aware of and see the value in it and to see good qualities
invisible to others. What may be to others a broken old toy destined for
the trash may be to a child the most valuable thing in the world. In
Citizen Kane, the most valuable object ever possessed by the wealthy Kane
was an old sleigh, long gone.

If you are a Christian, you believe in a god who loves everyone and who
believes in your redemption, regardless of your faults and flaws. And as a
Christian, you should aspire to that ideal yourself, regardless of your own
limitations. You should see the value in everyone, including the least of
your brothers. And you should acknowledge your faults and strive to
overcome them.

While you may not be a Christian, the ideal of seeing the value in everyone
is a worthwhile ideal to strive for. Not everyone has the same value, but
no one is without value. No one is a waste.

Likewise with things. There is nothing wasted, though we think it so. Even
the dead are transformed as they decay into something other than they once
were. The leaves become compost, the windfall of orchards become cider, and
the dead animals that fall through force or through nature feed others.
If you donate your organs, others may see things they love with your eyes, and feel your old heart in their chest quicken at the sight of them. Though much is lost, all can be transformed, everyone can be redeemed, and nothing need be wasted.

As always, thanks for reading this.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld to my old posterous blog November 14 2010, 12:09 PM  

We long to be where we are not…

When we are sad, certainly. We long to be in a place where we were happy,
or where we will be happy. It may no longer exist, or it may not yet exist,
but we know that if we were there, a waiter would come by, and hand us a
drink and seat us and we would think: we have arrived at this place where
we were/will be happy.

When we are adventuresome, there is no doubt. When i was younger i listened
to old radios. Cities were painted on the front, and a slight shift of a
dial would take you from London to Dusseldorf to New York. I could travel
from one city to another with a turn of a wheel, and i could imagine being
in front of a radio in a parlour of a house in some great city. Such radios
are antiques now. Instead we travel the world with laptops and browsers and
high speed Internet connections. We scan photos on iphones taken in the
Mumbai dawns or the Palo Alto dusks. We can go anywhere, in a limited way.
We yearn to travel with the ease of the electrons that leave our computers.

Or we may look to the sky and watch planes go by and imagine us in them. Or
we may stand before rivers, stand at edge of oceans and seas, and see
ourselves setting out on boats that take us down stream. Always we are
departing, travelling.

From time to time we will arrive where we are happy, are content. We will
wish to stay there forever or else a very long time. We tie up our boats,
shelve our passports, leave our radios tuned to one station.

when that happens, the song of the Sirens will sing out to us and promise
us lands of even greater happiness. And friends will haul steamer trunks
past our path and speak of great travels they are embarking on. We will
recall that one trip we never found the time to take. That one friend, far
away, we must visit once more. That last pilgrimage.

When that happens, we will once again long to be where we are not. For only
the dead are settled.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld at September 15 2012, 10:50 PM  to my old posterous blog.

On the doors we pass through

When you are younger, there are so many doors you can pass through. They
spread out in front of you. You run in and out of doors. You play with
them. Some doors lead to other doors. Some doors are easy to pass through,
while others need preparation. Yet all doors seem available to you.

Until they are not. Some doors close behind you, and you can no longer go
back. Others will not budge. Men stand guard over certain doors: those you
will never pass through.

You get up every day and pass through doors. Some you pass through often.
Others only once. You can never be certain when a door is one that you will
no longer not pass through. They seem to be ones you can open. Until they
cannot.

Then you get older and you realize that you will have less and less doors
to open. the doors become more precious to open, to close, to handle, to
wonder what changes as you go in or go out.

Doors transform us, identify us, protect us, shut us out. We can stare out
a window and be untouched, but to pass through a door is to make a change.
Even the doors we pass through all the time, for there can be a time when
we say: that’s’enough, i won’t go through there again.

To pass through a door is to say: i am going to do something. I am going to
be different. That is why we like doors when we are younger: doors are
Change. When we get older, we cherish doors because we think: things can
still be different. Or we cherish them because we say: no, things will
never be different despite other changes.

Thanks for reading this. To read it, you clicked on a link that took you to
this page. That link was a door, in a way, too.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld at August 22 2012, 10:35 PM to my old posterous blog.

On the love we waste

We waste our love. We love the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. We love people who no longer love us. We love people who never loved us. Crazy people. Calculating people. Frauds. We love them all, and more. We love people for what we thought they were, not what there are. We love shadows. And we love ghosts. Such good love, like gold, tossed into the sea, lost.

But love is not gold. Love is abundant. Like breathes and tears, sweat and blood, we are filled with a wealth of love. We may parcel
it out in a miserly fashion, but love is no more rare than heartbeats.

It is right that love is tied to the heart. If you use your heart, it gets stronger and beats harder and longer. Nothing the heart does is wasted. Even the most useless of exercise benefits the heart, and that strength makes your life better. So too with love. Every time you love someone, something, your heart gets stronger. Life gets better.

Love is never wasted.

Thanks for reading this.
—————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld. Originally posted on Posterous at September 29 2012, 3:56 PM

On avoiding the trap of political outrage

If you are associated with people who are political activists, you will likely be presented with events from time to time and you will be asked  “why aren’t you outraged by this?” It can put you on the defensive. It can make you feel uncaring, selfish, or apathetic. You have to agree that a massacre or child abuse or great poverty is outrageous, and you feel at that moment that a) something should be done and b) you are somehow deficient for not doing something about it.

This is a trap. First off: is there something you can immediately do to stop this? If you can, then do it. Chances are you cannot. So outrage aside, you need to make a plan either to take action in the longer term, or not take action at all. But why would you not take action at all? Simply because there are more terrible things in the world happening than you can possibly tackle. Even if you were to devote your life to them, there would be many many more things you cannot do than you can. You need to have a plan to do what you can.

Feelings like guilt or or pity or outrage may spark you do something. But if things stop there, such feelings are self-indulgent. Instead, pick something that you are motivated to improve and work on.Can you do more? Do more.

Just avoid the trap.

(Originally posted at Posterous on April 24 2011)

 

My new favourite app for beating procrastination and getting things done (GTD) is 30/30

My new favourite app for beating procrastination is the 30/30 app from the good folks at  binary hammer. I often find I get distracted from the list of things I have to do. With the 30/30 app, I can create a simple list of tasks, each with an amount of time to do them in. Once I start the list, the app shows me how much time I have to complete each item on the list. I can add if I want, or if I finish early, I can check it off (and the task moves down to the Completed section below the line). The result: I am better able to focus on the task list I have to do.

The app works on the iPad and the iPhone. The interface is superb. And it’s free! I highly recommend it.

For more on the app, you can go to the binary hammer web site (link above) or you can go here: 30/30 on the App Store on iTunes

Weekend Project: punch up your place with a small can of paint

As this article shows, you can make a big change in your place with a small amount of paint. Minimally Designed Apartment With Punches of Color (Design Milk).

Case in point, this door and the fixture above it:

Depending on the object you paint, you could get a big change with a small can of paint. Low cost, low effort, big difference. Well worth it.

See the link to Design Milk (above) for more great examples.