Matt’s Desk: Editor’s Blog

Several years ago, I lost over 50 pounds on the Atkins Diet. That diet, as I’m sure you know, is a tiered process in which you cut-out, then gradually increase to a still relatively low level, the amount of carbohydrate you consume. I should point out that calling it a “diet” is somewhat inaccurate; while Dr. Atkins’ plan became popular as an effective weight loss tool, it was intended to be a general nutritional paradigm: eat very little sugar, starch, flour and other simple carbohydrates that raise blood sugar levels, opting instead for meats and low-carb veggies and fruits.

But after several months of carb starving and 53 pounds metabolized into memory, I was quite eager to return to “normal.” So I gave up the other benefits of low-carb living and went back to eating more or less what I wanted, remembering – but only loosely abiding by – the “carbohydrates are your enemy” lesson Atkins taught.

Armed with this knowledge, but still eating more simple carbohydrates than I should, I regained a bit of fat over the years, but never got anywhere near my pre-Atkins weight. Now and then I thought back to how great I felt eating low-carb: good mood, better sleep, more energy, less waking-hours tiredness, clearer skin, just to name the biggies. I declared more than once that I’d return to a majority sugar-free and low-carb way of eating, but for good this time, to lose a little more weight and look and feel better…

Just not today. Monday, maybe. Or, after the holidays.

You know, eventually.

But that perennial procrastination ended two Thursdays ago when I had the opportunity to read a new book by Dr. William Davis entitled Wheat Belly. In one early morning sitting, I devoured the book and quickly decided to return to a low-carb diet the next day (I needed to hit the grocery store anyway).  It was just the push I needed.

This time, though, I would add one extra no-no to the list, at least for a time: wheat.

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Yes, it’s taken far, far too long -  years, in fact – but we finally have a page on Facebook. We hope to build this into a fantastic tool for for our readers to submit questions and suggestions, share what they like in the world of iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and even comment on what’s going on at Pocket PC Central in general.

Our Facebook page is a little sparse at the moment, but we’ll be working in the coming days and weeks – hopefully with your help – to make it a much more useful destination.

You can find us here: http://facebook.com/PPCCentral

Earlier this year I decided to ditch my Core i7 cooler and look for something quieter.  I work in the office hours each day, and keeping my working environment quiet, though a longtime desire, had become a growing concern – my CPU fan was getting older and starting to rumble a bit.

Originally, I had planned to gather several cooling solutions in the $60-$80 range to determine which was best; but in the end I decided to put just two in a head-to-head matchup:

The Noctua NH-D14 (above, left) , a whopping cooler with fans and fins and pipes galore, and a contained liquid cooling system, the Antec KUHLER H20 620. 

I spent weeks with each, tweaking and measuring, and made my choice.  But my choice may not be yours; the answer to which solution is best for you depends on several factors.

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Google Drive. Dropbox. SkyDrive.  While all interesting and worthwhile in their own ways, stripped to their cores these three competing services all work more or less the same way: create a folder, drop stuff into it, and keep the folder and its contents synced between computers and the Cloud, and accessible from the web or mobile devices.

But what if you need something more flexible?

What if – like me – you already have folders on your desktop(s) and laptop(s) you need to keep synced across computers – and even platforms – without having to consolidate them into “drop-boxes”?  What if you want Folder A – as is – on your PC synced with Folder B on your Mac, and Folder C – as is – on your Mac synced Folder D with your PC, and to have changes made to folders on either system synced with the other? 

Sadly, none of the aforementioned services can do this without changing your existing file structure.

For keeping project files, development workspaces, and existing file structures in place and in sync, there’s only one service I’ve found that gets the job done: SugarSync.

In this article, I’ll show you how to use SugarSync to keep existing files and folders synced across different computers, be they Windows PCs or Macs, and backed-up in the Cloud. And, if those folders don’t exceed 5.5GB or so in total space, you won’t even have to pay for the privilege.

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