Casio G'zOne Ravine Review

!±8± Casio G'zOne Ravine Review

Design:

The Casio G'zOne Ravine is bulky and hefty phone like its predecessor. But the front side of this phone is slightly stylized than the Rock. The phone measures 4.3 inches in length, 2.1 inches in width and 0.9 inches in thickness and it is constructed out of a durable plastic. It can give resistance against the water, shock, dust, altitude, vibration, immersion, solar radiation, humidity, extreme temperatures and salt fog. The result is a bulky phone with rubber stoppers for all its ports and textured rubberized back. There is locking mechanism for the battery cover to ensure that the phone's internals do not get damaged.

The external display measures 1.35 inch, a mono LCD. It shows information such as battery life, signal strength, time and date. The currently playing track is also showed when the music player is active. Just above the external display there is a secondary microphone for when you use Ravine as walkie-talkie device. The left side of the phone has a voice command key, red key, volume rocker and a standard 3.5 mm headset jack. On right side of the phone a charging port is present. The camera lens and LED flash are present on the rear end of the phone. To reach the microSD card slot you will have to remove the battery cover.

When you open this Ravine you will find a 2.2 inch TFT display which can support up to 65,0000 colors. It has a resolution of 240×320 pixels. The screens backlight, font size, menu layout, clock format can be adjusted. Beneath this display a navigation array is present which includes two soft keys, round toggle with middle select key, speakerphone key and camera key. Under this navigation array usual Clear, Send and Power/End keys are present. The keys on the keypad are raised and are in angular shape which definitely helps in easier typing.

Features:

The phone book of Ravine can store up to 1000 entries. Each entry gives a room to store four numbers, street address, two e-mail addresses and instant messaging screen name. Around 500 Push-to-talk entries can be added with multiple contacts. Few more fundamental features included are the vibrate mode, speakerphone, world clock, stop watch, calendar, calculator, notepad and countdown timer.

The Ravine includes slightly more advanced features like voice command support, wireless web browser, mobile IM, Bing search and has 3 e-mail options like corporate email, mobile e-mail and mobile Web e-mail. Ravine also has Verizon's "Social Beat" app that offers quick access to your favorite social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and many more. It is compatible with the Field Force Manager, a tool for resource management that allows businesses keep in constant touch with mobile field workers. The Ravine is a Mobile Broadband Connect capable, meaning that you can use this phone like a modem when connected to the computer.

One aspect that makes Ravine a loyal phone for outdoorsman though, is G'zGear suite of apps. Seven preinstalled applications are included like walking counter/pedometer, a compass, thermometer with Fahrenheit and Celsius measurements, Sunrise Sunset app, a tidal graph app complete with optimal fishing times, Star Gazer and astro calendar which displays lunar cycle.

Price: 9.99

Weight: 4.6 oz

Camera: 3.2 MP

Battery life: 5 hours of talk time and 3.33 days of stand by time

You can also access Verizon's broadband apps like V Cast Video and V Cast Music with Rhapsody which allows you purchase and download music for around .99 per song. It can support file formats such as WMA, MP3, AAC+ and unprotected AAC. It supports external storage of 32GB. The phone includes a camera of 3.2 mega pixels which is a little upgrade over Rock's 2MP model. It can take pictures in 6 resolutions (2,048×1, 536, 1,600×1, 200, 1,280×960, 640×480, 320×240, 160×120), six color effects and 5 white balance presets. Other camera settings included are brightness, self timer, multishot mode, night mode and flash. The photo quality is fairly good but not great. Images looked well defined and clean but the colors look a bit washed out. The camera can record video in 320×240 resolutions.

Performance:

The call quality is mixed. Callers can hear us loud, natural and clear. The speakerphone calls are not worse. The audio playback quality is amazingly good from speakers whereas the video quality isn't very good. It will be pixilated and choppy especially when there are lots of action sequences. The battery life is rated as 5 hours of talk time and 3.33 days of stand by time.

Casio G'zOne Ravine Review

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How to Practice Piano With a Metronome

!±8± How to Practice Piano With a Metronome

Why do I need a metronome when I am practicing piano?

Perhaps your piano teacher has told you to buy a so-called metronome, or you have heard of this device somewhere and is wondering whether it would be good for you or not.

What the metronome does is counting the time exactly, giving you a particular number of beats per minute. If you haven't got one, but would like to get the general idea, just think of a watch, which will give you a pulse of 60 beats per minute. Now, the watch can only give you seconds, while the metronome will be happy to divide the minute in almost any other number of beats, especially if you have a digital one.

Some composers have used this possibility to tell performers exactly in which tempo they would like their music to be played. You may find the instruction 'quarter note=72' at the top of your sheet music page. You then set your metronome to 72 and count the quarter notes accordingly.

Problems with metronome markings

This is the most basic way of describing  the use of the metronome, which however has its complications and pitfalls. For example, it is quite evident that it is hardly possible, and certainly not desirable, to play any piece of music with such a mechanical, unchanging pulse as the metronome gives you. The pulse of music should more often than not be flexible, just like the heartbeat of any living thing. Beethoven, for instance, put metronome marks on some of his works, but at the same time gave the instruction that it only ever applied to the very first measure of the piece.

Also, you should be aware that there are a lot of metronome marks around that are rarely or never followed. This can be due to a number of factors. It might not be put there by the composer, but rather by an editor, which of course makes it less authoritative. But even if it originates from the composer, there may be reasons to ignore or at least adjust it. Sometimes it might have been put there rather carelessly, to please a publisher, or it might even have been done with the help of a faulty metronome (which was in fact rather common when the device was newly invented).

Conclusion

So the conclusion should be that metronome marks can be useful indicators, but they should never be followed slavishly. When you practice piano, it comes to good use when you have difficulty keeping the pulse. But don't practice long sections, trying desperately to follow its every beep or click. Rather use it to check now and then if you are still feeling the pulse correctly.

Look over the different sections of your piece, and try to find not an exact metronome number, but rather an acceptable interval where you and your listeners will still have the experience of a constant pulse. In the example above, where the instruction was to play the quarter-note at 72, you might perhaps end up accepting everything between 66 and 76.  

How to Practice Piano With a Metronome

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