IELTS exam is one of the most awkward experience when you trying to migrate to an English speaking country. IELTS is a must when you are migrating to UK or Australia. New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, USA and other countries also require IELTS specially in academic purposes.

IELTS Exam is available in two formats.

A) General

B) Academic

I have done IELTS in General category for 5 times at British Council Sri Lanka. Each time i scored Average of 7 band score, but i needed to get 7 in each band.

Followings are the lessions learned and my advices,

Never do IELTS exam more than one time in a short period (Ex: 1 month) of time.

1. You can register for IELTS exam for any number of attempts, but with my experience this is worthless. First question is that, “Will you be able to improve your English language skills to the expected band score in a short period of time? “. This is totally depend on your learning skills and the materials you refer.
2. Secondly, there is a rumor that, whether you are confident enough about your English skills the examiner will not consider your answers are up to higher band level in a short period of time.(This applies specially in writing and speaking tests). Because once they have enter your passport number to the system they can access all your past IELTS results history. This idea may be a myth, but with my results i have this doubt as well. So why we take a risk to spend LRK 16500/= if we have enough time to prepare for the next attempt.

Never do Cheating,

1. Never copy anything from anyone at the exam hall or never do any kind of misconduct in IELTS exam. (I don’t know about other exam centers but ) British Council invigilators are very strict on this. I’ve seen this on my eyes.
2. Never send another person to sit the exam on behalf of you. Because they match the passport against the photographs that you’ve attached with the application and your physical appearance before the test. If your physical appearance and passport photograph are dissimilar for any reason(old passport, different haircut, any marks on your face etc.) the invigilators will ask some questions from you (for verification). This is pretty embarrassing on an examination condition and better to bring your national ID to prove yourself.

Just bring your Brain, Passport and some Stationary

1. Don’t bring books CD’s bulky bags, calculators or mobile phones. If you are coming from your own vehicle, better to turn off your mobile and put all your stuff in the car other than stationary.
2. Bring a pen, pencil, eraser and a pencil sharpener. Anyway British council provides a pencil and an eraser. Once I got a pen. But there is no pencil sharpener on your desk for individual use. You can ask from an invigilator when you need it. But don’t forget this because, definitely you will have to use a pencil sharpener 2, 3 times for the writing paper.

New Zealand colleges and universities are well reputed internationally and offer a wide range of educational opportunities for international students.

New Zealand has quality institutions including a nationwide network of English language schools as well as internationally regarded and accredited tertiary education providers.

Sri Lankan students can study for a certificate, diploma through to postgraduate (masters) and doctoral degrees.

Students are able to combine study and travel, exploring the great outdoors of New Zealand. There are literally hundreds of different activities that can be undertaken throughout the seasons of the year. Most importantly students can also combine study and working if you have a Working Holiday Visa. Anyway you are allowed work a a maximum of 20hours per week. And it sup to you to balance your studies and profession when you study in New Zealand.

Alternatively you can enroll in a long-term study abroad course and get a world-class degree at one of New Zealand?s highly reputable polytechnics or universities.

Most importantly student most student are entitled to apply for permanent resident (PR) visa after completing full time two years graduate program in zew zealand. Followings are some of the popular education institutes in NZ

ACE Computer Training Ltd
ACG – Academic Colleges Group
Air New Zealand Airline Training
AIS St Helens (Auckland Institute of Studies Limited)
Alpha Educational Institute
Aorere College
Aspect New Zealand (Auckland & Christchurch)
Aspiring Language Insititute
Auckland Grammar School
AUT University
Avondale College
Avonside Girls’ High School
Bay Of Plenty Polytechnic
Birkenhead College
Botany Downs Secondary College
Cambridge High School
Carmel College
Cathedral Academy
Central Hawke’s Bay College
Chilton Saint James School
Christchurch Boys’ High School
Christchurch Girls’ High School
Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology
Cornell Institute of Business & Technology
Darfield High School
Design and Arts College of New Zealand
Eastern Institute of Technology, Hawke’s Bay
ECN English Academy
Edenz Colleges
Edgewater College
EF International Language School
Elite International School of Beauty and Spa Therapies
English Language Matters Ltd
Epsom Girls Grammar
ETC Learning Centre
Excel English College
FERN English Academy
Freyberg High School
Geraldine High School
Glendowie College
Hamilton’s Fraser High School
Henderson High School
Heretaunga College
Howick College
Institute of Applied Learning Ltd
International Pacific College
International Travel College of New Zealand
Kamo High School
Kavanagh College
Kelston Boys High School
Kelston Girls’ College
King’s High School
KingsWay School
Kristin School
Lincoln University
Linwood College
Logan Park High School
Long Bay College
Lynfield College
Macleans College
Manukau Institute of Technology
Marlborough Girls’ College
Massey High School
Massey University
Massey University English Language Centre
Massey University Foundation Studies Programme
Maverick School of Languages
Media Design School
Melville High School
Middleton Grange School
Motueka High School
Mount Albert Grammar School
Mount Aspiring College
Mount Roskill Grammar School
Natcoll Design Technology
Nelson College
Nelson College for Girls
Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology
New Plymouth Girls’ High School
New Zealand International Campus (NZIC)
New Zealand Management Academies (NZMA)
New Zealand Tertiary College
Newlands College
Northcote College
NorthTec
Onslow College
Orewa College
Otago Polytechnic
Otamatea High School
Otumoetai College
Pacific International Hotel Management School
Pakuranga College
Palmerston North Boys’ High School
Papanui High School
Phlair International College
Queenstown Resort College
Rangitoto College
Riccarton High School
Roncalli College
Rosehill College
Sacred Heart College, Auckland
Sacred Heart Girls’ College, Hamilton
Servilles Academy of Hairdressing
Shirley Boys’ High School
Southern Institute of Technology
Southland Girls’ High School
St Dominic’s College
St Hilda’s Collegiate School
St John’s College (Hamilton)
St Paul’s Collegiate School
St Peter’s School, Cambridge
Tai Poutini Polytechnic
Tairawhiti Polytechnic
Takapuna Grammar
Tauranga Boys College
Tauranga Girls’ College
Taylors College
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
The University of Auckland
The University of Auckland English Language Academy
The University of Canterbury
The University of Otago
The University of Waikato
The University of Waikato Foundation Studies
The University of Waikato Language Institute
Tokomairiro High School
Travel Careers & Training Ltd
Unitec New Zealand
Upper Hutt College
UUNZ Institute of Business
Victoria University of Wellington
Waiariki Institute of Technology
Waitaki Girls High School
Wanganui City College
Wanganui High School
Wellington Girls’ College
Wellington High School
Wellington Institute of Technology
Westlake Boys’ High School
Whangaparaoa College
Whangarei Boys’ High School
Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design
Whitireia Community Polytechnic
William Colenso College
WINTEC (Waikato Institute of Technology)
Wollongong College

Sithin sina sisi athandili allala

enna yanna mal mawathe

sawan pura semin rahasin kiyannadoo

punchi adare kathandare….!

A beautiful sinhala song by rukantha gunathilaka free download .mp3 here. Sithin sina sisi – by Rukantha Gunathilake

Arambumama Kandulak Wela , ma balaiddie a diha, aa durath dura wadi nisa , awasanayata pera ae giya.

A touching beautiful sinhala song by Kasun kalhara.

Download audio and video here. Arambumama Kandulak Wela

Arambumama Kandula Wela

This post is very Specially for nokia 60 series V1, V2, V3 phones. I have tested most of these tweeks with Nokia N70, N73 and N95. Don’t forget to send your comments.

• Set your log duration to 1 day.

Works wonders! Normally, the call log list defaults to 30 days, but that’s completely unnecessary, at least from our speed point of view.

The method: Open up the Log application, hit options (left softkey), and select the Settings option. Change the Log duration to (optimally) 1 day, or you can try 10 days. Either way, it should give you a noticeable speed increase.

• Use the Edit key to select multiple entries.

when browsing a list of markable items, hold down the Edit key and use the directional keys to mark (check) multiple items quick and easily. Really handy when you want to delete a lot of text messages, for example, or when you want to add pictures to an album. Unfortunately, due to the way it was programmed, the Edit key doesn’t individually mark an item when pressed once – you need to keep it held down and just use the arrow keys to select items.

• Use keypad shortcuts when browsing the Menu.

Whether your Menu is in grid or list mode, you can use the numerical keypad to quickly jump to an item. It’s easy to see with the grid option enabled – each key corresponds to the item that’s on the menu (12 items, 12 keys). So if you wanted to open the application in the bottom right corner, just hit the # (pound) key. Note that accessing menu items with this method actually executes the application or folder, instead of just selecting the item.

On a similar note, some phones have Icon Animation on by default – this adds a 3D “twisting” effect to your Theme icons. It doesn’t work with custom application icons, and is generally pretty useless. Turn it off by hitting the menu key -> Options -> Icon Animation.

• Go through text messages faster with Nokia Conversation.

Conversation is an interface extension cooked up in Nokia’s Beta labs that lets you read text messages by sender, instead of some huge jumbo list of texts. Another benefit: you can also delete by sender, which is great for cutting people out of your life!

Once you’ve installed the Nokia Contacts Support Services Package and Nokia Conversation, you can access the extension by going to Contacts and hitting the
right arrow key. Download Nokia Conversation

• The multimedia menu: disable everything.

There’s a wealth of useless options when it comes to the Multimedia Menu. Custom background images, imgae effects, “menu sounds”, and start-up animation. Shut everything off for maximum speed. The background image option should be set to Graphics -> Themes, which should just display the current theme’s default background instead of loading another one.

Honestly though, the multimedia menu always seems to be one of the slowest things ever.

• Finally, keep your phone’s firmware updated!

All right, that was a cheap one. But seriously, sometimes Nokia actually improves the user interface a bit – take the latest N95 firmware, for example, which speeds up the Gallery by removing the mean bug that caused the gallery menu to appear for a second or two before (slowly) sliding off the screen.

Hw many Ford Mustang Cars in Sri Lanka.? I think only 2. There is a classic one i saw around battaramulla.

Have you ever drew a Mustang ? Let us know your comments?

Very short and sweet way to hide folders on your windows personal computer.Thanks to Mr.Chrishan Duminda (National lottories Board -Sri Lanka)for the Tip.

• Right click on the folder and select “Rename”
• Press alter+0168 keys
• Change the icon using blank picture.
• There you are!

It’s a well known fact that windows-based computers tend to be quiet temperamental. Often, all it takes in a seemingly harmless e-mail embedded with a little-known virus or some minor glitch in the windows registry and your system can be mercilessly brought to its knees and rendered unusable.

Using a windows live USB stick, you could recover data from an ailing hard drive with a corrupted master boot record; surf the internet without having a trace on the host system; use an instant messenger to ask a friend for assistance; view and edit your documents on the gol defragment locked files and even burn CD’s.

All that’s required is a USB flash drive, a computer with an internet connection and a licensed windows XP Installation CD. Note that the USB device you are going to use have enough space (minimum 512 MB). For starters, this technique will only work on fairly new computers manufactured within the last two or so years that are able to boot off a USB flash drive. For older machines, BIOS updates may be availble to resolve this issue. Also, while a large number of devices will be supported by this windows live USB stick, hardware support is still quiet limited and you may not be able to get peripherals such as your webcam, scanner or printer to work.

Softwares that we’ll be using to create thsi Live Windows USB stick are Bart Lagerweij’s free utility, PE Builder, which condenses files from a windows xp setup CD to create a compact and portable version of windows that includes all the essential tools you need to avert a PC disaster.

Additional applications can be added to the BartPE setup through the use of plugins. These include both freeware and commercial applications, such as anti-virus programs like NOD32, CD/DVD burning applications like Nero and PDF editors like adobe acrobat, etcetera and are available at the BartPE plugin respository.

Let’s get started, below is a list of files you will need before proceeding with the create of the live USB stick.

• PEBuilder
• XPE Plugin
• UBCD4Win Net Drivers
• Driverpacks base
• Mass Storage drivers
• UltraISO

Now assuming that you have downloaded all the required applications:

1- Drag the contents of your windows XP setup cd into a new folder called WINXP on your hard drive. Although, this isn’t mandatory, it will substantially speed up the creation of the live USB disk image.

2- Extract the contents of the pebuilder zip file into a new folder called ‘PEBuilder’. Next, double click the plugin subfolder and create a new folder called ‘XPE’ here. Now, extract the contents of the XPE plugin into this folder.

3- If you wish to add free utilities such as stripped-down version of Firefox or a MS word replacement to your BartPE installation, download the relevant plugins and extract their contents into the ‘plugin’ folder of the PEBuilder directory, otherwise you can skip this step.

4- The default BartPE installation provides limited support for network cards. To ensure, that your adapter is recognised properly, you will have to extract the contents of the UBCD4Win net drivers and place them into the ‘NET’ folder. This folder is located inside the ‘drivers’ folder in the PEBuilder directory. The ‘Net’ folder will now contain several subfolders, each with its own set of drivers.

5- To be able to access all kinds of hard disks in the BartPE environment, first extract DriverPacks base to a new folder called “Base”. Next, double click the ‘DriverPacks’ folder located inside this folder and place the MassStorage drivers there.

6- Now, run the file DPS_base.exe located inside the base folder. After selecting your language, move to the location page by clicking the button twice. Under ‘Installation platform’ select BartPE, followed by ‘Yes’. Click Browse and point to the location of the plugin folder located inside the PEBuilder directory. Move to the next page. The MassStorage text mode option will already be selected. Click on the ‘SlipStream’ button to complete the process.

7- Next, run the pebuilder.exe file located inside the PEBuilder folder to start the program. After accepting the license agreement, when the program asks to seach for windows setup files by itself, click “NO”. Under the source field, point to the ‘WINXP’ folder you created earlier.

8- Click the plugins button at the bottom of the windows. In the new window that appears, you will a list of programs with “Yes” and “No” prefixes. To enable or disable an item, select it and click enable/disable button at the bottom of the window. Note that all the of items available here are free to use. Disable all the redundant items listed below:

• A43 File management utility.
• Bart’s Stuff Test (Free edition).
• BartPE Installer V2
• Driver SnapShot
• Nu2Shell PENETCFG: Automatically start
• PE network configurator
• PENETCFG: PE Network configurator
• Startup Group

Click close and you’re done.

9- In the PEBuilder program window, set ‘Media output’ to ‘Create ISO Image’ and specify a file name like liveusb.iso. Click the ‘build’ button and agree to the prompts that appear to begin the create of the live usb key image. Close once the process is complete.

10- Now install UltraISO to your hard disk. After running the program, select File > Open and point to the ‘liveusb.iso’ file you created. Next, connect your USB flash drive to your PC, select, ‘Bootable’ follwed by ‘Write Disk image’. Under ‘Write Method’, ensure USB-HDD+ is selected. Hit ‘Write’ and in a few moments you will have your own live windows USB Stick.

As a final step, you’ll have to change the system’s boot order through your PC’s BIOS setup utlity. BartPE should now load. Depending on the speed of your USB drive, this may take a while. To have an even greater variety of applications to work with, load your USB drive with useful portable applications.

Things You’ll Need:

• External hard drive
• Windows CD

Step 1

Check that the size of the external hard drive meets the system requirements of the Windows operating system. Windows XP requires 1.5 gigabytes of free hard drive space. Windows Vista requires 20 gigabytes (for the Home Basic edition) or 50 gigabytes (for all other editions). The system requirements for older, outdated versions of the Windows operating system, such as Windows Me and Windows 98, can be found on the official Microsoft Windows Web site (link in the Resources section).

Step 2

Connect the external hard drive to the computer with which you plan to use the hard drive. Use the hard drive’s original cables included by the drive’s manufacturer. It does not matter what connectivity standard you use. Windows will automatically detect the external hard drive.

Step 3

Click the Start menu in the lower left-hand corner of the PC screen and select My Computer.

Step 4

Right-click the icon for the external hard drive. Click Format from the pop-up menu. Format the external hard drive in the NTSF format.

Step 5

Insert the original Windows installation disk into your computer’s CD-ROM drive. Close the Installation Wizard when it appears on the screen.

Step 6

Return to the My Computer window from Step 3. Write down the drive letters assigned to the CD-ROM drive and the drive of your external hard drive. For the sake of this article, we will use the example of D:\\ being the external hard drive and E:\\ being the CD-ROM drive. These are typically the letters assigned to CD-ROM and external drives in the Windows operating system.

Step 7

Click the Start menu button and select Run.

Step 8

Type “E:\I386\winnt32.exe /syspart:D: /tempdrive:D: /makelocalsource /noreboot” (without quotation marks) and click OK. This launches the Windows installer file on the Windows installation disk in drive E:\\ and commands it to install on the D:\\ drive (your external hard drive). The Windows Installer Wizard screen will appear.

Step 9

Select the Full Install option in the Windows Installer Wizard. You will then be guided through the Windows installation disk. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation. Depending on the speed of your computer’s processor, this may take several hours. Be prepared to enter important information, such as your Windows registration key to register your copy of the Windows operating system. Do not close the installation window until the installation process is complete.

Step 10

Shut down the computer and disconnect the external hard drive. You can now use the external hard drive to boot up another computer using the installed copy of the Windows operating system.