Alicia Sykes's Blog

The moon on the 2nd of August, a waxing crescent (39% full) photographed with my brother - after many attempts finally got it, with shutter speed of 1/6th sec, aperture f/8

The large dark patch in the upper right hand corner is Mare Serenitatis, which is a massive lava plain, which has a diameter of 674km, to give you an idea of scale.

It is slightly orange in colour becasue it is close to the horizon, and we are thererfore looking through a greater thickness of the Earths atmosphere as opposed to strait looking upwards. The atmosphere scatters blue light, so if your looking through a greater thickness of atmosphere more red light is able to pass through your eyes.

Click here to view the photo on Picassa 

On Thursday 7th August a lucky group of interns and university students were invited to Facebook HQ on Brock Street in central London. The evening opened with some drinks and snacks (Facebook branded cupcakes!) and networking between the students, Facebook employees and Facebook interns.



There was then a short opening talk given by the organisers where they introduced themselves and their role within Facebook and gave the outline for the evening.

Next was dinner - in the Facebook canteen, which was AMAZING! There was a huge choice of high quality restaurant-standard food to choose from, all fresh and very tasty, also deserts and drinks also included. Facebook employees can eat at the Facebook restaurant for free, 3 meals a day.

After dinner we headed back to the room we arrived in, and had a talk given by current Facebook employees and interns about the interesting projects they were currently working on. There was then an hour or so of Q and A where we were given the opportunity to ask them about there work, life at Facebook and Facebook's future plans, all this was very interesting, as Facebook is such a fast moving company and totally unique.

After this we were set loose to check out some of the cool stuff they've got in the Facebook office, including riding a virtual roller coaster with an Oculus Rift, climbing the in-office climbing wall, checking out the retro gaming room, visiting the Facebook free candy shop (which had every type of sweet I think I've ever seen in my life!). There was also a coffee shop(of course free too, and better than all the high street chains). There was a variety of informal and comfy work areas like bean bags and sofas.







All in all, an amazing insite on what it would be like to work for Facebook, and how cool the job, office and people there are.

For the last 12 months I have been doing some part time work for the new University Technology College (UTC) in Swindon. Which is due to open this September with 300 pupils joining in year 10, and another 300 joining next year in year 11.

My role as a website administrator was mainly just maintaining the website, including adding and modifying new pages and posts and working with the college's recruiters, principle, board members, and others. The role was not challenging, although a lot of work, and important not to make mistakes as the website served as the primary method to recruit the new students and staff.