Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know is undoubtedly one of the stand-out Australian releases of 2011. However it seems that it is getting attention overseas as well if the cover below by Canadian band Walk Off the Earth is anything to go by.

The video features the band covering Gotye’s song  whilst all five of them play the one guitar. It is pretty impressive!

And just because it is a brilliant music clip, I’ve included the original Gotye video, which has been watched a whopping 33 million times!:

Win Penguins by Yiying Lu

Yiying Lu, the designer of The Fail Whale, made famous as the image symbolising a Twitter outage, has been commissioned  by a San Francisco couple to create the ‘opposite of the fail whale’ to celebrate their marriage, according to Mashable.

The result (above) is titled Win Penguins. Aren’t they lovely? Hopefully these little fellows will see as much success as the Fail Whale.

Hearing Yiying Lu speak at the most recent Social Media Club Sydney event I learned the Fail Whale has quite a back story and was originally known as ‘Lifting Up a Dream’. According to Yiying Lu the design was originally created to symbolise making dreams happen.

For those interested in the back story of The Fail Whale check out this post on ReadWriteWeb.

The video above is not short, it is 20 minutes, it also not that new either, having been delivered in 2006, but it is well worth watching. The speaker, Sir Ken Robinson is a leading thinker on realising the potential of creativity and the importance of innovation. The talk is incredibly funny verging on a comedy routine at times. The premise is that the current schooling system that trains children for the working world is an inadequate tool for preparing children to face the unknown challenges and opportunities that will happen into the future.

I liked the presentation and particularly related to the example he gives on why people are often discouraged from studying arts subjects like music. One of my favourite subjects at school was drama, but I was discouraged from continuing it beyond year 7 as it was unlikely I would ever find work as an actor. I’m not an actor today – even if I had pursued the subject it is highly unlikely I would have wanted to be an actor. But having a job that calls on me to present to and influence people constantly I often wonder how the skills I would have gained from further study in this area would have benefited.

Anyways enough about me – watch the video, it is entertaining. Hat tip Steve Clayton.

Nothing like a 13 metre high mechanical spider walking through the streets to get you blogging.

Elizabeth and I trained our way up to Liverpool last night to check out La Machine’s latest creation that was commissioned as part of Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture.

The pics and the videos speak for themselves, but so, so very cool and nothing like you can imagine. It reminded me of a toy I had as a child –Spydor from the He Man Series (thanks to Toy Archive for the image).

Videos of La Princesse - http://www.new.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=37963021220

Getting closer

Spitting out venom

The mechanical stuff

Turning the place over

Me with the Superlambanana (we have a mini version at home on our shelf)

Elizabeth getting arty with me at Albert Dock