Weekend Watch: Take a Spin Through Geeksmithing’s Nerdy Pop Culture Projects

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Weekend Watch: Take a Spin Through Geeksmithing’s Nerdy Pop Culture Projects

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Wes Swain’s Geeksmithing YouTube channel is, as he puts it, about exploring science, technology, or any geeky / pop culture subject and then becoming inspired to create something!” That could probably serve as a good motto for Make:, and we’ve featured his Mario Kart Nursery, so it’s only appropriate to highlight his excellent videos!

Mario Kart 8 Nursery

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If you’ve heard of Swain, or watched any of his videos, the Mario Kart 8 nursery is probably the one you’ve seen. Featuring an impressive mural, as well as a more-or-less life sized (or maybe toddler sized?) go cart with Mario inside hanging from the ceiling, it would have to be his most stunning creation to date.

As you might suspect, the Mario Kart 8 nursery isn’t his first try at something like this. On his channel you can find his Yoshi’s Island nursery, which still exists, but in a house he no longer owns. Apparently he isn’t the only Nintendo fan with kids.

Additionally, there’s a video about his Zelda nursery, which was created for a friend after the Yoshi room. As he puts it, “It used a more realistic art style that was a good stepping stone into the even more detailed Mario Kart 8 nursery.” This included using a scaling grid system, which helped in constructing the Princess’s castle seen in the video above.

Twitter Activated Nest Cam

YouTube player

Of course, Nintendo isn’t the only thing Swain works on. He also setup a camera to watch birds outside of his house using a Raspberry Pi that could be triggered via Twitter. It seems that it’s no longer active, but Swain came up with the video seen above using those pictures. He is now in the planning stages of another wildlife camera, this time involving raccoons.

If wildlife cameras and Nintendo-themed rooms weren’t enough to check out, and possibly subscribe to, his channel, Swain hopes that it will “inspire people to get out of their comfort zone and not be afraid to fail.”

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Jeremy is an engineer with 10 years experience at his full-time profession, and has a BSME from Clemson University. Outside of work he’s an avid maker and experimenter, building anything that comes into his mind!

View more articles by Jeremy S Cook

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