Blog | Chucktown Deals | Happy Hours and Daily Deals in Charleston, SC

Fast forward: Sunrise from Sullivan’s Island at 8x speed

August 26, 2010 | Sean | fast forward

Making the most of early morning insomnia, I grabbed my Zi8 and drove to Sullivan’s Island today to see sunrise over Breach Inlet and the Atlantic.

Getting out in the cool early summer morning was just right. I was joined by some beach walkers, a friendly dog, lots of seabirds and a pair of dolphins. Not a bad way to spend a Charleston morning. Way better than sleep! :)

Unfortunately, the battery died a few minutes before the clouds really lit up. You know, those backlit, silvery weaving clouds.

Oh, I snapped a photo with my iPhone:

I’m tired and groggy, but that was a revitalizing, inspirational 30 minutes.

Fast forward: Across the Bridge and down E. Bay St.

August 19, 2010 | Sean | fast forward

I recently purchased a suction cup camera mount. It’s pretty cool. I actually bought it so I could make videos of driving to clients’ businesses. People could really see how to find their way. Today, I had some spare time and decided to test it in traffic.

The mount sticks to any non-porous surface: glass, plastic, fiberglass, etc. The slope of my windshield as a little too steep so I had to put it on my instrument panel (not blocking the speedometer of course).

Well, 25 minutes of driving around isn’t very exciting. I thought it might be fun to speed things up a bit. Here’s a trip to Charleston from Mt. Pleasant all the way down to the Charleston Battery and back reduced to 5 minutes. :) The camera mount is a little bouncy but it’s still pretty fun to watch.

I think I’m going to start a series of fast-forward videos. This mount will stick to my surfboard — can’t wait to take it out in the water!

It LIVES! Chucktown Deals 2.0 is here

August 16, 2010 | Sean | about

What can I say? The original version of Chucktown Deals was a flop. And there were a lot of reasons for its floppery. Maybe someday I’ll look back and write a post describing my floptitude. But not now — because we’re here to celebrate the newer, cleaner, better, way-the-hell-easier-to-manage Chucktown Deals.

The new site is so simple. Instead of trying to be the end-all-be-all guide to Charleston that the original site was not, this Chucktown Deals will be the end-all-be-all guide to Charleston happy hours and daily specials.

“Well, Sean, there are already websites devoted to Charleston happy hours,” you might say. The thing is, the ones I’ve seen kind of suck. I don’t know the people who developed them, but they’re probably mad at me right now. And it’s not very polite to say something ‘sucks,’ but the web is full of sucky websites, many of them created by myself. The other happy hour sites I’ve seen are overdesigned, hard to use and just generally uninformative.

This time I decided to do less. A lot less. You can see it in the design. It was inspired by craigslist. And craigslist is butt ugly. I wasn’t going for the butt-ugliness so much as the simplicity and ease of use. That’s the point. A useful website is better than a pretty one. There must be a reason craigslist has been making millions of dollars using the same fugly design for a decade.

I just wanted the site to be easy to read, simple to use and help you find good info on ways to have fun and save money all the same.

I still have some work to do. There are features to wire up like ways for you to suggest deals or happy hours. I know the community will do a better job of keeping up with what’s happening than I can alone.

So help out. If you know of a good deal that’s not on the site, give back by sending an email to chucktowndeals@gmail.com or by submitting the form if I ever get that done. We all love finding a great new place — and even more if we can save a few bucks. You’ll make someone’s day. Maybe even their week!

I don’t celebrate without a tear in my eye. I spent a lot of time designing and developing the old Chucktown Deals. And I think it’s a pretty good-looking site. But it just wasn’t helping anyone do a whole lot. So it was time to go. Luckily, a lot of that code still lives inside another design at GoCashiers.com, my guide to Cashiers, NC.

Please, give feedback. I’m not making any money with this site. Maybe I will someday, but for now it’s just a way to tinker and keep up my skills. So if you like it or you can think of a way to improve it, I would really appreciate it if you let me know.