Enjoying the hills
Andy McOvens

Full Stack Developer

I love getting immersed in delivering solutions on the web

Email me

Advanced skills

10+ years experience with PHP and Laravel

Passionate

I strive for minimising latency, particularly around database performance

Exploring new technologies

I'm always testing out new browser features to see how best they can be utilised

Portfolio

A collection of some of my work, primarily from an outdoor community website.
(Note: most features require you to be logged in)


Please don't hesitate to contact me for more information on any of my projects.

Crag topo creator

A useful tool to annotate images with lines to indicate rock climbing routes.
Built primarily using JS, using Leaflet to handle the image drawing and manipulation.
I also created a companion "Crag topo viewer" feature in JS.

Social feed

A social feed of "friends", combining various actions they have performed on the site.
The data is spread over multiple tables, requiring a large union of joined selects. Table keys were vital to reduce latency.
The front end used endless scrolling, and some scroll snapping for images in a carousel, combined with an intersection observer.

Video uploader

Allows linking of a video to a group of routes/crags at specific times throughout the video.
Integrates with various APIs including YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and the wrapper Plyr.

Admin site re-write

A complete re-write of the backend of a site using Filament with Laravel, with heavy use of Alpine to reduce server calls.

Crag search

JS rendered search to query the database through an API via some very complex filters.
The various user options were formatted into a SQL query optimised specifically for this use case.

Data table route list

JS loaded data table, with custom filters and searchable. Custom rich data if logged/liked a route, plus checkboxes to log multiple routes at a time.

Complex form

Integrates with Stripe API, with complex data fields.

Outside of work

A few of my hobbies

Hiking

Amongst other smaller walks, I am currently part way through a 192 mile coast to coast route with my wife and daughter.
In July we walked from St Bees to Patterdale, staying at hostels on the way.

Mountain rescue

I've been a volunteer member of my local team, Kirkby Stephen Mountain Rescue Team, for 6 years.
I currently serve as their equipment officer, and have advanced first aid training to treat casualties in remote areas.

Climbing

Since learning how to climb at university, it has been a long-lasting passion of mine. I'm very much still a punter, but I take a lot of joy from easy grades!