Damian Lappin's Personal Website

I am an IT Company Director and have worked in computing since 1984 on numerous projects both overseas and in the United Kingdom. I currently operate Arnica Online Ltd an Internet Marketing business based in London.

My hobbies include photography, cookery and a bit of gardening when the weather permits. I have an intense interest in 20th century history and in particular the events of World War 2 within Europe. I operate a tribute website about the Cambridge World War 2 American Military cemetery near Cambridge.

I don't get to ride much these days since selling my horse and getting married but I still like to visit Burghley Horse Trials once a year which takes place at Burghley House Stamford. Burghley House is one of the stately homes that I like to visit, along with Hatfield House in Hertfordshire and Sandringham House in Norfolk. Although the houses themselves are fascinating to visit, I really go to visit the gardens and receive inspiration and motivation to attend to my own garden at home.

Although I am quite a keen cook I tend to go for very spicy food which doesn't always go down too well at home. I have over the years perfected what I think is the ultimate Chili Con Carne which I may well publish the recipe for here on my website, when I have time. I also am a great fan of homemade houmous which again I have spent a lot of time trying to perfect. Sainsbury's houmous however is pretty good so sometimes I just buy it pre-made. I have never really tasted perfect houmous outside of the Middle East. I worked for five years in Abu Dhabi during the eighties and picked up a taste for arabic food, curry, lebanese mezza and in particular Houmous which I had never heard of before leaving for Abu Dhabi but which now seems to be available everywhere. I have recently started to take an interest again in Chinese cookery having started to watch the excellent "Chinese Food In Minutes" as presented on Channel Five by Ching-He Huang.

From a work point of view I am involved in web design and hosting for online business directories. I am competent in XHTML, Flash and Graphics design programs together with MySQL relational databases and PHP programming. I am currently extending my skill set into Javascript programming and multimedia authoring using Sony Vegas.