Binary Baking

Tonight, Conrad Is Dizzy With Ambition
I have just put a Halloween Pumpkin Cake in the oven to bake, after having made a recipe pointed out to me on the internet: "The Great Australian Bite*", an egg-and-veg-and bacon mix that you bake in the oven.  Gluten free, too.
     The GAB:

Before

After, with - er - "sampling bite" removed

      I don't think the Pumpkin cake will be done before I post BOOJUM! for tonight, so this is it just about to get done at GM4:

      - and now for the rest of your daily dose of drivel ...

"Presume"
Edna the Wunderhund has been known to get a tad presumptuous, thinking that whatever is left on the human's plates is hers by right.
     Inevitably, standing at the bus-stop, Conrad began to ponder on "Presume"** and where it came from.  After all, you don't hear people use the word "postsume" in their conversation, nor yet "puersume" although there is "assume" and "consume" and
     - better move on, Mister Hand is groping towards his Pretension Puncturing bamboo skewer -
     Ah, inevitably Presume comes from Latin.  "Prae" meaning "before" and "Sumere", meaning "to take", hence "Praesumere", which is transmuted via Old French into our friend Presume.

"Presume" is dull.  Here is a Challenger tank trying to kill Jeremy Clarkson.

"A Picture Paints A Thousand Words"
Conrad once again takes issue with the creators of this proverb.  For one thing, take a 90 minute film at the cinema.  At 25 (picture) frames per second, that means 135 million words or around 2,500 books.
     Then there are pictures like this:

This is an artist on drugs, children.

     I think you could definitely squeeze a 50,000 word book out of this one.  By Heironymous Bosch, just so you know.

Typhoon Vongfong
It sounds like a Bond villain from the Sixties, doesn't it?  One with either an undersea lair or one built into the cone of an extinct volcano - or, if they were really well-off, an undersea lair built into the cone of an extinct underwater volcano.
     Sadly not the case: it's a real typhoon making waves and trouble over in Asia.  And it reminded Conrad of a title seen in a rather worrying BBC news article: "The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy".  
     No?  Not amusing?  It made Conrad snigger in mild amusement.  Perhaps you had to be there.

Villain's Lair Problems #34: Your architect was an idiot and now you can't launch your nuclear missile

David!  How Could You Be So Wrong!
The "David" here is David Niven, British actor and author, and also soldier.

<Sadly David must wait as Conrad is off to see how the cake is doing>

     Nearly done.  Tented it with foil so it won't burn.  Where were we?  Oh, yes, David.
He joined the peacetime Army in the Twenties, didn't like it and left.  He ended up in Hollywood, scraping by as an extra, getting bigger roles.  Then the Second World War arrived and Mr Niven made his way back to Britain, where he joined the Army again, the different being that this time a lot of people were shooting at him.
     His memoirs come in two parts, and I address the one titled "The Moon's A Balloon".
     NO! No, David, it is not!  It is a large rocky object with about one-sixth the mass of Earth, almost no atmosphere, orbiting at a distance of 250 thousand kilometres.
     IT IS NOTHING LIKE A BALLOON!
     There.  Just thought I'd put that out there.

Look!  Do you see any strings?  NO!

Ticked-off And Tutted At
It is Conrad's habit at lunchtime, if he hasn't wasted quarter of an hour doing research on the internet for BOOJUM!'s verisimilitude***, to go and have his lunch in the cafe upstairs, usually in the presence of Ann, Jackie and Sophie^.
     And Mo.
     The one good thing about Mo is that one is never in doubt what her opinion is and where you stand in regards to her good wishes.  In Conrad's case, probably over there on the Isle of Man.  Yesterday I got yarked at for daring to crack my book open.  Today I got the collected venom of a scorpion-crossed-with-a-weasel-wearing-specially-sharpened -serrated-steel-dentures.
     Today it was the "unbalanced" nature of my lunch.

Conrad's entirely unremarkable lunch

     Last week it was the signature crime of dipping bread into yoghurt.
     O will my torment never end^^!

Finally
The terrifying sight of Mister Hand wielding his dreaded bamboo skewer from the victim's viewpoint:

"MANICHOK!"

* Only those from Oz will get this: there's a major geographical feature on the Australian south coast known as the "Great Australian Bight"
** From which is derived "Presumptuous".  Do keep up!
*** See?  See!  The sacrifices I make for you!
^ Sometimes Anna and the younger whippersnappers on the team.
^^ Probably not <makes sad face>