About

Welcome to the jungle. I’m the one holding the banana.

I go by monkeyintel, but before that I was the sysop of a BBS called Info Xchange, running off an IBM AT in 1984 — complete with a 20MB hard drive that made me a digital god at the time. Most people were still flipping cassette tapes for their C64s while I was busy hosting Legend of the Red Dragon and trading files at a blistering 1200 baud.

I’ve been online since you had to whistle the modem tone to get it to pick up. (Yes, I actually could do that. Yes, it actually worked.)

Then vs Now

Back then, I managed message boards, file libraries, and a user base that dialled in from rotary phones. Today, I’m diving into OSINT — open-source intelligence — because I never really stopped being curious about how information flows, who can find what, and how all of it fits together.

This site, Open Banana, is part sandbox, part notebook, part nostalgic nod to the weird, wild early internet. I use it to document what I’m learning as I explore:

  • DNS, metadata, and digital breadcrumbs
  • Tools like TryHackMe, SimpleLogin, and Proton Mail
  • How to separate identities and trace digital trails
  • The surprising overlap between old-school BBS culture and modern intel work

My Approach

I’m not a hacker. I’m not an analyst. I’m just someone who grew up watching the internet evolve and decided not to sit out the next wave. I believe curiosity is a skill, and this site is where I practice it — with a banana in one hand and a trail of tabs in the other.

I built this space to be fun, useful, and maybe just a little eccentric. Because learning should have personality.

If You Remember…

  • Playing the original Pong on a home console or in an arcade
  • What a FOSSIL driver was
  • Staying up all night playing Legend of the Red Dragon
  • The sound of a Hayes modem handshaking in the dark
  • Typing ATDT into a terminal and hoping the phone line was free
  • Being part of a forum before there were forums

…then you might feel right at home here.

Contact Me

I keep my long-time email at frag-monkey.com for nostalgic reasons — but if you want to talk OSINT, tech archaeology, or banana-themed branding strategies, you can reach me at:

monkeyintel@proton.me
(or through one of my burner aliases… if you’re cool)

Scroll to Top