I read on Facebook this morning that Ken Boak aka @monsonite has died. He’d created the “Minimalist Computing” group on Facebook and was active here and in many other places.
This is the message Duane Sane (co-admin of that group) posted earlier
Ken Boak has Died
The founder, leader, and prolific contributor to our Facebook group, Ken Boak, died last week of a pulmonary aneurysm at home on January 21. He was 60.
Ken founded this group Minimalist Computing in 2021. This was the latest phase of his decades-long fascination with these buildable ideas. He began writing frequently about his exploration of these topics in 2005-2016 on his personal blog Sustainable Suburbia.
In 2016-2019 he continued his explorations and writings on a second blog Thoughts from the Towpath, when he lived on a canal narrowboat. https://nanode0000.wordpress.com/
His writing on these blogs was longer and more detailed than his shorter style here on Facebook.
Some of Ken’s recent projects are published on Github and Hackaday under the name Monsonite.
Ken created three spin-off groups from this Minimalist Computing group: Bit Serial Computing, CPU Design, and LED_DTL.
I will miss him personally and his energy for this group and his fixation on bit-serial ALUs.
Yikes that’s a shocker. Thanks for letting us know. I met him about three times I think - we took a joint visit to TNMoC. He started more than a few topics here - see his profile:
Ken was really rather active in a wide range of things - here’s Computer Science from the Ground Up, a presentation from OSHCamp 2017
And here’s a slide deck explaining the Gigatron and introducing a Forth, “Go Forth with TTL! The Gigatron TTL Color Computer” (Forth for a Very Unusual Processor) from svfig Forth Day 2019
Sorry to hear the news. My condolences to those who knew him.
I just read some of the articles from his Thoughts from the Towpath blog and found them interesting. It seems that he left a legacy of worthwhile ideas and projects.
