Koree A. Smith

This was the moment I knew exactly how bad things had gotten, and how bad they were going to get.

2026-07-30T00:00:00Z

In 2017, the Arabic Immersion School in Houston was located not far from my house and work. On the first day of school, after dropping my kids off at their school, I went to grab breakfast from the Whataburger that was near the AIS.

What I saw when I drove by still angers me to this day. A group of about ten people was protesting the school. Screaming at school children (this is an elementary school), holding signs demanding that they “speak English or go home,” and generally being hostile to everyone trying to drop off their kids, as well as the kids themselves.

This school was created for Capitalism reasons. Fluent Arabic speakers are valuable to oil and gas companies. However, it also serves an important part of our community that natively speaks Arabic.

The fact that a group of grown adults decided to get their signs and go yell at a bunch of children at 7am because they look and speak differently meant that we were doomed long before now, and even long before then. It also shows me that Trump’s rhetoric and actions, even then, were emboldening the worst of our society to be this way out in the open, and without shame.

Agora Social Network

2026-06-27T00:00:00Z

Agora is an open-source, privacy-first social network you can run yourself. Unlike follow-based platforms, Agora uses Facebook-style mutual friendships. You and a friend both have to agree before you’re connected. From there, friend groups let you control exactly who sees each post.

Federation is built in but off by default. When enabled, your instance can exchange posts and friend requests with other Agora instances using Ed25519-signed activities, so you stay in control of what leaves your server.

Built with Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, and React. Deployable in minutes with Docker Compose, with automated Let’s Encrypt SSL included.

Check it out here!

Agora Github

Agora Mobile App Github

Musizen: A modern music practice journal app

2026-06-27T00:00:00Z

I’ve been playing music for most of my life, and I’ve never found a practice app that worked the way I actually practice. Most of them are either too simple to be useful, or expensive with a user experience so bad it gets in the way of actually practicing. I wanted something in between: something that tracks what I’m working on, shows me whether I’m actually putting in the time, and helps me run a focused session without fighting the interface.

So I built Musizen.

The core idea is straightforward: you organize your practice material by instrument, then by category (scales, repertoire, technique, whatever makes sense for how you work), then by individual items. When you sit down to practice, you pick an item and start a session. The app runs a timer, gives you a metronome with adjustable BPM, time signature, and subdivisions, and lets you make a recording if you want one.

After the session it logs the time. Over days and weeks that builds into a history you can actually look at: daily minutes, per-item progress, how much time you’re spending on each part of your practice. The progress tab gives you a real picture of where your time is going, not just a streak counter.

A few things I’m particularly happy with:

Sheet music. You can attach a PDF to any practice item and it opens right in the session. Flip to fullscreen and the metronome rides along in a ribbon at the bottom so you never have to leave the page to adjust tempo. Tap tempo is in there too.

Practice lists. Sometimes you don’t want to think about what to work on, you just want to run through a set list. You can build lists of items and run through them in order.

iCloud sync. Your instruments, categories, items, sessions, and recordings sync across your devices automatically via CloudKit. Start a session on your iPhone, review the recording on your iPad.

It runs locally. Everything is stored on-device in SQLite. No account required, no server to go down, no subscription.

Musizen is available on the App Store. I’m still actively developing it and there’s a lot more I want to add.

Unfortunately, it’s only available on iOS and MacOS currently. But hopefully I will be able to get an Android version going soon. If you have an Apple device, please check it out!

https://www.musizen.app/

Or go directly to the app store and grab it!