Pastebins are incredibly useful. But most of the public pastebins are not suitable for sharing within a company (think code fragments, log messages etc.) and most private pastebins are either ugly (except hastebin!), hard to setup/maintain and usually forced to be behind the firewall (for security).

So I decided to scratch my itch and whipped up a pastebin that fit my needs. Features:

• Usability: it’s a pastebin — you create a paste, you view a paste. That’s it. No need to specify the language — we guess it, thanks to highlight.js. It also looks good (I think), thanks to Solarized.
• Easy of deployment: no installation, no maintenance. Just deploy to Google App Engine.
• Security: you need a Google account to create a paste. No login required to view a paste though. Bonus: if you use Google Apps at your company, you can have a private pastebin for you company by restricting the app to your domain.
• Open source: Fork it, baby!

The Good Great

• Google integration: this is a no brainer. If you spend a lot of time on Google properties (like I do), the integration is superb! Nexus 7 is meant to be a device for content consumption so it’s no surprise that Google Play is almost “pushed” in front of the user. It even synced the known wifi networks (and passwords) from my Galaxy Nexus!
• Form factor: I’ve only used the iPad 2 and the new iPad briefly. Though the Nexus 7 is visibly smaller, it’s a lot more comfortable to hold with one hand without building muscle. (On the other hand, one could argue that it’s only slightly larger than Galaxy Nexus…)
• Performance: this baby is fast! Those quad-core Tegra processors sure do their job — I haven’t played any intense games yet, but everything else (switching between apps, Angry Birds, Google Earth, browsing through music and photos, playing videos etc etc) is super snappy.
• Bang for buck: at $200, the price point couldn’t get better. This price advantage alone will put the Nexus 7 within reach of many could-have-been iPad owners.

The Bad Good

• Build quality: this is no iPad, but the tablet feels solid. I like the textured back panel. But the screen gets smudged quite easily (similar to the iPad) and is a tad too glossy for me. I miss the smart cover!
• PDF reader: the built-in default PDF reader sucks. I can’t swipe to go to next page, for instance. The Kindle PDF reader is much better in comparison.
• Book reader: Again, this is no Kindle (but the Kindle Fire is toast) but the Play book reader is pretty good. All caveats w.r.t e-ink vs. back-lit screens apply. There is one problem though: if while reading you accidentally end up touching anywhere near the bottom of the screen (which is fairly easy to do, if you consider how you normally hold a book or an e-reader), you’ll end up either going to the home screen or opening up the task switcher. Either way, its extremely distracting. I wish they added a “locked” mode while reading books that can only be changed by using the physical power button.

The Ugly Bad

• Camera: there’s no (easy) way to take pictures on this device. Yes, there is a (crappy) front-facing camera but it is only meant for hangouts. I seriously don’t understand why Google doesn’t want to put a good camera on their devices. I’ve previously complained about how crappy the Galaxy Nexus camer is compared to the iPhone 4S‘s, and the Nexus 7 doesn’t change anything.
• Packaging: given that unboxing is the first experience with the device users have, I’m bitterly disappointed by the Nexus 7 packaging. The sleeve is too snug; the black packaging just too cardboardy; and there should be an award for opening the inner box without struggling. Overall, it was just plain frustrating getting the device out of the box (and I’m not alone in this). Yes, first world problems but whatever.

More later.

I came to the US in 2003. I earned my Ph.D. from one of the top university systems in the world. I’ve since worked at two startups. Aren’t these small businesses the engines that drive the US economy? Would you disagree that I have made meaningful contributions to the wealth, the economy and the intellectual property of this nation?

My wife is an artist. She earned her Master in Arts & Technology from one of the finest art schools in the world (and bore much of the financial burden of attending a private school). She has since created art that has been displayed and recognized all around the world. Would you disagree that she has made meaningful contributions to this society?

As law-abiding (non-permanent) residents, is it too much to expect that our families will visit us, once in a while?

Every parent wants to see the lives of their children; it gives them comfort knowing that their child has a good, fulfilling life. My parents have already visited us many times. And always returned back to India before the expiration of the authorized duration of their stay.

But my wife’s parents have never ever been outside India. Not surprising then, that she has been dreaming and planning about them visiting her ever since her first day in the United States.

It all sounds so simple. So natural. Of course, they want to visit!

And yet, you rejected their visa application. On grounds that they did not demonstrate “strong ties to India”?! We tried hard to clarify, to explain something which should have been so obvious, and it was like talking to a wall. So let me make another attempt here.

My in-laws run a successful, family owned, 30-years old pharmaceutical company. They live in a joint family, many members of which are still quite dependent on them for support. Their entire life is based in India. There are kids to look after. There are elderly to take care of. They own property in India. You think they want to uproot all of that and intend to permanently immigrate to the US? For what? In fact, neither me nor my wife have any immediate family in the US!

Why is this so complicated? They are just parents who want to spend some time with their kids. They are not criminals. They are not terrorists. They do not mean any harm. They don’t even know why their visa got rejected!

I realize that the volume of applicants from India is so high that you’ve had to put a lot of process in place, to go through that volume in an efficient manner. But, this process does NOT work. Somewhere between the forms, the rules, the lines, the terse, cold interviews, you forget that not everyone is trying to “game the system”. These are just regular people, wanting nothing but to spend some time with their loved ones. The process has sucked the humanity out of the system — we are all just application IDs.

This arrogance, this helplessness … well, it is cruel.

Being able to see your loved ones should be a right, not a privilege

The Awesome

• Google Integration: Galaxy Nexus is a great phone, no doubt. But make no mistakes — you won’t get the full experience if you’re not using Google’s services (gmail, calendar etc). If you already entrenched in the Google ecosystem (as I am), you’ll love it! As soon as I turned the phone on, it asked me for my Google credentials and within a few minutes I had my email, calendar, contacts, photos, bookmarks and music available on the phone. It was like magic! The support for multiple Google accounts is also fantastic; so if you’re using Google Apps at your workplace (as we are), rejoice!
• Hardware: This phone is FAST. The display looks great (I’m not quite sure how to compare it with the Retina displays on iPhone 4S, but I won’t be surprised if the Retina display comes off as better). The phone is also surprisingly thin and light.

The Good

• Android: The Google apps on Android are so much better than their iOS counterparts, especially Gmail, Maps, Google+ and Google Talk. Some services (like Google Music) don’t have apps on iOS (yet).
• Power Users: Geeks and data nerds will LOVE this phone. Signal strength graphs? Check. Breakdown of data and battery usage by apps? Check. Fine-grained control over how much cellular data apps can use? Check. Aggressively reap processes as soon as user exits an app? Check.
• No Cables: Unlike iOS devices, the Galaxy Nexus doesn’t depend on any iTunes like software running on a computer to get app updates or synchronize music. Everything synchronizes over the air (you can restrict syncs to wi-fi only). iOS5 has a similar feature but still needs iTunes running and accessible within your network AND requires the devices to be connected to a power source (which typically is also the computer, so …)
• Google Voice: Unlike on iOS, Google Voice can truly take over the phone on Galaxy Nexus. You can finally use Google Voice how it was meant to be used — let it control all incoming/outgoing calls, voicemail and text messages.

The Bad

• Lacks Polish: For all the great improvements made in Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the Galaxy Nexus is still not nearly as polished as the latest iPhones. iOS reigns king when it comes to attention to detail and making sure all aspects of the system fit well together. Here are a few examples. When I first turned on the phone, the home screen was part empty, part full of ugly “widgets” (I still don’t have a good  understanding of widgets on Android). There is a separate area for apps, so when you install something, it won’t appear on any of your home screens. The notification bar is nice, but I find the notification badges on iOS a lot more intuitive. Some of Google’s own apps (notably Google Listen for podcasts and Google Currents for news) are just half-baked and buggy products.
• Confusing: A common converse for a product that power users like is that it can easily overwhelm average consumers. There are just too many knobs and controls, some system-wide, some app-specific. It’s a phone for which I sometimes wish I had a user manual. Here are a few examples. Do you know how to take a screenshot on the Galaxy Nexus? Or how to quickly put the phone in silent mode? Or exactly what does “background data restriction” mean — and if it does mean what I think it does, why does the phone have a persistent warning in the notification area as if this is a real problem?
• Size: Size does matter and this phone is BIG to hold. The larger display is sure nice, but I can’t operate this phone with one hand. At all. This is particularly problematic if you need to go to the next song while you are riding your bike, or even just answer a call. Want to write a text with one hand (maybe you have a drink in the other)? Forget it. It doesn’t help that the phone is hard to hold and slips easily — I highly recommend getting some kind of a case/cover that provides a better grip.
• Verizon only: Galaxy Nexus is only available on Verizon as of today. I’m sure somewhere down the road it will be available via AT&T and other providers but I won’t hold my breath (it took iPhone several years to be available on Verizon). In the meantime, if you want a Galaxy Nexus for a GSM network, just buy an unlocked version from Amazon.

The Ugly

• Ecosystem: One of the biggest problems with Galaxy Nexus (as I imagine with other Android devices) is the ecosystem. Several key apps are not available in the Android Market yet (Flipboard, Instagram to name two). The app-ecosystem itself is quite fragment with Amazon and others wanting to get their share of the pie. The accessories ecosystem is even worse. Just try searching for a case for Galaxy Nexus. In comparison, the iPhone/iPad ecosystem is significantly richer.

(BTW, remember the 2009 Prius recalls? Notwithstanding the short term public memory, I think most of those incidents were blown way out of proportion)

The Good

• Great mileage: It has consistently been giving around 48mph, city or freeway driving.
• Feel good factor: You can debate endlessly whether hybrids are truly green over their lifetime taking into account all factors including manufacturing cost etc, but no one take the “I feel good about this” feeling away from me when I drive the Prius.
• There are some small niceties like the “hill brake assist“
• Spacious: The interiors have generous legroom both in the back and in the front. The hatchback style trunk can really take in a lot — I haven’t had the need to buy a bike rack yet because we can easily fit our bike in there!
• Remote A/C and solar powered ventilation is nice on a hot day. But I must admit, I haven’t really used the remote A/C that much. More on this later.
• Clever UI: Note that I’m not saying the UI is great (or even good). I do believe though, that the Prius UI has slow but steady impact on driving habits. By leveraging subtle signals (like when you floor the pedal, the indicator goes into the “red zone”), the UI turns driving at a safe speed into a game/challenge/curiosity. I’m trying to dig up some evidence on this, let me know if you know of a study.
• Good incentives: When we bought our Prius, Toyota was giving two years free maintenance and a 0% APR financing for 3 years on all models. Not unusual, but certainly welcome.
• Built well: (or we’ve just been lucky) Either way, the car hasn’t had any issues whatsoever in the past year and I’ve only taken it to the dealership for routine maintenance.

The Bad

• Solar panel is frivolous: As much as I hate to admit this, the panel is largely useless and a mostly unnecessary expense. Yes, the solar powered ventilation does help keep the car cool on hot days and yes, the remote A/C is a nice trick to show your friends. I’m sure people in Texas would have more use of them than people in San Francisco, but then again, who buys hybrids in Texas? Overall, I think it’s a lost opportunity for Toyota. If I do have a solar panel, why not use it to help power the A/C at all times (right now the panel only gets used when the car is off and has been standing in the sun for at least 30 minutes).
• Some of the interior is plasticky: This is not a fair complaint — you get what you pay for. The Prius is not a luxury vehicle.
• Voice commands are mostly useless: The navigation system is hands-free enabled and capable of accepting voice commands. However, the system is unusable in practice. I obviously don’t expect a Siri but consider this: to input an address takes upwards of 10 voice commands, each interceded with a pause and beep. Arghh!
• Not for those who enjoy driving: The Prius is a great car but it is not a sports car. Don’t expect a fast, responsive machine.

The Ugly

• Ancient navigation system: Both the hardware and software of the navigation system are pre-historic. Don’t believe me? Consider this: I sat in a 2001 Lexus and it had pretty  much the exact same navigation system! It’s not funny, it is outrageous. I can’t express how mad this makes me. Working with the nav is an extremely frustrating and slow process — the UI is slow and clunky; I need to press really hard on the screen for it to register the “touch”; Toyota should be ashamed of the refresh rates on these devices. If I’m spending > 25K on my car, the least Toyota can do is spend $500 on a decent display and processor!! I’m not alone in thinking that the car information systems market is ripe for disruption: see #6 on Photomatt’s list.
• Most annoying “safety” feature of all time: So the 2010 Prius has this safety feature that disables some navigation controls while car is in motion. Now, I can imagine how someone at Toyota decided this was a good idea — we already have laws to prevent people from texting while driving, why let them fiddle with their nav? Right? WRONG, when there’s someone in the passenger seat next to me. Picture this: my wife and I are zipping down on the freeway and want to swing by a gas station to fill up the tank. The nav system is entirely capable of guiding us to the nearest gas station, but no sirree, we can’t even enter the address without having to pull over first. I can’t describe how retarded this is — while I’m focused on the road, there’s no reason why the front seat passenger shouldn’t be able to operate the nav (they typically end up doing navigation, you know). But what is worse is that this “feature” is not even implemented consistently. For example, while I can’t type in an address, I can still use the “Previous destinations”. While I can’t scroll the song list, I can still press the up/down buttons on the touch screen. Just thinking about it makes me mad. MAD! Here’s a suggestion Toyota: you already know when there’s a passenger on board (you can warn me just fine about the passenger not putting on seat belts) — just enable this “safety feature” if you must ONLY WHEN THE DRIVER IS ALONE.

So there you go. In summary, the Prius is still one of the best hybrids on the market but Toyota really needs to fix their navigation system.

I’ll talk about the future of hybrids and technology disruption in cars in another post.

I live in San Francisco and work in downtown Mountain View. I don’t enjoy driving too much and so, I’m grateful that I’m able to take public transportation to work. A smaller commute would be nice, but it is not bad at all.

That is, until Caltrain fails. Again. And again. Note that I’m not blaming Caltrain for the fatalities, but I am complaining about how they respond to such events. It took me almost 3 hours to get home last night. I went though something similar a few months ago. Unfortunately, this is only one of the problems with Caltrain.

We pay our taxes; I pay more than enough for the monthly pass. We deserve something better. Here are just a few things that are “broken” (notwithstanding Caltrain’s well publicized financial troubles)

• Ancient hardware: this is the Silicon Valley; the so-called center of the tech universe; the birth place of many a great technology companies. Our public transportation should be leading the rest of the country and indeed the world. Instead, we are stuck with decades old diesel-powered engines and several outdated coaches. On more than one occasion, my ride was interrupted due to “mechanical failures” and one evening, the train simply shut down at Menlo Park and we had to be transferred to the next train. BART has its share of problems, but it beats Caltrain any day — it goes under the damn Bay!! Plans for high-speed rail and electrification remain just that — plans.
• Ancient protocol: post any fatality, Caltrain seems like a headless chicken. As it is, there’s no official way to track the trains or get status updates. Riders have graciously setup a Twitter feed for posting updates. When an accident happens, there’s no authoritative communication channel — no number to call, no real-time updates. Hell, even most officials present on site have no clue what is going on! There’s a PA system on some of the stations but it is largely useless. What I expect? The ability to track the location of each train on a map, in real-time; a social media strategy that is able to communicate in a timely and effective manner; a customer education strategy so we know what to expect and what to do when a fatality happen (and they do seem to happen with eery regularity).
• Ancient software: Caltrain remains a “proof of payment” system — that is, unlike most well-functioning public transit systems around the world, Caltrain requires travelers to purchase a ticket and carry a proof of purchase for the duration of the journey. While this is a feasible approach (the Indian railways does something similar), it starts breaking down quickly for a metropolitan area where most people won’t be riding for more than 30 minutes. It is harder to keep track of payments; it is error prone in that people may forget to buy tickets (so Caltrain loses money); it introduces more humans in the equation (conductors etc). To make things worse, Caltrain doesn’t sell tickets onboard. Until recently, this proof-of-payment happened to be an actual piece of paper. After several millions of dollars and some failed pilots, Caltrain finally transitioned to the Clipper Card a few months ago.

You’d imagine that with the Clipper Card in place, things would be smooth. Well they are smoother, but the system remains extremely un-user friendly. It is as-if they intend to confuse riders. For instance, you are supposed to tag-on before getting on the train and tag-off, except if you have a monthly pass, in which case you are supposed to tag-on and tag-off exactly once, that too, on your first ride of the month. That’s not all — even though I have a monthly pass (so I’ve already paid $170+ on the card), I’m still required to maintain a $1.25 cash balance on the card at all times.

Imagine you are a visiter to San Francisco. How confusing would all this seem to you? Sure there’s rationale for everything, but I’m sure if you asked a couple of smart people to think about this for a few days, they could come up with a better solution.

Arghhhh!

For years, free/libre/open source software (henceforth referred to as FLOSS) have proclaimed, year after year, how that year is the year of Linux, or the year that open source will become mainstream, or the year that open source will finally take off etc. But it never has, at least traditionally speaking. Linux based desktops haven’t penetrated either the enterprise or consumer markets; with a few notable exceptions (Apache httpd, for instance), most FLOSS products — be it office software like OpenOffice, multimedia software such as Gimp or Inkscape — remain popular with economically insignificant niches. And yet, this year, more than ever before, open source forges ahead with its silent victories.

Consider the following shifts:

• all the top brands of the day — Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon — they ALLstand tall on the shoulders of FLOSS giants.
• Contributing software back to the open source community is becoming increasingly common, even expected. Take a look at the GitHub repositories of Twitter and Facebook, or the various Google projects. In fact, when screening engineering candidates, I often look for and encourage people to talk about their open source contributions.
• Most of the activity around “big data” and “cloud computing” is being driven in large part by FLOSS, whether it is the Hadoop-powered ecosystem or the Xen/Linux powered Amazon Web Services.
• Given the current smartphone landscape, it is highly likely that Android will become ubiquitous on tablet devices and a variety of consumer smart phones. Already, Android has more search mindshare than Linux, despite the fact that Linux is part of the Android stack.
• If you start a software company today, I would bet that you will find yourself bootstrapping almost entirely using open source software. The entire development process — from the GCC compiler toolchain, to the build systems, to the scripting languages, to the version control systems, to the code review systems, to the continuous integration systems — everything is dominated by FLOSS products. Good bug trackers and enterprise Wikis are the last bastions but it is just a matter of time.

I’ve had a chance to see the enterprise software market up close and increasingly find more and more open source everywhere I look. FLOSS has not arrived, it has taken over.

To help sort out my thoughts, I drew a picture (don’t you dare judge me for my lack of creativity!):

Below I elaborate more on how I currently use each of the services.

Twitter

• I tend to use it for technical and/or non-personal content. Things that I would want to publicize.
• Unlike Buzz/Facebook, I don’t pay too much attention to who is following me. Most tweets are public anyways.
• The 140 character limit is sometimes amusing, but often irritating. Are people still using regular SMS with Twitter?
• Multiple startups devoted to managing Twitter “noise” is not encouraging.
• @ replies are bandaid. Twitter is a broadcast-and-forget medium — I can’t have (or follow) a conversation on it.

Facebook

• Use it for sharing random, personal updates (or things I find interesting :p)
• Mostly on because of network effect (read: don’t want to be left off the social bandwagon).
• Like that I can “Like” most things and actually follow the conversation via comments.
• Always worried if my privacy settings are working and if there’s a new “default” I need to worry about.
• Pay more attention to who I friend. The noise level is still quite high despite that.

Buzz

• Usage domain similar to that of Facebook. Unlike Facebook, can choose to make posts Public.
• Love the email integration. Conversely, API/clients still have to catch up to Twitter.
• Supports likes, comments and “resharing”.
• Privacy is modeled around my contacts (chat or otherwise), which seems natural.

I’m fine with using Twitter for all of my public posts. The main confusion lies between Buzz and Facebook. Facebook obviously has more social traction. That said, Buzz is just more convenient to use (because of the email integration mostly). Of course, all of the various connectors available (Twitter <-> Buzz, Twitter <-> Facebook, multicast via ping.fm or Chromedeck etc) make the whole thing even more confusing. At the end of the day, I might just go back to not using anything on a regular basis.

How are you using Twitter, Buzz and Facebook?

It is no secret that I’m an open source evangelist and so when it was time to set up internal infrastructure at work, naturally the first order of business was to evaluate the various OSS projects out there — everything from wikis, bug trackers, source control, code review and project management. Running Ubuntu LTS (10.04) on all of our servers was a no-brainer and there were plenty of excellent options for most everything else as well (a follow-up post on our final choices later). The Linux ecosystem is fabulous for most of the infrastructure needs of a startup, but I learnt the hard way that there are still some areas where Linux needs a lot of work before it can become competitive with proprietary, non-Linux solutions.

Authentication

Centralized account management (users and groups) and authentication is critical component in any IT deployment, no matter the size. Even for a small startup, creating users/groups repeatedly for each new server, separate authentication mechanisms for each new service is simply not scalable. That is precisely why Active Directory is so ubiquitous at enterprises.

LDAP was the obvious solution in Linux-land and I figured it would be trivial to setup an OpenLDAP server that can manage user/group information for us. It would also be the single authentication source for all servers and services. I was so wrong.

After struggling with OpenLDAP for several painful hours, I gave up — the documentation is fragmented, Google doesn’t help much and personally I think the LDAP creators had never heard of “usability” when designing it. The seemingly simple task of creating some new users and groups involved several black-magic incantations of the LDAP command line tools. Getting servers to authenticate against the resulting directory was even harder.

Just as I was about to throw in the towel and setup an AD instance in-house, I stumbled upon the 389 Directory Server (now known as the Fedora Directory Server). With a new found hope, I set about installing it on Ubuntu and hit another roadblock — there are no up-to-date packages of FDS for Ubuntu. Reluctantly, I setup a Fedora instance (the only one so far) and installed FDS. Thankfully, Red Hat has put together really comprehensive documentation and guides for the Directory Server, which was invaluable.

From there on, it was mostly downhill (only a few minor hiccups). Finally we have a nice GUI to manage users and groups, and all servers/services authenticate against a single Directory Server. But the journey was unnecessarily painful. Here’s what I’d like to see:

• Up-to-date packages of FDS for Ubuntu. Sane defaults and functionality out-of-the-box
• Ready to consume documentation on how to integrate LDAP with various web applications, Linux distros etc (I’ll put together some of this soon)
• More awareness — I should have found FDS a lot sooner than I did, but it is certainly not very well marketed
• Single sign on: This is a whole different beast

Remote Access

At my previous company, we had a Cisco VPN solution. There were plenty of Cisco compatible VPN clients on Windows and Mac. In fairness, it was relatively easy to get vpnc working on Ubuntu as well. In fact, with Network Manager, you can manage your VPN connections using a simple and intuitive UI. But the setup was not very reliable and my connections would get dropped relatively frequently. It was impossible to have a long-running VPN session without disruption. I’m not sure if the problem was with the Cisco hardware or the Ubuntu vpnc client; I did see similar issues with the built-in VPN client on Mac OS X.

But at least VPN on Linux works. I can’t say the same about other remote access mechanisms, in particular IPSec and L2TP over IPSec. It took me some time to figure out which package to use (Strongswan, Openswan, iked etc etc); another couple of hours to get the Openswan configuration just right; several hours of struggling to automatically setup DNS lookups when using the IPSec connection (gave up and ended up using entries in /etc/hosts!). There is no UI in Network Manager to manage IPSec connections either. Strongswan does have a NM plugin, but that only works for IKEv2 (certificate based authentication), while I had to use IKEv1 (shared key based authentication).

At the end of the day, I do have a working IPSec tunnel and it is definitely more reliable than the Cisco VPN (been up for more than 2 days without disruption). But all this can and should become a lot more seamless.

These are a few areas where Linux failed me in setting up the infrastructure for a startup; it shines most everywhere else. Hopefully these last few kinks will get ironed out soon.

BTW, if don’t know what Taiko is or have never heard Taiko, I refer you to the mighty Wikipedia and the mightier YouTube:

I’m on a temporary hiatus from Taiko right now, but I had an amazing experience the few months I spent with SF Taiko Dojo.

Yes, there are rules and etiquettes. But in a society where anything goes and freedom rules and any kind of “discipline” is often frowned upon, SFTD was almost refreshing. In many ways, it was reminiscent of the Gurukul system in ancient India.

Taiko itself is a wonderful art form. There is something powerful about a Taiko performance. A single drum is an excellent percussion device, but in a group, Taiko takes a life of its own. Like most art forms, you can pick up the basics real quick. But to go deep into Taiko, you need time, patience and a lot of hard work. The veterans at SFTD have been playing for 10-15 years and still learning.

Needless to add, Taiko is also a fantastic full body workout. It is a combination of dance, drumming, music and more. The classes are fun, but you do need serious commitment if you want to become an advanced Taiko player. The folks in the adult beginners class are a merry bunch. Before our first class, I was extremely anxious, trying to memory numerals in Japanese from Wikipedia and worried whether I’ll be able to keep up with everyone. There was help every step of the way. The class won’t stop for you, but it will not leave you behind either :)

But the best part of SFTD is the opportunity to learn from Sensei Tanaka. His accomplishments in the world of Taiko are well known, so I won’t enlist them here. What surprised me was the humility and generosity and the energy he brings with him, even after doing this for more than four decades. He could easily delegate the adult beginners class to one of his many advanced students; yet he still routinely teaches the class himself, ever so patient and understanding. Better yet, his expertise in Taiko is matched only by his wistful humor.

So if you are in the Bay Area and are looking for some inspiration, do checkout San Francisco Taiko Dojo.