A waste of time all round. No apparent way to contact an administrator and my previous message, like my initial one, was moderated for approval without the moderator appearing to notice what my comment was about, do anything about it or reply to my e-mail. Nothing in the forum rules about posting photographs. Ciao.

OK, only one photo was posted, not showing thegrain, sorry. Will write an administrator and find out what happened.

Careful, attitude indicates he might not get the humor.

"Canuck", with the moderators being volunteers, you need to be MUCH more patient awaiting a response. Days, not hours, is a more reasonable expectation.

Oh, so that's what passes for humour in these parts, is it? You guys should be on TV. I don't recall anything being said, by me, about "24/7". I submitted the post in the morning and waited patiently; it was posted in the evening, after someone got home from work I assume. Moments later I saw it and noticed the missing photos and looked for a way to send a message to an administrator. Couldn't find one, maybe I missed it. But I posted a reply to my own post apologising to eveyone for the missing photos, and moments later this reply was approved and posted - read, but its words about mysterious missing photos not absorbed, apparently. I found that odd. Approve and post a reply about a technical or other problem that a new user is having problems with, but don't try to help out.

It's too bad. Hirotaka Kuroki told me that he has never seen a finer masame grain pattern on the cutting edges of a goban. Of any goban, anywhere. I thought you all might enjoy seeing it, but belittling newcomers seems to be the preferred pastime.

I did reply to an e-mail notifying me that my original post was approved, describing my problem, but I got no reply to that.

[…] the ridicule was instantaneous.

Uhm, my reply 10 hrs 30 minutes after your last post is not what even slow-thinking I would call instantaneous.

So… you’re new to the ’net? In that case I apologize. For me, it was just a tongue-in-cheek answer.

And for future navigation of the internet I’d suggest patience, patience, patience, and acknowledging that “the net” has kind of a whacky humour sometimes. I admit that it took me a few months, 30+ years ago, to get used to it. The humour is a bit abrasive sometimes if you’re on the short end of it.
And re: getting acquainted to the “certain characteristics” of a new venue that Ed mentioned—rest assured that I have done MUCH worse back then (like using High Bit characters äöüß„“”’ in newsgroup posts, which garbled the digests for a few thousand other users).

So… welcome to this fine forum I think there are very few unfunny crackpots like me here (And maybe it’s an excuse that I’m German )

Hello, I thought people might be interested in this floor board and its unusual grain. The board is 17.5 cm (7 in.) thick, and there are about 300 rings. I bought it in Japan 15 years ago and it is in remarkably good shape, still with a glossy wax finish.

The masame grain has "veining" running through it at 90 degrees. This is a rare phenomenon in a variety of trees. These thin black veins rise to the surface of the board, where they appear as tiny black dots.

Hope you enjoy, any comments welcome.

OP's quickness to anger/frustration seems to have come in part from the incorrect assumption that a human moderator saw and read his post and deemed it pending for approval, rather than the reality that all posts from new users are automatically placed in the pending approval state before any human reads them as an anti-spam measure. Can we alter the automated message to make this and expected timescale clearer?