lol i read the first page, and all i can say is this, its random... you could be jumping back and mineing every 2 seconds, except you would lose so much time in jumping... but you would still have the same chance of mineing anythieng. One spot, 8 spots w/e
do you think that is like "at 8:23:04 faceing northeast you will mine a super dragon gem"?
its not its got a certain amount of randomness, obviously some thiengs are more/less random than others like gold to iron or supergems to euxquinite ore... lol