.. I have a new TOY!
stargrace 
I have.. a new toy and I absolutely love it. On the left hand side is what looks like your very general track window. But that’s not all, of course not. This track window is a little more unique then most. Instead of tracking mobs and NPC, it tracks harvesting resources. What’s more, is that as you can see by the ? and ! on the page, it will track shinies.
Where does such a wonderful item come from? Well, easy, it comes from tinkering of course, which is the funnest tradeskill I have attempted, even though it’s also the most annoying in so many ways. It uses so many dang resources I’m lucky if I get 20 skill ups off of 5 hours worth of harvests. Though I suppose that’s not so bad.
The gnomish divining rod – great for tracking harvests
Now, there is a little trick I use when I use this item. You can specifically track the items listed if you want, but that will close the track window and waypoint to your destination, meaning you have to wait two minutes before you can track again. Actually, the two minute count down is from the initial use of the machine. Anyhow, it’ll mark your map with an X on the destination.
But.
What I do, is travel through the zone with that track window open. See, tracking can work a number of ways. It can work alphabetically, it can also place all named mobs first for you no matter their distance in the zone, and it can also track by distance from you. If you run around the zone (lets say Feerrott for example since that’s where Stargrace has been playing with this machine) with the track window open, and see a node on track that you’re looking for, you can pretty much just gage how far away from you it is by the distance down the list. As you get closer to the node you want, it’ll raise up on the list until the closest node next to you is the one you want, and by that time it’s easy to find it and harvest it.
If you see no nodes in your area that you’re looking for (For example, take a look at that list, there’s no ore listed at all) you can travel around keeping track up until you DO see some ore on the list, and then just maneuver your way around until the ore is closer to you or until you see it and can harvest it.
There are of course downsides to this. Number one, people don’t like "cherry pickers". They’re the harvesters who leave all the "gross" things up like poor discarded shrubs, and quite often trees, and pelts. Taking just the metals and roots as their loot. It’s not fun to walk through a zone and have nothing at all up to harvest except things that are not for your craft. I typically do harvest everything except fish (I’ve never managed to even work that skill up… I know I know bad of me!) but some times not many people are around and I just want something specific.
Not to mention the fact that the harvest tracker is also great for finding those ? and !’s that are scattered through out Norrath. Especially in those zones where they’re hard to come by, Antonica and Commonlands where there’s just so much space to cover. Or the zones where they seem a little more rare, or well, just any zone for that matter.
So yes, I am enjoying my new toy and all the uses I have for it so far. Tinkering was a great choice for my "main" character illusionist. I have a transmuter already, and actually transmuting is not that useful. Because even if you work a transmuter up to 350, you need an actual specific crafter to make the adornments of your choice in most cases. The transmuter just makes the items the crafter uses. Does that make sense? My transmuter makes powders and shards and infusions, and then my other crafters take those and craft them into adornments specific for that class. One reason why I love having a lot of crafters, I can rely on myself for adornments and don’t have to fork over a lot of money to others to make the items for me. Anyhow, I hope everyone else’ weekend was absolutely amazing, on a personal note, the ottawa senators (where I live) made it to the Stanley Cup finals, and the city is super excited about that. I’m not the biggest hockey fan out there, but it is my city after all, so I have to show a little support *grins* sorry to hear about those leafs Cordanim.