Nicely done, I like it. Well, then again, I used to watch the progress
of filesystem defragmentors as a kid. Ahem. :-P
The problem here is, of course, that we don't know how beforehand much
work needs to be done. The indicator could be full of stars long before
the start of history is reached.
This could be helped somewhat by having three states instead of two:
unblamed (.), blamed (o) and just-now-blamed (*). Each time new stars
are written you'd demote the other stars in the field to o's. This way
you'll at least see something moving until the end, no matter how often
blame is pushed further down for already blamed lines.
This increases terminal bandwidth usage and on-screen activity, but not
necessarily the usefulness of this thing. :)
Ren