[arnioxux]

This visualization is really cool and innovative! It's useful for seeing the changes in the stream of values even if they are small relative to absolute magnitude (e.g., 1000001 -> 1000005 -> 1000003 etc).

The tradition way to solve this is to rescale the y axis (for example google stock price chart ranges from 1000-1200). But this doesn't work for graphing IO because it spikes up/down too often in a huge range.

Your visualization plots the base-1024 digits so whenever the IO is sustained at a certain range, the top few digits will be held constant and the next digit will show the variation within that scale.

Unfortunately I don't think this solves the spiking problem completely. It's mentally hard to parse since two adjacent values are only comparable whenever their top digits match.

For example it's only meaningful to compare (1gb+2mb+3kb) with (1gb+2mb+5kb) on the kb graph. If it spikes down to 0gb+0mb+0kb, you need to switch to reading the gb graph (since comparing the kb value to one before is pretty meaningless unless for some crazy reason you actually care about the mod 1024 value of two very different numbers).

To fix this, you should color code the "runs" of values that are meaningful to compare! In other words, kb values have the same color only if their gb/mb values match. And mb values have the same color if their gb value matches.

[jdmichal]

I like the idea of using a color signal to show a changed value, with the change cascading to lower "digits". So, for instance, if the GB change, then so do MB, KB, and B. If GB and MB remains the same, then only KB and B will change.

Hard part would be how to do this over a long span of columns without the whole thing looking like a unicorn puked on the chart...