Archive for Insightory

Maximum length for BLOB columns in MySQL

Well, that was interesting. I was debugging a problem with a particular uploaded document on Insightory, and it looks like I made the wrong decision when choosing the datatype for a blob column in one of my tables.

Apparently MEDIUMBLOB stores up to 16 MB of data, and the uploaded document was larger than that. Not a big deal, I’ll go ahead and accept blame and fix the table schema and move on.

However, when trying to research on this and find the maximum length for BLOB fields in MySQL at the manual, I get this pretty data table with some formulas on how to calculate the maximum number of bytes myself. Isn’t that helpful?

How about the members of the documentation team pre-calculate this stuff for me, so I can just read and absorb the content without taking out my calculator? Mmkay thx bye.

SE|PY is a must for Actionscript developers

I’ve started working with Flash a bit lately for some features we are adding to Insightory, and I quickly noticed how bad the built-in “Actions” panel in Flash CS3 really is.

While watching a video tutorial up on GotoAndLearn.com (highly recommended, by the way!), I learned about SE|PY, an Actionscript text editor written in pure Python and based on top of Scite.

It’s a very good editor, complete with support for multiple open documents in the same window as separate tabs, Actionscript code syntax highlighting, code snippets, file browser and even support for Flash CS3 project files. It’s a perfect replacement for the built-in editor.