Inserting binary values in the mysql shell

I needed to insert some dummy values into a table which had a bit field as well as a blob field, both of which are "NOT NULL". You just need to have the 'b' prefix on the data, like so:

INSERT INTO faketable(blob1, name, bitfield) values(b'001011101', "Beeblebrox", b'1');

You can also print out the binary data in a way that's not going to ruin your terminal using the BIN(), OCT() and HEX() functions:

SELECT name, HEX(blob1), BIN(bitfield) from faketable;
+--------------------+--------------+----------------+
| name               | HEX(blob1) | BIN(bitfield) |
+--------------------+--------------+----------------+
| Beeblebrox         | 005D         | 1              | 
+--------------------+--------------+----------------+