title: How do you create a BLOB column in rails postgresql database
body: <p>I'm attempting to store binary data in a database. (postgresql on heroku) </p>
  
  <p>I understand there are two different ways to store binary data in postgresql. A blob and a bytea.. </p>
  
  <p>When I create a table in my migration, </p>
  
  <pre><code>create_table :binaries do |t|
    t.binary :data
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>it creates a column in the database of type bytea. </p>
  
  <p>My question is.. How do I create a record of type blob?</p>
  
  <p>Why do I ask? It seems when I send a ten byte file up to heroku, it stores it as a string of hex values, prepended with an "e".. so my 10 bytes becomes 21. My 10 meg file would become 20 megs (and one byte), ext, ext, ext... <br>
  Now that bothers me, but as I don't really care about performance. (I've had the care beaten out of me by the PM), its not what bothers me the most.<br>
  What really bothers me is; when I read out the contents of the database I get the 21 bytes, not the 10. That is un-useable. </p>
  
  <p><strong>So my question again.. How do I create a BLOB column in rails/postgresql/heroku environment?</strong></p>