note that
"SELECT <timestamp-field>, ..."
will return the field with type 7 (timestamp) but with content like "2010-07-14 14:35:08". the point being it is a string.
"SELECT <timestamp-field> + 0, ..."
returns a type 5 (double) but while a number, is not seconds since epoch, but a number in MySQL's "YYYYMMDDHHMMSS" format, in this example:
20100714143508
(PHP 5.2.12)