BIGINT UNSIGNED value is out of range

Question

I am getting the error

BIGINT UNSIGNED value is out of range in '(1301980250 - mydb.news_articles.date)'

When I run the query

SELECT *, ((1 / log(1301980250 - date)) * 175) as weight FROM news_articles ORDER BY weight; 

Removing the ORDER BY condition, removes the error too. How can I fix it?

Update: The date field contains unix timestamp (ex: 1298944082). The error started appearing after I upgraded MySQL from 5.0.x to 5.5.x

Any help please?

Answer 1

I recently ran into this and found the most reasonable solution to simply cast any UNSIGNED ints as SIGNED.

 SELECT *, ((1 / log(1301980250 - cast(date as signed)) * 175) as weight FROM news_articles ORDER BY weight