I've read somewhere that using SELECT * FROM causes too much CPU usage, so even if it is a pain, I suppose you can make a SELECT call on each column, this way mysql doesn't have to think.

You can probably get away with using mysql_fetch_assoc($result) instead of array, I don't know if it's true, but I heard it was a little faster too...

Also, to replace the if's, you can use switch, it is faster.