Howdy guys and girls,
Most of you don’t know me; I’m mostly a lurker in the Rails community…
Anyhow, I wanted to let you guys know about my upcoming Rails book: Mr.
Neighborly’s Relevant Ramblings, Pointed Pontifications, and Thought
Theories on Ruby & Rails. I just released the first chapter for free
today
(it’s a 60 page Ruby tutorial); you can grab it from here:
http://www.mrneighborly.com/book
You’re probably groaning about now about how there are already 15,000
Rails
books in beta, print, or PDF right now. Well, I’m trying to approach
this
whole thing a little differently. First off I’m self-publishing. I
don’t
like wrestling with publishers; their sterile websites and clingy PR
people
make me antsy (I lost sleep the last time I bought books direct from
publisher; that convinced me to never abandon Amazon and its
cuddliness).
Second, after my publishing costs are covered, the eBook will become
free
and the print book will be reduced in price (from me at least; Amazon
can do
whatever it wants because they’re rich and their CEO drives a Segway
[that
of which, oddly enough, was driven over my foot once at Disney World]).
This edition will be based on Rails 1.1 and Ruby 1.8.4 (with an appendix
with currently available information on Ruby 1.9-2.0). When new versions
of
these are released, I’ll create a new edition of the book (which will be
treated like this edition: sold until publishing is covered and then
released as cheap/free). The old version will still be up for download
when
the new editions come out, so don’t worry about losing out.
You can pre-order now or donate to help cover costs beforehand (and
maybe,
just maybe, cover the costs beforehand so I don’t even have to charge
for
the eBook). Check out the web page for more information on the book and
what you can do: http://www.mrneighborly.com/book
Thanks a lot; enjoy the tutorial/chapter. 
