[LRUG] On learning Ruby/Rails

[Pierre Nel]

Hi!

I'm from a PHP background, and bought Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques
for Rails Developers   and Agile Web Development with Rails (2nd
Edition), and I've probably watched all the screencasts, and tried a
few of the examples. In a practical sense, I'm guessing the best way
to actually learn a language is to try and do something with it -
other than the usual "Create a Blog in 5 Minutes" tutorials.

Does anyone have suggestions on little projects to try, to slowly
increase my familiarity with Ruby & RoR? Something I bit more involved
than creating a blog, and less involved than some crazy API mashup :-)

Also, does anyone have any tips regarding "unlearning" all the awful
PHP I'm familiar with, especially it's awful OOP mode, which I never
really got to grips withl, so I can start afresh with RoR instead?

Thanks!

Pierre