After realizing the difficulty of implementing my learning curve using the Head Start Rails book (v2 book: Rails is now v3), I decided to look around for other possibilities. This book is referenced at the main Rails guides site, so I will now work through this one.
On first look, this is much more up to date, and goes through great lengths to discuss installation, configuration and deployment. Examples screen shots are on the Macintosh OS (which is what I am using).
The opening chapter shows how to do an installation of rails from scratch. Since I am using the Bitnami stack, much of this has already been done. However, there is a good discussion regarding the installation of git (Section 1.3), then creating a repository on GitHub
