Side note: if you really want to draw that <i>fucking owl</i> I recommend "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. It's a book about drawing (no surprise) that goes deeper than just the mechanics of drawing, so it's also fun to read.
It looks like a Great Horned Owl, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Horned_Owl" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Horned_Owl</a>. They usually just sit and stare at you so drawing them should not be too much of a problem.
Something I have to remind myself often when starting a new hobby. I have a taste for RL projects but lack the experience in most areas so often the initial iterations suck.
This blog post reminds of an article I read a few years back, 2007 I think, in the Harvard Business Review called, The Making of an Expert. The article stipulates that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in a particular field. It also stated that having a mentor increased the probably of actually becoming an expert significantly.
How to make a rails app (back when scaffolding was wiz-bang):<p>1)<p>rails blog<p>script/generate scaffold Post<p>script/server<p><a href="http://localhost:3000" rel="nofollow">http://localhost:3000</a><p>Look at your pretty blogging engine<p>2)<p>Delete all the generated code and write an actual blog engine.