However I agree with the other commenters that you should absolutely learn HTML, CSS, and JS first. There's no point digging into Rails until you know these basic technologies...
You could take a look at the following a my friend and I (new to Rails) built using Ruby on Rails: http://supernotes.herokuapp.com/ for our school friends in a few days. It's still quite bare, with little JS or AJAX but that's because we're studying for our exams now.
I might have to learn the ruby first too. Seems quite key when i want to build my custom .html.erb pages.
Obie sent me the print version of his book, I'll probably take a look at it. Though in his email he considered it to be "more of an intermediate book".