installation trouble??

[Lostin Ruby]

Hi,

I am very new to ruby and have hit a wall with the installation. I am
using a Mac OS X 10.4.11(Tiger). I got everything installed correctly
(Ruby Version 1.8.6, RubyGems 1.3.2, Rails Version 2.3.2, db adapter
sqlite3) and I was trying to work through the Agile Web Development with
Rails 2nd edition. There was an issue with scaffold being deprecated in
newer versions so I scoured the web to find a fix. I tried to uninstall
RubyGems 1.3.2 so that I could work through the book edition 2 with the
intention of installing the newer version later. However now when I try
to start the server I get the message

Rails requires RubyGems >= 1.3.1 (you have 0.9.2). Please `gem update
--system` and try again.

and when I try to update my gems or indeed run any other gem command I
get the error

/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:92:in
`load_specification': private method `specification_version=' called for
#<Gem::Specification:0x10b01d4> (NoMethodError)
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/specification.rb:421:in
`initialize'
from (eval):3:in `new'
from (eval):3:in `load_specification'
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:128:in `eval'
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:92:in
`load_specification'
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:128:in
`load_gems_in'
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:127:in `each'
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/source_index.rb:127:in
`load_gems_in'
... 14 levels...
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in
`gem_original_require'
from
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:27:in
`require'
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:112:in
`manage_gems'
from /usr/local/bin/gem:10

I'm really at a loss so any help would be greatly appreciated. Please
bear in mind that I am very new to Macs and Ruby.

Kind regards,

LostinRuby