An evolving set of the gems and patterns I currently use for Rails 3 development.
Inspired by https://github.com/defeated/rails-app-template and https://github.com/npverni/rails3-rumble-template
After creating a new Rails app, and updating config/database.yml, run the following:
$ rake rails:template LOCATION=https://raw.github.com/speric/rails3-app-template/master/rails3-app-template.rb
Go to http://localhost:3000; the default admin username/pass is foo@bar.com/password.