the “equals-tilde” =~ operator for comparing strings to regular expressions
It’s worth noting that, once you have defined some attributes as accessible using *attr_accessible*, only those attributes can be modified using *update_attributes*.
When working at the console, it’s useful to keep an eye on the development log, which records the actual low-level SQL statements being issued by Active Record:
$ tail -f log/development.log
The **-f** flag ensures that tail will display additional lines as they are written.
I recommend keeping an open terminal window for tailing the log whenever working at the console.
Though it’s not strictly necessary, you might find it convenient to *annotate* your Rails models using the annotate-models gem.